This is really just plain crazy, right? But it's not just Texas. These "zero tolerance" policies in schools are often enforced around the country:
Tolkien lore led a Texas boy to suspension after he brought his “one ring” to school.
Kermit Elementary School officials called it a threat when the 9-year-old boy, Aiden Steward, in a playful act of make-believe, told a classmate he could make him disappear with a ring forged in fictional Middle Earth’s Mount Doom.
“It sounded unbelievable,” the boy’s father, Jason Steward, told the Daily News. He insists his son “didn’t mean anything by it.”
The Stewards had just watched “The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies” days earlier, inspiring Aiden’s imagination and leading him to proclaim that he had in his possession the one ring to rule them all.
“Kids act out movies that they see. When I watched Superman as a kid, I went outside and tried to fly,” Steward said.
Aiden claimed Thursday he could put a ring on his friend's head and make him invisible like Bilbo Baggins, who stole Gollum’s "precious" in J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy series “The Lord of the Rings.”
“I assure you my son lacks the magical powers necessary to threaten his friend’s existence,” the boy's father later wrote in an email. "If he did, I'm sure he'd bring him right back."
Principal Roxanne Greer declined to comment on the fourth-grader’s suspension, citing confidentiality policies, according to the Odessa American, who first reported Aiden’s troubles Friday.
Aiden sounds like an intelligent, curious kid. This is his third suspension. The other two? He referred to a classmate as "black" and he brought an encyclopedia to school that had a section on pregnancy.
