Corrected and Reflecting

I have deleted a post, actually more of a rant, on the Avery Doninger case, which you can read more about
here. This is yet another case of litigation between parents and schools over disciplinary action taken by the schools. Anyway, I slammed the parents in this case pretty hard. A commenter pointed out that the news articles I had based my post on left out some important facts. And, in a number of areas, he was right. Worse, my tone was harsh and unfair.

I still do not feel this should be viewed as a censorship case. A dispute at school over a battle of the bands event spilled over into a blog post in which a child threw an online tantrum calling school officials "douchebags" and asking people to send mass emails to administration officials. The school responded to the disrspect shown and now it is in litigation - which seems to be the new American way.

My frustration with such issues stems from recent efforts to try to organize volunteers to help out in a local school where discipline is a major problem (think knives, gang assualts, arrests, threats against staff and epidemic rudeness and disrespect). I am hoping to start up after school programs and eventually mentoring type programs.

My emotions on this swing back and forth wildly. On the one hand my heart aches for these kids who are obviously not taught simple manners and civility and have so many problems at home. On the other, I can't resist the urge to think these kids need a good swift kick at times. What is worse is we are a fairly small midwest communtity and you wouldn't think we'd have to deal with so much of this. As for the teachers and school staff, how can they do their real jobs when they are constantly dealing with disrespect, abuse, and even violence? And this is an elementary school.

Sometime's I want to throw up my hands and scream "If the parents would just parent, the school's wouldn't have to." Of course, we are talking about parents who themselves were from less than ideal homes, who deal with economic hardship, addictions, and some are just plain too selfish to invest in their offspring. Government gets involved: courts, family services, social workers, etc, but they cannot hope to deal with the basic moral root of the problem.

For years I've heard people say "you can't legislate morality" and yet that is exactly what we are being forced to do. It seems that without morality, you have no choice but to legislate it, or litigate it. But the moral compass that guides free people to live responsibly and in a civil manner cannot be imposed. So "freedom" becomes divorced from self control and we see the government forced to deal with things that people should have worked out on their own.

In my liberal days I felt that government programs could solve things, and elevate people to a better life. Wealth needed to be redistributed and then we'd see all sorts of social ills disappear. Well, that hasn't happened. Decades of such programs have destroyed families, neighborhoods and schools. Then I became a hard-core conservative and felt that government had failed (still believe that) to deal with these issues and that people need to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and if they fail, too bad for them, they had their chance.

Now, I find myself moving into a new perspective. Communities need to solve their own problems by addressing issues government can't and shouldn't. Churches need to take the lead, because they can mobilized the physical and economic resources to meet immediate needs. But, and more importantly, they can build relationships to address the spiritual, emotional and moral needs that are at the heart of poverty, addiction and self gratification without responsibility that leads people to wrongly execute their rights to the detriment of themselves and others.

Well, that pretty much became another rant I guess. I need to keep on guard and not fall back into the judgmental stuff, which is all too easy to do.