Florida school suspends 8-year-old for using ‘finger gun’ during play time
An Osceola County School District in Florida suspended an 8-year-old boy from school for using his fingers to shoot invisible guns in a game of cops with his friends at Harmony Community School.
photo Dennis Skley via Flickr
In a WFTV interview, the boy’s mother, Bonnie Bennett, said she thought the school’s response to the actions of her son went overboard, but officials from the school district say their code of conduct does not condone students playing with invisible guns.
“He had nothing in his hand. It was a finger gun, a pretend gun,” said Bennett about her 8-year-old son, Jordan. “He didn’t threaten violence. He didn’t utter words that were inappropriate. He made a sound and used his fingers and that was it.”
But the school didn’t interpret the boy’s finger gesture that way and now his mother is worried that he will be labeled as violent with a suspension on his school record.
“If he would have written an essay about why it was inappropriate, what he did, that would have made more of an impact,” explained the boy’s mother. That would have been a much better response than letting her son miss a full day of school.
In Maryland a similar situation unfolded with a student being expelled for using his “finger gun.” This prompted lawmakers to institute a bill to authorize the children’s imagination.
