Forget about why Johnny can’t think. What happened to the thinking ability of the teachers and bureaucrats and the law enforcers? When school shootings make the headlines, common sense is one of the first casualties.
Again and again, schools are throwing the book at innocent children for doing innocent childish things. Grown adults are adding two and two and coming up with five. Ever play cops and robbers when you were a kid? It’s a guy thing. I bet if you surveyed one thousand adult guys, at least 999 of them would admit that yeah, as little boys they did play cops and robbers at one time or another. Very few of those thousand, if any, grew up to become bank robbers. Harmless stuff, right?
Well, not if you use a paper gun and not if you’re attending second grade in Irvington, New Jersey, in the year 2001. Kids caught playing cops and robbers there were recently suspended from school, and school officials called in the real coppers. The police did some deep thinking of their own and charged the little boys with making terrorist threats. Sounds like it really is getting dangerous to go to school these days dangerous for little boys, anyway, who do the things little boys always do.
The people we trust to teach our children how to think seem to be doing precious little of it themselves. Panic is the enemy of clear thinking. We all need to take a deep breath, count to ten, and consider whether two and two maybe add up to four after all.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.