School asks 3 year old kid to change name because it "looks like a weapon"

[pwaldo]

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/...191629255.html

Three-and-a-half year old Hunter Spanjer, who is deaf, signs his name by crossing his forefinger and index finger and moving his hand up and down.

To his family, friends and those who know the Signing Exact English (S.E.E.) language that the Grand Island, Neb., boy uses, that gesture uniquely means "Hunter Spanjer."

But to Hunter's school district, it might mean something else. The district claims that it violates a rule that forbids anything in the school that looks like a weapon, reports KOLN-TV.

And Hunter's parents claim that Grand Island Pubic Schools administrators have asked them to change their son's sign language name.

"Anybody that I have talked to thinks this is absolutely ridiculous," Hunter's grandmother Janet Logue told the TV station. "This is not threatening in any way."

Hunter's father Brian Spanjer said, "It's a symbol. It's an actual sign, a registered sign, through S.E.E."

"I find it very difficult to believe that the sign language that shows his name resembles a gun in any way would even enter a child's mind," Fredda Bartenbach said in the news report.

[ensbergcollector]

saw this. ridiculous. i personally know two children under the age of ten named hunter.


and on a completely different note, we have taken away kids ability to play pretend? (i know that the current issue is not about playing pretend, but apparently playing pretend guns is wrong now?)

[pwaldo]