See, it’s crap like this — in the news on a daily basis — that confirms my intent to home school our son when he’s ready for school:

A fifth-grader in Cupertino, California was suspended and threatened with expulsion for bringing a small Swiss Army knife on a school-sponsored, science-oriented camping trip.

In early April, Braden Bandermann’s class set off on Garden Gate Elementary School’s annual, week-long pilgrimage for fifth-graders to Marin Headlands, just north of San Francisco.

Before leaving, Braden did what any Silicon Valley 10-year-old faced with the perils of nature might do: He packed his trusty Swiss Army knife. As any camper knows, the multi-tool device is nothing if not versatile. Braden’s particular model contains a can opener, tweezers, a toothpick, a nail file, a tiny pair of scissors and a small blade.

The little blade landed the boy in big trouble.

“They called me,” explained Tony Bandermann, Braden’s father. “They said, ‘You have to come and get him. He has a weapon. He needs to be suspended or possibly expelled.’”

At the time, the elder Bandermann was on a business trip in Sacramento, roughly 100 miles away. His wife, Braden’s stepmother, was at the camp with Braden, but they had arrived by bus and had no private transportation. (Braden’s mother was also unable to go to the camp so that he could serve a suspension.)

The school principal, Brandi Hucko, allegedly wanted Bandermann to rush to the site of the science camp, pick Braden up for a one-day suspension and then deliver him back to camp.

Bandermann told The Daily Caller that he was frustrated over Hucko’s insistence “that I risk my job and go get him out of the program for a one-day suspension all over a Swiss Army knife.”

The multi-tool instrument did not present a threat, Bandermann believes.

“I went to the very same trip when I was a child at the same school, and I had a very similar Swiss Army knife,” he said. “In fact, most of the kids did.”

For crap’s sake — it’s a Swiss Army knife. If a boy can’t take a Swiss Army knife (or any pocket knife, really) on a camping trip, why even manufacture pocket knifes anymore. If a kid is seriously intent on hurting other kids while out on a camping trip, he can use a rock , a sharp stick, a frying pan, or just about anything else he can get his hands on.

I got my first pocket knife, a gift from my grandfather, when I was 7 years old. It was my most cherished possession, and I carried it with me everywhere. To include school. At recess, me and my buddies would compare our knives, and trade them for other childhood treasures, like marbles, slingshots, and baseball cards.

We never went on stabbing sprees.

I already have the knife I’ll give to my son as his first knife (a Böker canoe-style double-bladed pocket knife made in Solinger, Germany in the early 1950s), probably around the time he turns 7-8 years old. And rather than be punished by some pantie-wetting Liberal teacher and administrators at a mediocre elementary school, his knife will be part of the curriculum: how to sharpen and care for his knife; how to use it safely to whittle wood, cut food safely (I use one to this day to cut an apple anytime I eat one), and other useful chores for which a pocketknife comes in handy.

And some day, long from now, I’ll also give him my Swiss Army knife — the one with my name stamped in it; a gift from a good friend about 10 years ago when he visited the Swiss Army knife factory in Ibach, Switzerland. Along with all my other knifes and guns.

So often, I read a story in the news and then click over to Ace of Spades to find out that he’s pretty already described exactly how I feel about that story.

Kind of like this story, which is reason #10837 why I will not be sending my boy to be indoctrinated by the Liberals and morons (but I repeat myself) running and teaching in our nation’s public schools.

NY Middle School Forces Children To Ask Same Gender For A Kiss During “Anti-Bullying” Class…

Parents say their daughters were told to ask one another for a kiss and they say two girls were told to stand in front of the class and pretend they were lesbians on a date.

“She told me, ‘Mom we all get teased and picked on enough. Now I’m going to be called a lesbian because I had to ask another girl if I could kiss her,’” parent, Mandy Coon, told reporters.

Coon says parents were given no warning about the presentation and there was no opportunity to opt-out. Both the school principal and the district superintendent are defending the workshops and advising they will schedule more.

