I was reading the news the other day (yes, I am a news whore, but we already knew that), when I came across a story about 3 Carlsbad, NM middle school students who were arrested, charged with battery and aggravated battery, and then suspended for "stabbing" each other with pencils. You can read all about the story here.

Now this story left me shaking my head for many different reasons. Not so much that the 3 boys, ages 13 and 14, were "stabbing" each, but that they freaking got arrested for it. I worked in public education for about 2.5 years and in my time I saw a bunch of crap go down, but never once did we have a child arrested for anything like this. We would suspend the child(ren) in question.

Hell, all this really is horse play that got way out of control and was allowed to go too damn far. I want to know what in the hell was the teacher doing when this was going on? The teacher even said that she did not see the stabbing take place and that she "saw the boys in question play like that every day..." and "...was tired of getting on them every day for hitting each other." If she was so damn tired of it, why did she not freaking do something about it?

Now I know that the blame does fall onto these 3 students and that there needs to be consequences for their actions. That I am not disputing. But I think the blame should also be put on this teacher and the school admin's for not doing anything sooner before it got to this level.