School administrators have lost their minds. Their ‘zero tolerance’ rules defy logic and common sense.

First you have 16-year-old Florida student who is facing a criminal trial over using common household products on a remote section of the school grounds to see what would happen. What happened was school administrators lost their collective minds, and people are asking: “How could an otherwise model student be expelled and charged with a felony over an experiment that didn’t hurt anyone?”

What she did was hazardous, because it involved toilet bowl cleaner which is usually hydrochloric acid. It can cause chemical burns. When you drop in a wad of aluminum foil a reaction takes place which produces aluminum chloride salt and hydrogen gas. The reaction is exothermic and generates heat which causes the gas to expand. If you use a small plastic bottle for the experiment and cap it after dropping in the foil, the pressure of the expanding gas may cause a rupture, like a tire blowing out. The remaining acid may react with the humidity in the air and produce white fumes that look like smoke. It isn’t anywhere as impressive as what happens when you drop a Mentos into a two-liter container of Diet Coke.

An educator would have required the student to write a research paper explaining what happened during the reaction she experimented with, and explaining the dangers of the acid and the hydrogen gas. She would be required to use actual books, not the Internet for her research.

This was a teaching moment and she learned how stupid some adults really are.

Then you have the case of a Chicago teacher: “Doug Bartlett, a veteran teacher with an upstanding record of 17 years, has filed a lawsuit against the school district of Chicago for suspending him without pay after giving a lesson on gardening tools to his second grade students.”

Mr Bartlett apparently had ‘weaponized’ pliers and wrenches in the locked tool box, that he used to demonstrate things to the class. The kids had no access to the tools, and didn’t even get to touch them, but their mere presence was enough for the administrators to suspend him without pay.

Update: Mr Bartlett was giving a mandated class on “garden-variety” not “gardening” tools, and one of the tools he selected was a pocket knife.

Cat in the Grass

He won’t find me here.

[Editor: Photos of Ms Blue normally require zoom, but she is ‘hiding’ behind some spiderwort which she assumes prevents me from seeing her.]

Friday Ark