As I got ready for the day on Wednesday, I had the television on in the kitchen, listening more than watching as I ate my breakfast. A news item came on that literally gave me the creeps (not a pleasant thing early in the morning over a bowl of cereal).

Authorities in Georgia yesterday announced that they had confiscated items that would be used to knock a teacher unconscious, bind her with handcuffs and duct tape so she could then be stabbed with a broken steak knife.

Another Columbine? Abusive teacher?

Not exactly.

The students involved were third graders, ages 8 to 10. According to what police have been able to piece together, they were upset because the teacher had scolded one of them for standing on a chair.

You read it correctly. Third graders plotting to knock out their teacher with a glass paperweight, tie her up and stab her. Each student involved was given a task. One child was to cover the windows so no one could see what would have transpired, one was to clean up the room after the attack.

According to Waycross, Georgia Police Chief Tony Tanner, teachers called the police after another student told a teacher that a girl had taken a weapon to school. Two students were arrested on Tuesday, a third arrest is pending. District Attorney Rick Currie said other students told investigators they didn't take the plot seriously or insisted they had decided not to participate.

Currie said the children are too young to be charged as adults, and probably too young to be sentenced to a youth detention center. Currie said he decided to seek juvenile charges against two girls, ages 9 and 10, who brought the knife and paperweight and an 8-year-old boy who brought tape. He said they face charges of conspiracy to commit aggravated assault, and both girls are being charged with taking weapons to school.

Nine children have been given discipline up to and including long-term suspension, said Theresa Martin, spokeswoman for the Ware County school system. She would not be more specific but said none of the children had been back to school since the case came to light.

Wow.

Third graders forming a plan to bind an adult and perhaps stab her with a broken steak knife. Third graders are normally being taught how to count by 10s (10,20,30...) and these children, who were referred to in the news reports as not being known as troublemakers, were planning torture because one of them was chastised for STANDING ON A CHAIR.

I've always said that the schools, by default, are forced to do all of the things that families are either unable or unwilling to do. We are teaching honesty and the proper way to apologize now and feeding children two of their three meals in a day. Oh, and if we have time, we might get to that math, reading, history and other stuff.

No wonder we have a hard time attracting and keeping teachers. Perhaps these 8 and 10-year-olds should be sent to Guantanamo Bay to get some information about where Osama bin Laden is. A broken steak knife in the hands of an agitated third grader might just be what is needed to finally break some of the terrorists.

Come to think of it, perhaps we should just turn this little feral pack loose in Afghanistan with a photo of Osama and tell them that he REALLY hates children standing on chairs.

He would never knew what hit him.

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