Tell Me What's Right While Doing What's Wrong

Ahh, high school. Those years when teachers and staff try to mold young minds for the challenges of the future. A time of showing the difference between right and wrong. A time to hopefully build some compassion, some sense of justice, and to learn to live together peacefully.

Yea right...

What high school should not be, in my opinion, is preaching with a "do what I say not what I do" attitude. Yet it happens in ways both small and large. We have high school coaches videotaping naked girls in the locker rooms. We have female teachers having sex with young male students. We have school personnel being arrested for embezzlement. And we have this - arguably not as significant as the other things I just listed, but still showing a careless regard for both the law and the rights of others:



Mr. school employee/door repairman, you took the last handicapped-accessible parking space. No, you did not have the handicapped placard that gives you the right to park there. But yes, it was right in front of the building where you had to fix a sticky door. And yes, it saved you from toting your bag of tools (no bigger than a student's backpack) across the parking lot. But it meant my child had to get out of my car and into his wheelchair in that busy parking lot.

Thanks for making his life more difficult and less safe. And thanks for the wonderful message you sent to the other students at school. I'm sure that those students won't feel much remorse when they park in a handicapped spot. You showed them today that it is alright...