Deaf Child Can’t Sign Name at School
Posted by on Wednesday, August 29th, 2012So, this story is EVERYWHERE, it might as well be here. I first heard about it yesterday on Free-Range Kids. Tons of my facebook friends are talking about it, and it was all over twitter yesterday as well.
Evidently, a young boy named Hunter was forced to change his name in order to attend school. The issue is that he is deaf and the sign for “Hunter” violated the school’s weapons policy.
People on my social networks yesterday were shocked by this story. However, people who read this blog will not be surprised by such asinine rules. I’ve already discussed other zero tolerance nonsense — like the child who was punished for eating his pizza into the shape of a gun. I could go on and on with examples, but you can just look around here for other, similar stories.
The point is that we covet safety. We will trade anything for it — even common sense, evidently. The school has released a statement indicating that it is not requiring the boy to change his name, but goes on to talk about some conformity with A.S.L. (American Sign Language). The boy’s name is signed in S.E.E. (Signing Exact English) since that is the sign language method he uses. It’s not entirely clear, but I think they are saying that they would prefer the boy use the sign for his name in ASL rather than SEE, which wouldn’t amount to change his name.
The fact that this was even brought up — that his fingers look like guns when he’s signing his name — is ridiculous!
Grand Island’s “Weapons in Schools” Board Policy 8470 forbids “any instrument…that looks like a weapon.”
…and with that went common sense.
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