You know, I can't blame today's schoolkids for being confused.
First, they encounter teachers who do everything possible to avoid telling an under-performing child that they are failing, and avoid every possible thing that could be correlated with negative feedback, sometimes going so far as to ban teachers from using red pens to mark papers. After graduation, though, students who enter the real world discover that bosses usually don't shy away from poor performance evaluations or outright firings. In addition, the real world asserts its uncaring attitude by, for example, allowing bridges that were badly built to fall down, even if it makes the builder feel bad. Thus, underachievers tend to discover that such behavior is treated quite differently in real life than in school.
(Update: Think I'm exaggerating the movement to prevent teachers from ever saying anything in a classroom that might hurt a student's feelings? Think again.)
And then there's the situation of the bad kids - you know, like the ones who take Midol, or carry a historical gun replica as part of a school project, or who perform other such outrageous acts. In schools these days, such "crimes" can carry stiff penalties.
But, in the real world, repeated violent sexual assaults on children don't deserve punishment, because, you know, punishment doesn't really work:
Prosecutors argued that confessed child-rapist Mark Hulett, 34, of Williston deserved at least eight years behind bars for repeatedly raping a little girl countless times starting when she was seven. But [Vermont] Judge Edward Cashman disagreed explaining that he no longer believes that punishment works."The one message I want to get through is that anger doesn't solve anything. It just corrodes your soul," said Judge Edward Cashman speaking to a packed Burlington courtroom. Most of the on-lookers were related to a young girl who was repeatedly raped by Mark Hulett who was in court to be sentenced.
The sex abuse started when the girl was seven and ended when she was ten. Prosecutors were seeking a sentence of eight to twenty years in prison, in part, as punishment.
The judge gave this guy 60 days in jail. And he's very concerned that the criminal sex offender be given rehabilitation - which the offender can attend while living a free life after he serves his whole two months in jail.
It's not only the victim's family who should be enraged by this. Imagine that you were a high school student in Vermont, and that you were expelled for having a legally-owned, unloaded rifle locked in your car - a situation that was explicitly excluded from punishment in the Gun-Free Schools Act. Or you were the student in NC who faced 30 days in jail just for cursing in front of your teacher. Or you were any student living under insane "zero tolerance" policies. And then you read about this judge's statements.
As I said, not hard to blame the kids for being confused.
(Hat tip to Opinion Journal for the story, to ZeroIntelligence for many of these links, and to the Ace of Spades for his additional outrage. Michelle Malkin, on the other hand, was surprisingly reticent on this topic; my guess is she's too busy hugging her children while explaining that any bad man who comes near them won't live long enough to go in front of a judge.)
Posted by kswygert at January 5, 2006 05:45 PM