The schools and most other systems are dropping their own ability to differentiate. For whatever reason, they want to go to a cold list of rules that are followed to the letter as opposed to following the spirit or intention of the law. That's why they can seem to tell the difference between the sweet, harmless, cub scout, Zachary with his eating utensils, and the kid sitting on the other side of the room with a creepy grin holding a butcher knife. No one wants to take the risk of being a fair judge.
Perhaps it might have something to do with lawyer-phobia?
It's still a knife, the kid is old enough to realize that. It's just not safe to bring that stuff to school.
Uh huh. There are plenty of 'allowed' items that are more dangerous than butterknifes. I guess it's not safe to bring those items as well. To name a few:
writing instruments (pencils and pens are quite good at stabbing, and mathematically, it can be illustrated that when provided with the same force, they have a much higher chance at penetration than a butterknife, which is often as dull or duller, and is nice and rounded to boot)
backpacks (well, maybe not at his grade level, but with packs reaching into the 30lb range on occasion, it wouldn't be hard to pack a pack full of bricks or other hard and massive weights and use it for malicious intent)
hands (a work entitled 'how to kill someone with your bare hands' (sorry lol, I just had to add the portal reference, but seriously, it says it all))
food (food allergies? chocking? food-borne-illnesses?)
DHMO (See
http://www.dhmo.org for more details)
school projects (I once built a catapult that could smash golfballs against a wall, damaging both the balls and the wall rather evidently. (the catapult even damaged itself: the arm chopped right though a 3 inch thick set of layered particle boards, so I rebuilt it with metal reinforcements) It was for a competition in which we would be lobbing tennis balls around campus)
plants and fungi (a number of them are poisonous yet rather innocuous looking)
other assorted allergy sources (self explanatory)
Anything heavy (see backpack reason)
vehicles (on a highschool campus at any rate...)
bacteria and viruses
That's enough for now... -_- But pretty much ANYTHING can be dangerous if misused.