Pencils and other lethal weapons in our Big Government schools

America's public schools are government schools, and they are in the hands of imbeciles.

* When school officials found a pair of scissors in 10-year-old Porsche Brown's book bag, the fourth-grade student at Philadelphia's Thomas Holme Elementary School was handcuffed and hauled off to a police station even though the school district admitted she did not threaten anyone with them or even display them.

The scissors were discovered when students' belongings were being searched for property missing from a teacher's desk.

The school's excuse for this absurdity?

Porsche violated a rule against having dangerous weapons in her possession. So they called police and had her handcuffed and taken to the police station in a filthy paddy wagon.

"They handcuffed her and she said they were tight on her wrist and they took her out and she was put into a paddy wagon," her mother Rose Jackson told a reporter. "She said there was blood in the back of the wagon and it smelled like urine. It was dark in there."

Now if this isn't crazy enough, consider the fact that nobody ever told Porsche or her mother that having pair of scissors in school was forbidden.

And that's not all:

"I received a letter of things she needed for school, and scissors were on there," Jackson said.

At the police station cops realized that Porsche had committed no crime, and they released her.

The school's excuse?

Weapons are banned from the premises, and scissors could be used as a weapon.

But a No. 2 lead pencil can be used as a deadly weapon. Jammed into someone's eye and into the brain it could kill the victim.

Are No. 2 lead pencils banned?

Of course not.

Just about anything can be used as a weapon. A detective once showed me a fountain pen like the one he said had been used to kill someone.

These laws are ridiculous. Sure, ban guns and daggers and explosive devices, but scissors?

If this were an isolated incident it might be considered an aberration. But this kind of nonsense is becoming commonplace in our idiotic government school system.

Drugs are banned and a child can be expelled for having an aspirin. The school, however, doesn't hesitate to force kids to take drugs to make them more docile and manageable. And those drugs have been shown sometimes to provoke students to kill themselves or their classmates.

* In Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, honor student Chris McCarthy was expelled from class for the remainder of the school year at Upper Moreland High School for mistakenly bringing a pocketknife to class.

Said his dad David: "This kid has been jerked around because a penknife was in his pocket. This kid has never had a demerit or detention in 10 1/2 years of school".

* A 5-year-old kindergartner was handcuffed by police at Thurgood Marshall Academy, a St. Louis charter school.

His mother admitted her son has had trouble adjusting to his first year of school but complained that "he didn't do anything to deserve to be handcuffed. He is only 5," she added. "Suspend him or do whatever, but you don't handcuff him." Sam Morgan, the principal of Thurgood Marshall Academy, said he wanted to teach the boy a lesson to try to improve his unruly behavior.

"I'm trying to scare this kid straight," he said. "I would not be doing my job if I were not trying to get him on the right path." Add to these outrages the current attempt by government schools across the nation to ban all mention of Christmas - the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, who I guess is not considered politically correct.

These are all assaults on America's parents who have lost control of what were once public schools but have now been taken over by big government and a host of imbecilic educrats who can't tell a pair of scissors from a deadly weapon.

These things will continue to happen until more and more parents yank their kids out of the government schools, or even better, take their schools back.

Michael Reagan is a syndicated columnist.