An award winning science teacher was suspended when an unnamed school employee thought two student science projects looked too much like weapons.
Idiocracy: An award winning science teacher was suspended when an unnamed school employee thought two student science projects looked too much like weapons.
Schiller got into trouble after two of his students turned in science projects designed to shoot little projectiles, reports the Los Angeles Times. One of the projects used compressed air (but was not actually connected to any air). The other one was coil gun: a tube surrounded by a coil and powered by a standard AA battery.
An unidentified school employee saw the air-pressure projectile device and got scared because, to her, it looked like a fearsome weapon. The amount of knowledge the employee has concerning science – if any – is unclear.
As a result of the unnamed employee’s fears, Schiller – who actually never got to see either the air-pressure project or the coil project except in photos – was dismissed from the classroom indefinitely. School officials impounded both projects as “evidence,” according to the mother of the kid who did the coil project.
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Idiocracy: An award winning science teacher was suspended when an unnamed school employee thought two student science projects looked too much like weapons.
Schiller got into trouble after two of his students turned in science projects designed to shoot little projectiles, reports the Los Angeles Times. One of the projects used compressed air (but was not actually connected to any air). The other one was coil gun: a tube surrounded by a coil and powered by a standard AA battery.
An unidentified school employee saw the air-pressure projectile device and got scared because, to her, it looked like a fearsome weapon. The amount of knowledge the employee has concerning science – if any – is unclear.
As a result of the unnamed employee’s fears, Schiller – who actually never got to see either the air-pressure project or the coil project except in photos – was dismissed from the classroom indefinitely. School officials impounded both projects as “evidence,” according to the mother of the kid who did the coil project.
Why am I reminded of this movie scene?
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
It is becoming easier and easier to be the smartest person in the room.
Unfortunately, when you are dealing with school administrators, being the smartest person in the room does not always help, you can still end up suspended for months.
Ever since junior high, I have realized that administrators have no clue how to handle kids or stop bullying. I thought that they were idiots then, and I haven’t changed that opinion. Apparently, child psychology is not even on the ‘desired skills’ list for these positions.
http://www.schoolspring.com/find/administrator_jobs.cfm
And there was no hint of needing any knowledge of science, or even common sense, for that matter. Our schools are being run by idiots. We spend more and more for administrators, but we aren’t getting value for our money.
http://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/a-new-study-has-found-that-there-is-zero-correlation-between-increased-spending-and-improvements-in-education#comments
“Zero tolerance” is a concept that is needed in order for idiots to be able to handle common sense situations, such as a student who makes a tiny marshmallow thrower or unintentionally bites a Pop-Tart into the shape of a gun (somebody might get hurt?).
http://www.storyleak.com/school-suspends-child-biting-pop-tart-gun/
Are these administrators and unidentified school employees merely projecting their own violent thoughts onto others?
It is a sad, sorry day when the students are smarter than the administrators and unidentified school employees. It is too bad that being smart is detrimental to attending — or teaching — school.
A kid just flipped out yesterday in a school and stabbed 20 or so young people with two kitchen knives. The solution of course is for the government to now confiscate all knives from the homes of the citizens in America and replace them with plastic pic nick knives to protect the children. And to have no reference to knives or any sharp tool or implement in any material or science demonstrations. This is how dopey the American bureaucracy has become.
An adult tackled the disturbed young man and stopped his rampage, it probably would have ended sooner and with less damage done to innocent school children if a trained adult had a concealed firearm and was able to back him down or if need be to shoot him. How many parents would opt to have a trained adult somewhere in the school be able to protect their child from harm in such an extreme situation?
You all know that the answer to that question is not the slam dunk as many might assume.
Just when I think it is safe to hit “Submit Comment”, I come across more supporting evidence of the lack of psychological training and the idiocy of zero tolerance:
http://www.truthrevolt.org//news/school-forces-psych-eval-child-accused-making-gun-motions-pencil
“We never know what’s percolating in the mind of children, okay, and when they demonstrate behaviors that raise red flags, we must do our duty.”
What didn’t they tolerate? Twirling a pencil.
Plus, they assisted a bully in bullying another student.
He doesn’t know what’s percolating there because he lacks child psychology training AND the common sense to understand who is the bully and who is the bullied.
So, school administrators: 1) are idiots, 2) lack common sense, 3) lack child psychology training, 4) are increasing in number like a cancer in the education system’s body, 5) are intolerant, 6) are paranoid, 7) lack knowledge of what is being taught in their own schools, 8) , and N) are bullies; bullying not just the students, but the teachers, too.
When my mother went to high school in Texas it was common for a student or even a teacher to have a shotgun or rifle in the gun rack of their truck. Unlocked.
It was common to see a student wank across the football field before school with a shotgun going to class after hunting in the morning.
No one was afraid.
When I went to school we had a student copy and build, piece by piece, a 38spl revolver in metal shop. All except the barrel and crane which he bought by catalog.
He was not suspended, fined, arrested, or anything of that nature. When it was finished the instructor confiscated it and handed it over to the local police who eventually destroyed it. But not until after they tested it out with a few hundred rounds and told the instructor it worked.
The student got an A for the year and was asked by the police to not do that again until after he was 21.
No one got nervous.
Today my friend would have been in a federal prison for even asking the instructor if he could do a project like that.
I really do feel sad for my son. He will never get a chance to live in a world that free and safe.
Not to be sentimental about ‘the good old days’ (high school for me was anything but), but I shared your experiences with guns at school. I went to high school in a rural area, and gun racks (with guns) were not uncommon in the student parking lot. One student ran a muskrat trapline before class. The horror that would cause today.
When I was in the fifth grade I built a working model of a catapult. Praise all around. For my junior project in Chemistry I built a still, and produced a small batch of alcohol (under supervision) to prove it worked. I got an A. As you noted, American society used to be much freer and safer. I have more in common with my parents who grew up in the 40’s and 50’s than kids today have with my generation who grew up in the 60’s and 70’s.