The Kid Is Alright …
… But local officials have lost their minds.
The BBC had this, Boy held for ‘killing pet dinosaur’, in their weird news section.
It takes place in South Carolina where a 16-year-old high school student was given an assignment to write something in the ‘Facebook status update style’. [I was unable to locate this ‘style’ in the Modern Language Association style guide, and cannot conceive of an actual need to be familiar with it.]
Giving the assignment all of the seriousness it deserved, he wrote about his plan to kill his neighbor’s ‘pet dinosaur’, and the school went bananas. Then the local police went bananas when he was ‘difficult’ in questioning and arrested him on a charge of ‘disturbing the school’.
I can certainly agree that both the school and the police are seriously disturbed based on their reaction, and I think the boy’s desire to be home-schooled is definitely the best course, because the diploma from a school that assigns papers written in the ‘Facebook status update style’ and doesn’t recognize a joke is hardly likely to be taken seriously.
3 comments
😕 Ummmmm…
The word “insane” comes easily to mind. Maybe “batshit crazy morons” might be more apt.
I guess education in the USA truly is beyond a joke! 🙄 Heck, not even Russians or Arabs are as anal and humorless as many Americans seem to be. *shrug*
I cannot believe how incredibly glib you are being here. My god, DO YOU WANT A DINOSAUR COLUMBINE? If this kid has access to guns and a time machine, he could totally CHANGE HISTORY AND MAKE DINOSAURS EXTINCT!
I considered using ‘batshit crazy’ vice ‘bananas’, Kryten, and vaguely remember reading somewhere that there is some scientific support for the term, as with ‘mad as a hatter’ [mercury poisoning from the chemicals used to make hats], but I like bats [they eat mosquitoes] and don’t want to remind people of some of their negatives components.
Had he started talking about calculus, heavy-lift rocket systems, and the relative position of near-earth objects, I might have shown more concern, NTodd. I certainly wouldn’t have been pleased with another asteroid slamming into the Bay of Campeche, but the Orkin people would be reticent about visiting properties that contained velociraptors and if cockroaches or termites get a hold on one house in the neighborhood, there go property values.
It is people like this school that are turning out the people responsible for the total lack of anything entertaining on television.