Education

The Daily Caller Presents: The 2015 Elementary And Middle School Stupidity Awards

Alex Pfeiffer White House Correspondent
Font Size:

The dog days of summer have provided a nice opportunity to commemorate the academic year that was in various ways. For example, The Daily Caller’s Third Annual College Stupidity Awards already provided an impressive collection of folly and futility. The 2015 High School Stupidity Awards are upcoming and will offer sad-but-comical amusement.

And what year would be complete without a rundown of idiot professors beclowning themselves and the institutions they represent? (RELATED: The Daily Caller’s Official Rundown Of The Worst, Looniest, Most Leftist Professors In America)

America’s middle schools and elementary schools are also a rich source of stupidity thanks to teachers and administrators who make poor decisions which range from amusing to terrifying to infuriating.

And thus, without further ado, TheDC presents this year’s official ranking of the utter stupidity that has run rampant over the course of an academic year at elementary and junior high schools across the fruited plain. (RELATED: The Daily Caller Presents: 2013 Most Idiotic Elementary And Jr. High Schools)

Facebook Laura HooverIn February, principal Missy Fitzsimmons of Oregon’s Lincoln Elementary School made the mistake of angering a six-year-old student’s grandmother. The grandmother, Laura Hoover, was irate because Fitzsimmons had punished her grandson for being one minute late to school. The first grader wasn’t late by his own choosing but because his mother was having car trouble. The bizarro punishment meted out by Fitzsimmons “for something that is out of this baby’s control” was for the boy to sit at lunch in a strange solitary confinement — behind a sad, makeshift, cardboard divider but just a few feet from all the other kids. The tech-savvy grandma responded by taking to Facebook with an image of the incident. It quickly went viral locally, then nationally, then internationally. This one has a happy ending, though. School district officials hastily apologized after Hoover’s public shaming of them. Also, a local radio host spearheaded a drive to get the boy’s family a new — newer — minivan. (RELATED: Principal Made First Grader Eat Lunch Alone Behind Cardboard Because He Was One Minute Tardy)

family confusion square Getty-ImagesIn April, at Hallsville Elementary School in Manchester, N.H., a local guidance counselor visited a fourth-grade class and instructed students to write down bullying phrases which, if the students wanted, included curse words. According to one irate parent, students fully embraced the assignment. “YOU GAY WHORE!,” wrote one. “YOU FUCKER,” wrote another. Next, the guidance counselor mixed up the phrases and asked the fourth graders to come forward one by one and scream them at a paper cutout of life-size man and then rip a bit of the paper. Laurie Evans, the guidance counselor who organized the lesson, told the young students, “Say it like you mean it.” Participation was mandatory, according to complaining parent Keith Katsikas. The exercise concluded with the kids apologizing to the inanimate paper man and taping him back together.  (RELATED: Fourth Graders Cuss In Bullying Lesson)

WDIV screenshotIn March, at Detroit’s Coleman A. Young Elementary, parents received letters threatening to suspend their children if the parents failed to attend a parent-teacher meeting regarding a Common Core-related test. “I don’t like being threatened in no letter, especially when it comes to my child’s education,” concerned parent Latricia Smoak told local NBC affiliate WDIV-TV at the time. “The way jobs is going these days, you’re not even allowed to take off an hour or two and go up to the school just for a parent meeting,” Smoak added. The wonderfully passive-aggressive letter first thanked two dozen parents who were able to show up for conferences before scolding other parents who could not attend. The meeting was for the upcoming M-STEP test, a comprehensive test of math and English skills for students grades three through eight. (RELATED: Detroit Public School To SUSPEND KIDS If Parents Miss Common Core Test Meeting)

NBC Washington screenshotIn our nation’s capital last September, sixth graders at McKinley Tech Middle School received a homework assignment featuring a Venn diagram which compared former President George W. Bush and Adolf Hitler. “Now that we have read about two men of power who abused their power in various ways, we will compare and contrast them and their actions,” a corresponding assignment instructed the kids, according to NBC Washington. “Please refer to your texts, ‘Fighting Hitler — A Holocaust Story’ and ‘Bush: Iraq War Justified Despite No WMD’ to compare and contrast former President George W. Bush and Hitler. We will use this in class tomorrow for an activity!” The unnamed and unpunished teacher admitted to using poor judgment. (RELATED: Sixth Graders Asked To Compare Bush And Hitler)

Getty ImagesLast August, students at Brooks Elementary School in Newnan, Ga, had to give up birthday cakes at school in the name of being fair and equal. School bureaucrats banned all food from birthday parties over worries that kids with food allergies could feel sad and left out. “Although our first priority above all else is the safety of our students, we are also trying to create an environment in which all students feel included and not singled out.” Brooks Elementary principal Julie Raschen explained. About 10 percent of the student body suffers from food related allergies, Raschen added. (RELATED: School District Bans Birthday Cupcakes Because They AREN’T FAIR)

pirate Getty ImagesOn Sept. 19, 2014, four schools in rural North Carolina went on lockdown because a popular teacher had brought a plastic sword as part of his costume on International Talk Like A Pirate Day. A vigilant cafeteria worker at Richland Elementary School saw something and said something. The schools were on lockdown for about three hours. Police scoured the campuses with police dogs and found no “suspicious person.” “After a thorough review of this incident, it has been determined that school personnel working in conjunction with law enforcement agencies handled the situation in a very professional manner and followed all protocols to the letter,” a sheriff’s department spokesman proudly explained. (RELATED: Teacher’s Plastic Sword On ‘Talk Like A Pirate Day’ Caused FOUR-SCHOOL LOCKDOWN)

Hobbit ring YouTube screenshot Xpayne1This past February, a nine-year-old boy in small-town Texas who had watched “The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies” then went to Kermit Elementary School wearing a ring similar to the one from the movie. The imaginative boy told another kid he’d use his magic ring to banish another student of the face of the earth. Naturally, principal Roxanne Greer responded by suspending the little guy for making terroristic threats. The unidentified nine-year-old boy was previously suspended for possessing a book about pregnancies. (RELATED: Nine Year Old Boy Suspended For Saying His Hobbit Ring Could Make Another Kid Disappear)

In April, sixth graders in a quiet Florida town got a life changing vocabulary assignment at Corkscrew Middle School. The boys and girls were asked a very serious, ethical question on sperm donation. “He merely signed a waiver of anonymity. Locked himself in a room with a cup and a sexy magazine. And didn’t consider the emotional or genetic [FILL IN THE BLANK] for another 30 years,” the question prompted. The question is part of a collection of over 100,000 vocabulary questions at Vocabulary.com. The school district suspended its contract with Vocabulary.com over the sperm-donation-sentence-completion kerfuffle. The taxpayer-funded Collier County school district had paid for the extensive array of Vocabulary.com fill-in-the-blank questions to the tune of $22,000 each year. (RELATED: Public School Sixth Graders Get SPERM BANK Vocabulary Question)

colored only sign Creative CommonsSegregation is alive and well in South Bend, Ind. For field trips in April, school officials only took black third graders on visits to colleges. The director of African-American student and parent services G. David Moss defended the discrimination at the taxpayer-funded elementary schools. “It was not meant to be exclusionary,” Moss, who is black, said of the exclusionary field trips. “It was only meant to support and give these kids what they need to think positively about themselves and about their future.” (RELATED: School District Excludes White Students From Third Grade Field Trips To Local Colleges)

(Photo credits: Facebook/Laura Hoover, Getty Images, WDIV screenshot, NBC Washington screenshot, Getty Images, Getty Images, YouTube screenshot/Xpayne1, Getty Images, Creative Commons)