She said they took it away after he reportedly hit someone with it and wanted to prevent him from hurting himself or others. His family said it was a way to humiliate him for misbehaving. They say Dakota is like any other 8-year-old, only he was born without eyes - something in the medical world known as Bilateral Anopthalmia. “Why would you do that? Why would you take the one thing that he’s supposed to use all the time? That’s his eyes,” his mother said.
Cronk said Dakota hit somebody with his cane on Monday while riding the bus. When asked why a pool noodle was given to him as a substitute, Cronk said Dakota fidgets and needed something to hold. “They said they were going to give me this for the next two weeks,” Dakota said. Dakota’s mother said he was written up for misbehaving on the bus, but she said she doesn’t understand why his punishment was to take away the thing he needs the most.
“He’s gone through so much in his life already, 8 years, 8 years, and I just don’t like someone else putting my son in that position,” she said. Dakota’s father, Donald Nafzinger, said his son simply lifts his cane sometimes and the bus driver thought he was using it violently. “All around, he’s a good little guy, and he shouldn’t be treated the way he’s being treated,” he said. On Tuesday Dakota attended his sister’s concert with nothing but a pool noodle to guide him around. “Can’t feel things,” he said.
With news video.
3 comments:
I am 68, and at a high school reunion I attended a few years ago someone I had known all the way through school and at church came to me with a story that he remembered from the 6th grade. We had been studying a map of the world. I raised my hand and politely when called upon I said that the way that the Americas and Europe and Africa were arranged It looked so much like they fit together, had come apart and drifted, that it could not be just coincidence. My friend said that the reason he remembered this event was not just because I have been proven right, even though that was most interesting. He said that it stuck in his mind over the years, because of the vicious way she had ridiculed me for making the suggestion. This is what my education in America was like. I never had a male teacher until the 7th grade.
His parents have simple solution. If the school justify the confiscation of the cane by saying it is school property then his parents should buy him his own cane. That way the school won't be able to use that justification any more. And because they used that pathetic and patently ridiculous justification in the first place will not be able to confiscate the cane again. Hoist by their own petard.
Agreed, Gareth. I'm actually really perplexed by the fact an 8-year-old who has been blind since birth doesn't have a cane of his own.
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