Here's an email that came through in response to my column last week on problem kids.
Kudos for telling it like it is. It is what happens when you have parents so busy trying to give their children what they didn't have that they forget to give them what they did have. Discipline. Although I didn't realize it at the time, I grew up with two fantastic parents. It was rare to receive a spanking but when all else failed I got it and I am not any worse for it.
In my opinion we don't need a better school system. We need parents to leave the teaching to teachers, the return of detentions and if the student has a bus to catch that is just too bad. A failing grade should mean that the student does not get promoted to the next grade and misbehaviour should have a consequence.
We need parents to teach their children that there are realities in life. We need to support our police services and the court system. We need to remove the swinging door from our prisons and make life in prison such that once will be enough.
Jail time should not be a holiday resort. It must ensure convicts never re-offend and end up back in prison and that incorrigible young people fear being sent to reform school.
It's funny the equations that people often make between prison and school! It's not that I disagree with her at all; it's just that I think that's how kids see it, too: school is like jail.
That's one of the reasons we homeschool. But honestly, the school system is not going to change until we get back to a culture that believes in authority, rather than a culture that believes in nothing. Because if you believe in nothing, then how can you tell a kid what to do?
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This is somewhat off-topic, but I feel I have to comment on the misperception about prisons. I could be wrong, but I believe the only people who can think that modern prisons are some kind of posh resort don't have any friends or relatives in prison.
My nephew, who I dearly love and helped to raise, made some really bad decisions that landed him in prison. Last week he was so close to a stabbing of a guard (who he likes and had developed a rapport with) that blood splattered on him.
My brother is also in prison. During the first year he was stabbed several times by a cellmate (using a sharpened pencil). Aside from the physical and emotional trauma that can occur in prison, simply being locked away and denied choices is a harder thing than a lot of people give credit for. All my brother wants is to go walking in the woods, with no one around.
Please don't think that prison is a vacation. It's not.