I think this is what nags at me in this case, for all that it comes across as a bunch of anal retentative authoritarians gone bezerk:

“For myself, personally, I likely would have stopped after the first warning. More likely than not, I would have taken the laptop back to the school and said “keep it, ”

Even assuming the worst of the school with you or me, it’s hard to see how things could have escalated to this level. The kids, or their parents, must be playing a part in adding fuel to the fire. And it just speaks of a generally confrontational approach to problems that is unproductive, even dangerous.

It smakes of the “no compromise – no retreat” approach taken to foreign policy by the Bush regime for example… an approach that I for one think has caused more problems than it has solved. What is disturbing to me is that incidinces like this seem to show that this isn’t an anomalous way of doing things, and that it is becoming more of a cultural norm.

In simple terms I suspect that if either you or I were stuck dealing with these kids and their parents … or the school board, we would after a short time would want to throttle the self serving idiots. Stories like this worry me because it reminds me how many such “difficult” people there are out there.

( I of course am perfect! 😉 )