Shame has been brought on my family by the news that one of our grandchildren is a knife-wielding thug, who was found carrying a blade into school. Had it not been for the quick thinking and swift action of one of his teachers, carnage may have ensued. The teacher deserves a medal for probably averting a bloodbath.
Our grandson Willie (not his real name as the case is still sub judice) had shown no previous signs of violent intentions, and had never been known to carry a knife. In fact, he carried two blades: a dagger and a small sword, concealed in his school bag into the classroom.
As a family we are just wondering what went wrong. Was it his parents, our daughter and son-in-law, who were at fault? Had they upset him or put some evil ideas into his head? Did he have a vendetta against a classmate, or was he simply trying to impress a young lady? We just cannot work it out, but we are beginning to come to terms with it.
What the future holds for Willie is uncertain. This is clearly going to be a stain on his record, and if matters get into the hands of the Procurator Fiscal (the incident took place in Scotland), we worry that he could face legal proceedings as well as a custodial sentence.
But there is a silver lining in all of this. Willie is only five years old, so we feel that we are not too late to re-educate him, and turn him away from the life of crime he was about to pursue. Presumably counselling and advice are available for both him and his parents.
The other salient facts of the case are that Willie smuggled the knives into the classroom in his pencil case. We are not clear how he came to have these weapons, but his parents strongly suspect that a suspicious looking character who had often been spotted hanging around their house may have supplied them. Little is known about this person except that he goes by the nickname Action Man, and he is known to have form for carrying deadly weapons.
And that’s enough of the nonsense. The above, with an attempt at a humorous spin, is not far from the truth. Our grandson, new to his school on a military patch and having just moved to Scotland, was obviously keen to impress his new pals with some of his toys. He duly stuck the Action Man accoutrements into his pencil case. He must have been showing them to a friend or just playing with then at his desk (our daughter reports that he’s done virtually nothing by way of lessons since joining the school), and the teacher confiscated them.
Fair enough you might think, and the same might go for any toys taken into school. But the incident was escalated, and the toys were given to the head teacher. The first my daughter knew about this was when she went to pick our grandson up. She was told that there had ‘been an incident’ and that she had to see the head teacher.
The head teacher duly produced the toys—in all seriousness—and gave my daughter a bit of a dressing down about letting her son take weapons into the classroom. It was all my daughter—a former intelligence operative and Afghan veteran—could do not to (her words, not mine) ‘p*$$ herself laughing’ and ask the head teacher, who clearly was serious, if she was, in fact, being serious.
The offending weapons are pictured below in my hand, and I don’t have giant hands. The ‘dagger’ would barely give you a poke and the ‘sword’, made from very soft plastic, would not penetrate butter on a hot stone.
So, I’m glad to say that no further action will be taken against wee Willie who, like his mum, thinks the whole thing was hilarious. We are just counting our blessings that he did not misgender one of his classmates, in which case a custodial sentence may have been unavoidable.
Roger Watson is a retired academic, editor and writer. He is a columnist with Unity News Network and writes regularly for a range of conservative journals including The Salisbury Review and The European Conservative. He has travelled and worked extensively in the Far East and the Middle East. He lives in Kingston upon Hull, UK.
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I was about to say that I’m ‘beginning’ to fear for the mental-health of so many individuals who have managed to inveigle themselves into positions of great influence in our public institutions, but I realise there’s no ‘beginning’ about it. I’m rapidly coming to the conclusion that anyone who cares for their children’s mental health and future should home-school, and remove ALL devices with access to the internet.
The best part of seventy years ago I was told off by a teacher because I didn’t have a sharp knife to sharpen my pencils.
Since that time I have carried at least one sharp knife with me at all times and despite considerable provocation have never felt any inclination to stick one in anyone.
Nowadays it seems I could be imprisoned for carrying one.
In the ‘fifties and ‘sixties it was rather fashionable for small boys to openly wear a sheath knife on their belt Boy Scout fashion, and I never saw or heard of any of those sheath knives being used for any purpose than cutting twigs and carving bits of wood.
So what has gone wrong, I wonder…