Swedish school confiscates boy's party invitations

[Gio Takahashi]

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) -- A school has confiscated an 8-year-old boy's birthday party invitations after they were handed out during class because it said it had a duty to ensure against discrimination.

The boy handed out invitations to classmates at his school in Lund, southern Sweden, but did not invite two boys because they were not his friends, the Sydsvenskan newspaper reported earlier this week.

The school, 360 miles south of Stockholm, confiscated all the invitations, saying it objected because it had a duty to ensure against discrimination.

The report on Friday did not name the boy or his family. It said the boy's father has filed a complaint with the parliamentary ombudsman.

The father told the newspaper that the two classmates were not invited because one had bullied his son and the other had not invited his son to the classmate's birthday party. http://www.neowin.net/forum/style_emoticons/default/huh.gif

''My son has taken it very hard,'' the father told Sydsvenskan of the school's decision. ''It's like taking someone's mail.''

The parliamentary ombudsman has asked the school board to decide on the issue before Sept. 8.

source (http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-ODD-Sweden-Party-Snub.html)

[Bloodcinder]

Strange, indeed, but why was he handing them out during class?

[Gio Takahashi]

The boy is eight years old, it wouldn't be a bigger of an issue at that age, than say, middle school or hell even high school. (Invitation card at high school? PFF) I recall doing the same thing for my 11th birthday, actually.

[Aingeleag]

Yeah, I always handed out invites during classes. That was pretty much the only time you had to do it was during school hours. Plus I would only get to invite max. 10 people to any of mine, and nobody that wasn't one of the ten didn't have a fit or anything...
That just seems like a bit harsh way to take the discrimination thing. Those other boys shouldn't have been shitty to the birthday boy. In my schools, they would have encouraged you to do stuff like that to teach people that they miss out on things if they're mean to others, etc.
I do hope that the poor little boy gets to have the rest of the class over for his party anyways. It's times like this that now probably nobody will show up since there was such a stink made over it.

[deathofcheese]

Aside from being a little more discreet about handing invitations out during school time, I feel the school has overstepped its bounds. So what if he handed out invitations to all but two people. He's throwing a private, invitation-only party. He didn't invite his class, he invited his friends, or people he cared to share the event with.

Although I can see why he'd want to hand them out during class (after the bell rings, dismissal is often hectic and the kid might not have gotten a chance to give out all his invitations, although he could've just handed the rest out the next day), he probably should've taken a little better care to do it towards the end of the day, or during lunch or something.

[Killer_Man_]

As long as the teacher isn't teaching, who gives a fuck?

[Seegtease]

I suspect grouchy teacher.

[Killer_Man_]

The teacher was just pissed he/she didn't get an invite.