My take on the Taunton Craziness

By now most of you have heard about the 8-year-old Taunton, Mass. boy that was suspended, forced to undergo a psych eval, and subsequently transfered schools all because he drew a picture of Jesus on The Cross. If you haven't you can check if out here: Catholic.org - "Taunton 8-yo Suspended"

Most blogs have covered this quite well. I have a different take, at least different than I have seen so far.

What bothers me most is that the boy ended up taking the Psych eval. Someone didn't step in beforehand and say, "Wow, we are sorry someone CLEARLY overreacted." If you read a lot of the news accounts of this story, there is a blurb at the end about this same school going through an incident a few years back where a young student drew a picture of a stick figure shooting their teacher and classmates. [This bothers me as well - but I won't get into this part of the story.]

So anyways, we have this student who then is forced to take a psych eval. to ensure that he is "safe" to come back to school. Most people read this and say, how horrible, how invasive, how wrong, and they are all right. What most fail to realize is that having a psych eval., especially a mandatory or ordered eval., is forever on your record. This *could* later affect this boys military, law enforcement, college, or other applications. Now I know this is a stretch, but for something completely out of his control it is very unfair! I am sure he could eventually explain it away, but it is similar to having a misdemeanor on his record that he got charged for and convicted of erroneously. You can't un-ring this bell.

This is just one small feature of how horrible this story is. Again, this is just *another* reason why it is so horrible, not the only or main reason. It is sad that our society has come to this point. It is probably a good thing they didn't ask the kids to draw a picture of their hero... could you imagine if someone drew Saint Sebastian, Saint Joan, John the Baptist, or some other martyr? Heck, that school would *still* be on lockdown!