After all of the talk about the 'Ville this week about the Hughes family's new home courtesy of "Extreme Home Makeover", there was another newsworthy story to discuss at the office yesterday. On Thursday, a 9 year old boy at a local south end elementary school threw a chair at his teacher and hit her in the face. It started as a "verbal confrontation" but escalated when the PAT-in-training picked up a chair and threw it at the teacher. The teacher tried to restrain the punk, and got punched in the face. The teacher said that she's not sure if she will press felony charges againt the PAT-in-training or not. I know I sure would.
The news channel interviewed the boy and his mother, and just showed their shadows to protect their identities. In what seems to be normal style, the boy and his mother said that this was basically not his fault. It reminded me of the interviews with older teenage or twenty-something criminals who were killed in a drug deal gone bad or in a gang related shooting -- it was never their fault according to their families.
I talked to someone who teaches at this elementary school, and she said that this wasn't the first time this kid has shown such violent behavior. I wonder what's going to happen to this kid when he gets older. If he's not brought under control now, we'll see him on the 11 o'clock news some day after he went on a rampage in a convenient store. Evidently, this kid's mother doesn't care, because she said it wasn't really all his fault. At this time of Thanksgiving, I am very thankful to have friends who are great parents and who give a damn about their kids, and who don't make excuses when they act up. I'm thankful moreso for my friends' kids, who are very cool, caring and considerate little people. I hope that one day when they're adults, they'll be thanking their parents for giving a damn.
2 comments:
You really can't blame the kid. I blame the parents. Where do you think a 9 year old LEARNS this type of behavior? I'd say he's probably immitating what he's learned at home.
We as students were never allowed to act this way growing up in the 70s. As much as we wanted to stand up and confront, we never went against authority. If we did, then we had to confront our stern parents as well as the school system--the stern parents usually being worse in that day and time. What will become of these rebellious children in the future workforce? No wonder we outsource so much of our menial work to third world countries.
Post a Comment