A friend on facebook posted this morning that she received a referral slip in the  mail regarding her daughter’s behavior on the public school bus. A referral slip is, evidently, their way of writing someone up. After you receive a referral, the next consequences are more severe. For her, it will mean being banned from riding the bus. Why? Because she made a mess with a Pop Tart on the bus.

The parent mentioned that, in the same school system, one of the bus drivers fell asleep recently while driving the bus! As far as she knows, nothing was ever done about that. But, they did bother to write a referral slip for a Pop Tart mess and say it was a “safety issue.”

Of course, nearly everything that government tries to do these days to take away our freedom or criminalize normal behavior is branded as a safety issue. If it was correctly labeled, it would garner very little public support. “Freedom sucking laws,” for instance, don’t really make it through for some reason. “Turn our kids into mindless zombies” rules also don’t tend to be marketed very often.

Some people are starting to notice the things that I notice…and the things that are being written about in this blog and elsewhere. For instance, in the facebook status where my friend described her daughter’s Pop Tart incident, one person said that similar things are happening to her kids at school, and she feels like the schools are too busy nitpicking the kids’ behavior to actually supply an education. She went on to say that it feels like they are trying to turn the children into perfect little robots instead of people who can think for themselves. Well, some would argue that she has actually articulated the position of the public school system since its inception. I don’t tend to be that conspiratorial, but it sure looks like she’s hit the nail on the head in terms of how they are acting in this day and age.

Although my friend’s daughter was not arrested, her story reminds me of one that made headlines recently. A girl’s wrist was broken and she was arrested on multiple charges after she dropped some birthday cake on the floor at school. Her mother was also arrested for battery when she suggested that the officer who broke her daughter’s wrist be held accountable. The entire thing was caught on video, and the person taking the video was also arrested.

After you watch the video, you can choose to believe her story or not, but the fact remains that our kids are being told that they are bad for participating in normal behaviors. To read up on incidents involving schools, click here.

Related posts:

1. Criminal Charges for a Food Fight
2. Criminal Toys
3. Daytime Curfews for Minors
4. Natural Consequence
5. Dumb Lunch Guidelines