Go Free Yourself

In case you weren’t aware, sniffing Sharpies is gross. It’s also cause for suspension from school if you attend Adams School District 50 in Colorado.

That’s what happened to eight-year-old Eathan Harris, who colored a small area of his sweatshirt sleeve with Sharpie and smelled it periodically during class. His reasoning?

“It smelled good,” Harris said. “They told me that’s wrong.”

School administrators, however, suspended him because “smelling the markers could make him high”—and they also removed all other markers from school premises to prevent this from happening again. Never mind the fact that a toxicologist with the Rocky Mountain Poison Control Center confirmed that getting high by smelling Sharpies is an unfounded theory.

This is all very alarmist and nanny state-y. (It’s Friday and I’m making up words. Roll with it, please.) But my question is why the hell was this kid smelling a Sharpie? I can think of few things that smell worse than a Sharpie. And you can’t even get high! I mean, at least when I was a kid we had markers that made you light-headed and actually smelled good—cherry, blueberry, black licorice (although that one smelled more like death doused in motor oil and sprinkled with battery acid, now that I think about it).

Anyway, my point is that this is insane on two levels: 1) the obvious alarmist aspect of it, and 2) the fact that this child actually thinks Sharpies smell good.

It’s a crazy world we live in.

I graduated from public school, so I’m generally not a loud voice in the “public schools are entirely worthless” chants. I had some really great teachers, and I had some really lousy ones. I’m all for school choice, and I’m not exactly a spokesperson for government monopolies on anything. But I also get really tired of the self-righteousness from some sects of homeschoolers or private schoolers. In short, there isn’t one magical solution—families should have the freedom to decide for themselves how their kids are educated.

Anyway, whatever education route a family decides to take, it would probably be wise to make sure the kids are actually learning the truth about history, as opposed to some of the fables that have made their way into textbooks just to spice things up.

Check out Cracked.com’s “5 Most Ridiculous Lies You Were Taught In History Class” here. It’s a fun read—enjoy!

Public schools must really be having a hard time turning out well-educated students. In fact, one Texas principal is so upset that he threatened to kill a group of middle-school science teachers and himself if their students didn’t improve their standardized test scores.

Yikes.

(Hat Tip: Fark.com)