“The school is overstepping its bounds in not notifying parents first and giving us the choice,” another parent said. “I thought it was very inappropriate. That kind of instruction is best left up to the parents.”

“I was absolutely furious — really furious,” a parent who asked to remain anonymous told reporter Todd Starnes, “These are just kids. I’m dumbfounded that they found this class was appropriate.”

OK…I guess it’s marginally better than the daily stories of another teacher raping her students (seriously, is there any other single profession outside of prostitution that attracts more sexual deviants and perverts than that of educator?). This is nothing short of Government-funded and taxpayer-subsidized child abuse.

Ace nails the response:

If the Gay Rights people are insisting that children must kiss same-sex children in order to make their lives more convenient, then I am going fully Anti-Gay-Rights.

You cannot demand that someone afford you the right of liberty while in the same movement stealing that very thing from everyone else.

How about this for an insane idea: Just as people have the right to be gay, other people retain their right to not be gay.

Or is that to “extreme” a position?

Keep.

Your Fucking.

Hands.

Off.

Other People’s Children.

For God’s sake. For God’s sake.

More than just trying to protect my son from teachers and “curriculum” like this, my primary reason for keeping Cash out of public schools is to keep myself out of prison.

Because — fair warning to any of Cash’s future teachers (in the event that I am forced by some new, unforeseen-at-this-time law that forces children to be educated indoctrinated by unionized public ed teachers — the first time my boy comes home and told me this was the day’s lesson? I’m keeping him home the next day. So that he doesn’t have to watch his dad drag his teacher out of the classroom into the parking lot, hog tie her with her own pantie hose, and then drag her behind my pick up truck until she promises to quit fucking with other people’s children.

My wife and I have about 4 more years to find and implement a plan that will allow us to homeschool our son, rather then send him off to the Liberal indoctrination camps of public education. And just about every single day, I find another reason to detest public education, most teachers, and their administrators.

Like this story today in the Washington Post from George Will, about white elementary-aged children being required to wear “white power” wristbands (like the yellow LiveStrong bracelets that you don’t see anybody wearing anymore) “as a reminder about your privilege, and as a personal commitment to explain why you wear the wristband.”

The real vocation of some people entrusted with delivering primary and secondary education is to validate this proposition: The three R’s — formerly reading, ’riting and ’rithmetic — now are racism, reproduction and recycling. Especially racism. Consider Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction. It evidently considers “instruction” synonymous with “propaganda,” which in the patois of progressivism is called “consciousness-raising.”

Wisconsin’s DPI, in collaboration with the Orwellian-named federal program VISTA(Volunteers in Service to America; the “volunteers” are paid), urged white students to wear white wristbands “as a reminder about your privilege, and as a personal commitment to explain why you wear the wristband.” A flyer that was on the DPI Web site and distributed at a DPI-VISTA training class urged whites to “put a note on your mirror or computer screen as a reminder to think about privilege,” to “make a daily list of the ways privilege played out” and to conduct an “internal dialogue” asking questions such as “How do I make myself comfortable with privilege?” and “What am I doing today to undo my privilege?”

Are. You. Fucking. Kidding. Me?

Imagine the outrage if  we made black kids wear “Yellow Crime Tape” bracelets as a “reminder of the violent and criminal culture” that is so prevalent in the black community…

If my kid came home wearing one of these, I’d cut it off and take it down to the school and strangle his teacher with it. And then re-use it (remember to recycle, children) to whip the principle of that school about the face.

I will homeschool our boy, because he will not  be taught to be ashamed of who he is. Or to denigrate the success of his parents as something they were “handed” simply due to the color of their skin. Which is just as absurd of a notion as being held back in America simply because the color of your skin today. Instead, we’ll teach him to be proud of who he is, and to strive for, celebrate, and enjoy success.

As Glenn Reynolds rightly notes, “The more public schools are about pushing a political agenda, the less political — and budgetary — support they’ll enjoy from those who don’t share that agenda.”