Kids are suspended from school for all sorts of reasons—fighting, talking back to a teacher, breaking the dress code. One boy in Italy made headlines in 2016 for a much simpler reason—he was suspended for selling snack foods at school. The boy, who was a 17-year-old student in Turin, would take orders from friends and fellow students for snacks and sodas, then buy them at a convenience store and sell them for a cheaper price than the school cafeteria. When the school found out about it the first time, a year earlier, the student was suspended for ten days.
Once they found out he had started up his snack business a second time, they increased his suspension to fifteen days. The media caught wind of the situation, and debate ensued. Some people felt the school was right to suspend him, while others felt that the school was dampening his entrepreneurial abilities. He was even offered jobs from various startups, as well as a scholarship from an institute that said that the boy’s initiative should be celebrated, not punished.