At first reading, a story this week about kindergarten kids needing gun licences before they point sticks sounded like "PC gone mad" - to borrow a cliche from talkback radio.
In fact, there's nothing politically correct about what the principal at Stratford's Avon Kindergarten is doing - it's just common sense.
Lynsi Latham-Saunders introduced the licensing policy after she noticed some of her 3- to 5-year-olds picking up sticks and pointing them at the other children. So far, so normal. Kids will fashion play weapons out of whatever they can find.
It's nearly 20 years ago, but I still remember a hippie mum who lived in Wellington's Aro Valley. She was determined her children's psyches would not be constrained by patriarchal gender constructs (or whatever she was repeating from her wimmin's herstory course) and gave them gender-neutral toys and anatomically correct dolls in a "the world is one big melting pot" cafe au lait colour.
She was horrified when one of her gorgeous little boys picked up his approved doll, twisted round an arm, wrenched off one leg and used it to shoot every hippy in his sights. To her knowledge, he had never seen a violent cartoon or violence in real life, and she agonised over whether he was going to grow up to be a psychopath. (As it turned out, he didn't - I believe he's an extremely successful tax lawyer.)
