8 year old student suspended for this?

TAUNTON, Mass. (AP) - An 8-year-old boy was sent home from school and ordered to undergo a psychological evaluation after he was asked to make a Christmas drawing and came up with what appeared to be a stick figure of Jesus on a cross, the child's father said Tuesday. Chester Johnson told WBZ-TV that his son made the drawing on Dec. 2 after his second-grade teacher asked children to sketch something that reminded them of the holiday.Johnson told the Taunton Daily Gazette, which first reported the story on Tuesday, that his son has never been violent in school. An educational consultant working with the Johnson family said the teacher was also alarmed when the boy drew Xs for Jesus' eyes. The boy was cleared to return to school on Dec. 7 after the evaluation found nothing to indicate that he posed a threat to himself or others. But his father said the boy was traumatized by the incident and the school district has approved the family's request to have the child transferred to another school. "They owe my family an apology and the kid an apology and they need to work with my son (to) the best of their ability to get him back to where he was before all this happened," Johnson told New England Cable New. The father said in the days before the incident the family had gone to the National Shrine of Our Lady of La Salette in Attleboro, where there are crucifixion statues. "That was fresh on his mind," he told NECN. "And that was a good thing that he saw." Superintendent Julie Hackett said she could not discuss an individual student and did not address the drawing specifically or the teacher's reaction to it, but did say the school has safety protocols in place that were followed. Hackett did not return multiple calls from the Associated Press on Tuesday. 

Let's jump straight to the point here, this flat out ridiculousness. Are we really so paranoid as a society that an image of the crucifix merits a child's psychological evaluation? I probably drew the same image a hundred times in school and never heard a word about it. I had friends who drew it all over their backpacks. It is insane that this teacher, not to mention the schools administration, found suspension and psychological evaluation an appropriate response. What did they think he was drawing? Are they so unaware of the Christian religion and it's relation with "the holidays" that they didn't make this very simple correlation? Do they not understand that kids usually draw X's on the eye's of people who are hurt, because that's what cartoon's on TV do? This response is so far over-board that it would be more appropriate to evaluate the teacher. I guess I didn't realize that the crucifix was such an offensive and dangerous symbol for the holidays. I hope this teacher never enters a catholic church, or she may go into cardiac arrest.