from drudge:

Christopher Beamon, a 13-year-old seventh-grader in the Texas town of Ponder, got a 100 score from his teacher for a Halloween horror-story writing assignment. Authorities detained him on suspicion of making terroristic threats and held him in juvenile detention from Thursday until Tuesday, the DALLAS MORNING NEWS reported on Tuesday.

In fresh editions, the paper reprints the story as Christopher wrote it:

My flashlight went out and I heard someone right behind me and I turned in a very slowly scared way and boom the lights came on and the door bell rang. I walked very slowly and creepy and turned the knob ding dong the door bell went again. I said just a minute and I will be right there and I looked through the little hole in the door and Robin said Boo. I told him to come in and have a seat and we both wated and wated for Ismael because he was supposed to bring the (ounce) so we could get high but half an hour later still no Ismael so I got the idea of freeon and we grabbed a bag and a knife and ran out back to the airconditionar. We througth the bag over the nostle and covered it tightly and used the knife to press the volv. We started to hear something after we got high so we ditched everything we quickly run to the door to see who it was and there wasn't anybody there then we heard someone at the back door to see who it was I thought it was a crook so I busted out with a 12 guage and Ismael busted out with 9 mm and we step off the porch and this bloody body droped down in front of us and scared us half to death and about 20 kids started cracking up and pissed me off so I shot Matt, Jake, and Ben started laughing so hard that I acssedently shot Mrs. Henry. Ismael saw somebody steeling antifreeze so Ismael shot over ther near the airconditonar and hit somebody (indecipherable word) also scattered out and went home and my mom drove up and everything was back to normal but they didn't have any heads.

-- a (a@a.a), November 02, 1999

Answers

And 99 will be the highest IQ in the land. Hey, it's almost perfect! LOL

-- Jim (waiting@aol.com), November 02, 1999.

English teachers certainly don't expect much from 7th graders these days. I wasn't born in TX, but I grew up here...and my 7th grade English teacher would have given me an F just for the misspellings. Was it actually that bad, or did you mis-type....tell me it ain't so.

As they have noted on local news, the teacher asked for a horror story...and for today's youth this is a horror story. The mother noted in her childhood it was Psycho; and you've got to admit she has a point. Murder and mayhem are not new in our culture. The prevalent version is simply focused in the crime of children against children. Note it was an accident that Mrs. Henry got shot.

-- Shelia (Shelia@active-stream.com), November 03, 1999.

I gather his teacher is on work release?

-- Gia (laureltree7@hotmail.com), November 03, 1999.

Maybe she was grading on a curve?

Or maybe she awarded the kid one point for every word?

(I remember when I was in the 6th grade I wrote a report about a pretend cross country road trip. We were supposed to write down what we saw and where we went on this hypothetical road trip, and gather info about each state from encylopedias, state parks, etc. etc. Well, my report was about a mass murderer who drove across the country killing cops and innocent gas station attendents. I even wrote about driving to D.C. and killing President Reagan. Needless to say, I got a big fat F. And I was pretty good speller too!)

-- (anon@anon.com), November 03, 1999.

Here is one I just heard from WGST radio,

A woman riding her bike on a popular bike trail in Des Moines, Iowa early this morning was the victim of a bomber. Some ass****! rigged up a string of barbed wire across the bike path, whee it was attached to a bomb. She tripped the wire, and set off the device, which was wrapped in nails. The woman was hit in the leg by nails, and shrapnel from the explosion came down as much as forty yards away. Apparently the bomber was indiscriminate as to who the target was, so...

one question comes to mind... "why?".

( Another: An Oklahoma boy brought his parents gun to school, and was suspended for a year. This boy's age? FOUR F****** YEARS OLD!!, he brought the LOADED GUN TO SHOW AND TELL!)

-- (anon@anon.com), November 03, 1999.

The school authorities, police, and juvenile judges etc in this country are going absolutely ape-shit and loosing all common sense lately. The boy was told to write a horror story, and he did just that. Then he gets jailed. We refuse to deal forcefully with real criminals in this country (I like judge Roy Bean) so now we're making every petty offence into a big deal. I read today that a kid had his nail clipper taken from him and got suspended for having it on him! And some little girl gets suspended for having tylenol in her purse! Who says stupidity is not contagious. These kids are going to rebel big-time if these bozos don't let up and stop turning the schools into the Gulag.

-- doktorbob (downsouth@dixie.com), November 03, 1999.

If you think we are worse off, try this link from another thread:

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=001hOR

It may give an idication what is wrong.

I think the SYSOPS should delete that thread!

-- Huh! (Notmyreal@address.com), November 03, 1999.

doktorbob- You know, if my kid wrote what that kid wrote, I'd conclude the same thing. He needs help. You think the columbine killers spent their day baking cookies? No. They wrote stories too. And then they acted them out. Yes Virginia, there are ways to spot a sociopath.

-- Gia (laureltree7@hotmail.com), November 04, 1999.

The point of all this seems diffuse. What exactly is it?

OK, students were asked to write horror stories. They did so. Does this make them all psychopaths? Is Stephen King a psychopath? Are these kids being sandbagged -- if your story contains no horror, you failed the assignment, while if it does, you're a psychpath? Ya can't win.

It's not clear that the "suspicion of making terroristic threats" is related to this class assignment at all. Do the police read class assignments? Or was this story dug up as "evidence" to reinforce some other act not mentioned here?

Yes, this story shows poor command of the language, but not all that much poorer than normal for 7th graders. We aren't told what corrections the teacher made (if any) to improve language skills.

Without question, there's hypersensitivity about school violence today. 25 years ago there was hypersensitivity about other things (read a few newspapers from 1974. Bad Things happened then too). But bear in mind that there are millions of kids in the reporting territory of the Dallas Morning News, and this one was written up. Depicting one out of millions as "typical" is pushing it a bit.

Sure, times have changed in 25 years. A lot. I think it takes a pretty unhappy person to consider all changes as negative. And then get on their PCs and post their unhappiness to the internet (neither of which really existed 25 years ago!)

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), November 04, 1999.

So they arrest the kid and probaly stuck him in a cell with a bunch of child molesters and rapists. Oh yeah, that'll help him out! They put little kids in with the adults and expect no problems. FOOLS! He was told to write a horror story! This is supression of free speech and a setup!

-- Crono (Crono@timesend.com), November 04, 1999.