Understandably, Shah felt spooked after reading the essay, particularly since Columbine couldn't have been far from her thoughts. She complained to school officials, who decided that the essay amounted to a threat to do bodily harm and therefore violated the school's disciplinary code. They sentenced Carithers to a three-day suspension, a decision that the Boston Teachers' Union supported.

"Ever since Columbine, all people in education are trying to tune into what students say or write," said Edward Doherty, president of the BTU. "And they do take threats of violence a little more seriously than they used to."

Carithers' mother, Natalie, balked at the punishment. "He did what a horror story does, which is scare you," she has said. She also has said that she thinks the suspension was "very unfair" and "extreme." She feels her son was just completing his homework and that Shah should have stated explicitly whether there was subject matter -- like the murder of an English teacher -- that was considered off-limits for the assignment.

Natalie Carithers has appealed to Boston's superintendent of schools, Thomas W. Payzant, asking him to overturn the suspension. The American Civil Liberties Union has rushed to her aid. In a statement issued April 27, John Roberts, executive director of the ACLU branch in Massachusetts, said the suspension was "a violation of the principles of free expression which the school should be jealously guarding" and called upon Payzant to annul it.

But Latin Academy is completely justified in suspending Carithers and there are two important reasons why: As a kid, he is subject to stricter laws than your average citizen; and he wrote about murdering a fictionalized version of someone he knows -- Shah.

Let's start with the first point. The fact is that the civil liberties of children (their right to form and express opinions and act on them without restriction) are frequently limited by the law. A few examples, just for starters: It is illegal for minors to do things like drink, smoke or have sex with adults. They have to go to school until they reach a certain age, whether they like it or not.

And standards of acceptable behavior dramatically restrict kids' inalienable rights on a more basic but also a more drastic level: Cultural norms dictate that kids should almost always be under some kind of adult supervision.

Children are subject to stricter rules than adults for a good reason: They are less developed than their parents -- not just physically, but also psychologically and emotionally. Children look to role models, especially teachers and parents, to demonstrate what is right and what is wrong. And when irresponsible parents -- like, some might argue, Natalie Carithers -- fail to help their children make that distinction, the burden falls all the more heavily on the teacher.