Eight-year-old caught up in birthday card outrage
A second grader in Lund in southern Sweden was forced to take back his birthday party invitations because he hadn’t invited all the students in his class.
Two students were left off the invitation list, prompting the boy’s teacher to confiscate all the invitations, reports the Sydsvenskan newspaper.
The boy’s father has filed a complaint with Sweden’s Ombudsman of Justice (JO), which is now looking into the matter.
“We think it’s an interesting case,” said JO’s Carl-Gustaf Tyrblom to Sydsvenskan.
According to school rules, if a student plans to distribute invitations on school grounds, he or she must invite the entire class, or none at all.
Alternatively, invitations can be sent to all the boys, or all the girls, but simply leaving two students out is not acceptable.
“When the teacher arrived, the whole class was upset,” said the school’s principal.
“Those who hadn’t been invited felt sad and left out. The teacher decided to collect all the invitations again, and the student then went and gathered up the cards himself.”
The father claims he was unaware of the school’s detailed birthday card distribution policy.
While he agrees with the concept in principle, he contends it was ill-advised of the teacher to take back the invitations once they’d already been distributed.
“My son took it pretty hard. No one has the right to confiscate someone’s property in this way, it’s just like taking someone’s mail,” he told the paper.
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Two students were left off the invitation list, prompting the boy’s teacher to confiscate all the invitations, reports the Sydsvenskan newspaper.
The boy’s father has filed a complaint with Sweden’s Ombudsman of Justice (JO), which is now looking into the matter.
“We think it’s an interesting case,” said JO’s Carl-Gustaf Tyrblom to Sydsvenskan.
According to school rules, if a student plans to distribute invitations on school grounds, he or she must invite the entire class, or none at all.
Alternatively, invitations can be sent to all the boys, or all the girls, but simply leaving two students out is not acceptable.
“When the teacher arrived, the whole class was upset,” said the school’s principal.
“Those who hadn’t been invited felt sad and left out. The teacher decided to collect all the invitations again, and the student then went and gathered up the cards himself.”
The father claims he was unaware of the school’s detailed birthday card distribution policy.
While he agrees with the concept in principle, he contends it was ill-advised of the teacher to take back the invitations once they’d already been distributed.
“My son took it pretty hard. No one has the right to confiscate someone’s property in this way, it’s just like taking someone’s mail,” he told the paper.
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