Stupidity in the schoolyard

I just came across this story: "School Suspends Boy for Talking to GI Mom in Iraq"

He was talking to his mom on his cell phone at school. I thought, okay, maybe he was talking during class. Nope, it was during his lunch break.

Here's the juicy portion of the story:

"They're not supposed to use them for conversing back and forth during school because if they were allowed to do that, they could be text messaging each other for test questions," said Alfred Parham, assistant principal at Spencer.

Francois said he told the teacher, "This is my mom in Iraq. I'm not about to hang up on my mom."

Parham said the teen's suspension was based on his reaction when he was asked to give up the cell phone.

"Kevin got defiant and disorderly," Parham said. "When a kid becomes out of control like that they can either be arrested or suspended for 10 days. Now being that his mother is in Iraq, we're not trying to cause her any undue hardship; he was suspended for 10 days."

Now, is that crazy or what? I don't know where to begin. I guess I'll go with the text messaging bit. First, it seems rather obvious that he was not text messaging, so why even bring that up? Second, yeah, they could do that, but, as it was lunch break, wouldn't it be easier to tell the other person the test questions directly? It would certainly seem so. If they're worried about students in class text messaging, well, then police that; why worry about them doing it at lunch? It doesn't make a lick of sense.

Second, he was "defiant and disorderly"? It looks like he was defiant, sure, but disorderly stretches it a bit; plus, we're talking about him speaking common sense to some mindless school officials. Are those the kind of people you really want teaching your children? Instead of worrying about teaching kids, they're worried about mindless restrictions. Yet another example of how bogus and corrupt the public schools have become, and why I support charter schools, vouchers, anything to get rid of the public schools' stranglehold over most children, and try to knock some sense into them.