School raps 8-year-old birthday boy for ‘discrimination’

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An 8-year-old boy stirred up an unorthodox civil rights debate in Sweden last week after passing out invitations to his birthday party in class. Noticing that he’d failed to invite two students, the boy’s teacher confiscated all the invitations, citing the school’s duty to fight “discrimination.” The case went from the classroom to the school board when the boy’s father lodged a complaint with a parliamentary ombudsmen, saying, “No one has the right to confiscate someone’s property in this way.”

Sweden, despite its reputation as a Scandinavian bastion of tolerance, still has a problem with homophobic and xenophobic crimes, particularly against Muslims and the Roma people. Not that any of this had anything to do with the birthday party in question. Apparently one of the noninvited classmates had bullied the boy, while the other hadn’t invited him to his own birthday bash.

In its misguided efforts to promote tolerance, the school has ended up hurting the feelings of one student — the birthday boy. Says his father,

My son has taken it pretty hard.”

Hopefully some cake and ice cream will cheer him up.