Brickbat: I Can't Believe It's Not Butter

Daniel Hussey / Dreamstime

Officials at Florida's Maude Saunders Elementary School suspended a first-grade student for bringing a dangerous weapon to school. A butter knife. They discovered the weapon when the girl used it at lunch.

Comments

[Jerryskids]

"We're just here for the safety and security of all our student and that's our number one goal," Jones explained.

Where does educating students fall on your ranking of goals?

[Rat on a train]

Day care is the mission.

[SQRLSY One]

I am a weak and tired old geezer, but I would STILL challenge any idiotic school administrator to walk into any classroom and let me randomly grab something (like a chair) as a weapon, and they can arm themselves with a butter knife, and we can duke it out! I bet I would win!

(We must ban chairs, etc. from the classrooms, then, perhaps?)

[David Nolan Michael Hihn]

I mean someone like Jackie Chan can turn anything into a weapon.

[Vernon Depner]

Get your children out of public schools. They are being harmed.

[Telcontar the Wanderer]

Well, not now that they've found the knife they're not.

[Telcontar the Wanderer]

That's weird. How did they catch her by surprise? Shouldn't it have glowed blue when they got near?

[Quo Usque Tandem]

Nice reference to The Hobbit. Beater and Biter.

[Tom Bombadil]

They caught her in a Sting operation.

[Libertarian]

These brickbats are getting edgier.*

*What is a brickbat, anyway? It sounds like it could be a dangerous weapon.

[Hank Stamper]

noun: brickbat; plural noun: brickbats

a piece of brick, typically when used as a weapon.

?a remark or comment which is highly critical and typically insulting.
"the plaudits were beginning to outnumber the brickbats"

[Griffin3]

I was pretty much sure, when I grew up, it referred to the cricket-like bat that masons used to tap the bricks into place, when they bed them in the mortar. When did all the online dictionaries gather to defy what I know to be true?

[crufus]

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/brickbat
Noun
brickbat (plural brickbats)
1. A piece of brick used as a weapon, especially if thrown, or placed in something like a sock and used as a club.
2. A criticism or uncomplimentary remark.
3. A section of a publication containing criticism.
For example, it's quite common for magazines to have a section called Bouquets and Brickbats for compliments and criticisms. See for example: Reason Magazine: Daily Brickbat

[Fist of Etiquette]

"They should have called the parents, brought the parents in, 'Let's get this student together, get the parent and let's get the guidance counselor together to discuss what had happened and why they should not bring one to school," Willie Moore, who has a second-grade student at Maude Saunders, said.

Look, administrators aren't there to educate and they don't have all day to stand around using discretion. The rulebook's job is to free staff of thinking and bully children into submission, so they're going to use it. If you don't like it, take your business somewhere else.

[Zeb]

why they should not bring one to school

What if there aren't any reasons other than "rules must be obeyed"? Seems to me that a pencil (or any number of other common objects) is at least as dangerous a weapon as a butter knife.

[Eidde]

I remember when schools had pencil sharpeners in the classrooms, presumably so that students could make their weapons even sharper and more dangerous.

[Bra Ket]

"because we are idiots with god complexes who lack common sense and will hysterically over-react out at any opportunity".

[cgr2727]

Back in the day (late '70's/early '80's) you could turn a pencil into a pretty decent shiv just by popping the eraser out and flattening the now-empty ferrule under the leg of your chair. Bonus points for liberating the razor blade from one of those little plastic pencil sharpeners.

They probably don't even let the kids use pencils with erasers anymore, because that would imply they were making (and correcting) mistakes, which could hurt feelings.

[Longtobefree]

. . . . and then the other students returned to class, picked up their sharpened pencils, and resumed 'learning'.

[Roger the Shrubber]

But how does one defend oneself against a student armed with a banana?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U90dnUbZMmM

[Longtobefree]

According to CNN, by calling it an apple (?)

[Necron 99]

It is the school-to-prison pipeline mentality. You wouldn't give a dangerous inmate a butter knife, he could hone an edge on it and make a shank to use against other inmates or prison staff. Therefore you cannot allow little Suzie Firstgrader to have a butter knife because she could sit in the back of the class covertly sharpening it on cinderblock walls and attack other inmates students and staff.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

Zero Tolerance = 0 discretion, 0 differentiation, 0 thinking, 0 judgement. No room for errors.

[Eidde]

A butter knife can be used to spread butter, and eating butter is like snorting cocaine, that's how unhealthy it is.

You wouldn't let a kid bring a cocaine spoon to school, would you?

/sarc

[creech]

Yeah, I'll bet that 100% of those crazy drug maniacs started out eating butter on his toast or baked potato when he or she was just a yute.

[Entelechy]

Surely, this must be the butter knife of Damocles.

[Incomprehensible Bitching]

I hear we still let children interact with school.

Listen: the minute my precious offspring encounters some other hooligan's dangerous accident against humanity, I am going to sue that school until the end of time!

[deeco]

The unspeakable horror! A butter knife! Egads! WHO WILL SAVE THE CHILDREN?!?

[Longtobefree]

Someone with a margarine knife, no doubt.