School Against Deaf Name

From Daily News:
"Family: Nebraska school says our deaf 3-year-old's sign-language gesture for his own name looks like 'weapons,' must change"

A Nebraska school district wants a 3-year-old deaf boy to change the way he signs his name because they say the gesture makes his hands look like weapons, the boy's family claims.  The district, in Grand Island, about three hours west of Omaha, has a policy that forbids kids bringing to school "any instrument ... that looks like a weapon," local station KOLN reported. According to the report, Hunter Spanjer signs his name by crossing his index finger and middle finger and then wagging his hands, which the school says is not appropriate. "Anybody that I have talked to thinks this is absolutely ridiculous. This is not threatening in any way," his grandmother, Janet Logue, told KOLN. It's a symbol," his father, Brian Spanjer, added. "It's an actual sign, a registered sign, through S.E.E.," or Signing Exact English, a sign language system. A school spokesman called the issue a "misunderstanding" and said it had nothing to do with guns or weapons. The name gesture was "not an appropriate thing to do in school," and administrators were asking Hunter to spell his name out, letter-by-letter, instead of using the sign, spokesman Jack Sheard told the Daily News.

^ This is one of the dumbest things I have heard in a long time. It re-enforces how people have allowed their common sense to disappear. The fact that it's a school district is worse because these lack of common-sense people are teaching their stupidity to other people's children. I really hope the boy's parents sue the school until they allow him to sign his name the correct way. ^

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/nebraska-school-3-year-old-deaf-boy-sign-language-gesture-guns-change-video-article-1.1146024