6-year-old faces reform school over spoon

If a first-grader who joined the Cub Scouts and regularly wears a suit and tie to school isn't safe from the "zero tolerance" thought police, who is?

In Newark, Delaware, a 6-year-old student took his Cub Scouts camping utensil to school. It's a combination of a spoon, fork, and knife - not unlike a fast food spork.

You'd think the school would be proud of him for joining the Cub Scouts. But instead, the school accused him of violating the "zero tolerance" weapons policy. Now he faces 45 days in reform school.

How right-wing is that?

If the school doesn't allow spoons, how do kids eat lunch? Do they lap up soup with their heads in the bowl, like a dog?

The America we once knew is dead, I'm afraid.

"Zero tolerance" policies were developed primarily to give schools an excuse to punish victims of bullying instead of the perpetrators. Notice that serial harassers are never punished, as the schools defend them as folk heroes. But it's also a win for school officials who just want everyone under their control to be molded into docile spokes in the corporatist wheel.

(Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/education/12discipline.html)