Sal Santana II, a 12-year-old Magoffin Middle School student, said he stuck his tongue out at a girl who declined his invitation to be his girlfriend. School district administrators viewed the incident as sexual harassment, suspended him for three days and are considering placing him in an alternative school.

In other news, Joey Pendleton, a fifth-grader at Orange County West Middle School was arrested for “inciting panic relating to bioterrorism and the SARS epidemic” (according to one school official) when he announced that “Lauri Jackson’s got cooties.” (Joey’s parents are working to downgrade this to a misdemeanor slander on appeal.)

This news comes on the heels of last week’s investigation of hate-crimes in the eastern Pennsylvania town of Seacrest, where one Pamela Jenkins allegedly wrote “Boys suck” on her math notebook during class and then carried it through the school to her locker “like a sign” according to one classmate.

So basically kids can't be kids anymore

I should point out that, for the record, the 2nd two 'news' stories were spoofs of the first paragraph, which is real.

Sadly, the spoofs are so close to the assinine behavior exhibited in today's ZT environment that it's hard to tell I'm joking.

Thank you. I was so hoping you were using absurdity in the second two comments to illustrate the absurdity of the first statement.

I guess the lack of links should have been a giveaway.

And thus we are making sure the next generation will not be utterly confused throughout their introduction to reality, they will learn to despise our generation all the more. Good job!

What ever happened to the days of keeping a kid after school and making him write on the chalkboard "I will not stick my tongue out it school." a hundred times or making him clean the chalkboard for crying out loud - you don't suspend a kid for 4 days. As if I wasn't worried enough about Malik starting school in a year, now I have to worry about tongues being stuck out at the girl across the row. Home schooling here we come.

ye gods. suspended? man oh man. what about asking him to apologize? did they try that? doesn't seem so, from the news story. stories like that make me crazy.

the spoofs, however, made me laugh.