8-year-old Eathen Harris of Colorado was initially suspended for three days after sniffing a stripe of Magic Marker off of his shirt repeatedly even after a teacher told him to stop.The punishment was reduced to one day of suspension, but Eathen's parents believe this is still too harsh. They argue that the school,
"automatically assumed that he was huffing a marker. He is in third grade, he's 8 years old. And I think that's a ridiculous assumption.”
The prinicipal, Christopher Benisch, stands by the disciplinary action. He says that they,
"really want to send a clear message to that student and the other students that we're responsible for that. This is a real true danger.”
Was this punishment too harsh? Do you think that the 8-year-old was inhaling the marker intentionally or just trying to be funny? What other options could the school have explored besides suspension?
1 comment:
I think that regardless of whether or not the student was "huffing" the marker, he was not listening to the teacher, and that is a problem. The teachers job is to keep their students safe, and that was what the teacher was trying to do. If I was the parent of that student I would have asked for a punishment other than susupension, such as doing a special project about what is good to breathe in and what is not and why. We know that children today need to taught about inhalants and that teaching them at this age that markers, whiteout, dustoff and other products are poisons will hopefully keep them from experimenting with these poisions in the future.
Post a Comment