Zero Tolerance: Autistic Boy to Face School Tribunal on Felony Terrorist Charges for Stick Figure Drawing (video)
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on May 15, 2010
Zero tolerance in schools.
I’ve always hated zero tolerance, and here’s Reason #13,592 as to why.
When did students with medical disabilities start being treated like terrorists and terrorists start being treated like misunderstood garden-variety criminals? Common sense right out the window in Atlanta…
AOL News, Autistic Boy Faces Felony Rap for Stick-Figure Sketch:
A 14-year-old autistic boy in Georgia faces felony charges of making terroristic threats after he drew a stick-figure version of himself firing a gun at his teacher.
After discovering the crudely rendered drawing that Shane Finn had made on his classwork, officials at Atlanta’s Ridgeview Charter School suspended the eighth-grader and decided to pursue charges against him, Fox News in Atlanta reported.
In Finn’s drawing, a stick figure identified as “me” is shooting a gun at the head of another stick figure, identified as “hartman,” a reference to one of the boy’s teachers. Finn also added a tombstone to the picture, with the letters “R.I.P.”
Karen Finn, the boy’s mother, says the school is overreacting and points out that her son has the mental capacity of a third-grader.
“I think that there needs to be some sort of common sense used with these school systems that a 14-year-old autistic boy who does not understand what he’s done or what he’s drawn, who has an IQ of 75, should not be charged with a felony,” Finn told Fox News. “I find it appalling. It’s outrageous.”
Finn plans to fight the charges against her son, which, she argues, have failed to take his learning disability into account.
“It’s that sweeping, zero-tolerance [attitude],” Finn said, “and I just think that it’s ridiculous.”
More on this story:
Adam Baldwin, Big Hollywood: Intolerance Education Runs Amok: Special Education Student Charged with Terrorism
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