You are responsible enough, but your parents have to go to jail?

[Stopthinkingsomuch!!!]

On a talk radio station, I learned that state wants to sentence parents to community service or jail time if their child is delinquent from school.

Now this seems odd to me because, if a teen or child is deemed responsible enough to do a host of things, why shouldn't they and only they be responsible for the consequences.

Plus if parents are being told more and more that they have a limited right to discipline their own child and enforce standards and rules; then at the same time tell them if their child does something wrong or doesn't go to school, the parent is responsible?

If you give someone the freedom and responsibility to make a good decision or bad one, shouldn't the person making that decision be held accountable?

[gdoane]

I'm pretty sure that when Mom gets out of the hoosegow that the kid is going to be held plenty accountable.

Parents are responsible for their children. If a kid breaks a window, it's the parents who have to pay for it. I don't see this as much different.

[Samm]

On a talk radio station, I learned that state wants to sentence parents to community service or jail time if their child is delinquent from school.

Now this seems odd to me because, if a teen or child is deemed responsible enough to do a host of things, why shouldn't they and only they be responsible for the consequences.

Plus if parents are being told more and more that they have a limited right to discipline their own child and enforce standards and rules; then at the same time tell them if their child does something wrong or doesn't go to school, the parent is responsible?

If you give someone the freedom and responsibility to make a good decision or bad one, shouldn't the person making that decision be held accountable?

Yeah... that's exactly what we need to do... protect society from parents whose kids skip school by putting them in jail and let murders and rapists out to make room for them. :rolleyes:

Who thinks up this crap? :wall:

[gdoane]

Yeah... that's exactly what we need to do... protect society from parents whose kids skip school by putting them in jail and let murders and rapists out to make room for them. :rolleyes:

Who thinks up this crap? :wall:

http://www.myfoxmemphis.com/dpp/news/033009_Memphis_City_Schools_Fight_Truancy

Apparently the City of Memphis is looking at their school statistics and going after the problem.

Fewer than 70% of Memphis students are graduating from school. Some schools have graduation rates below 50%. Desperate situations call for desperate measures.

Memphis has assigned truancy officers to hunt down these kids and bring them back to class for the first offense. Further offenses will have the kid going to one of four Memphis "truancy centers" and continued defiance can result in parents being locked up if the parents are letting their kids run wild.

The implications of such a dropout rate are staggering.

A High School Dropout is:



Twice as likely to slip into poverty.
Making an average of $9,200 less income per year.
Eight times more likely to wind up in jail or prison.
Costing the US Economy over $90 Billion per year in squandered opportunity.

If this isn't criminal, it oughtta be!

[Stopthinkingsomuch!!!]

So why jail the parent. Jail the kid and make them go to school in jail.

[gdoane]

So why jail the parent. Jail the kid and make them go to school in jail.

The thinking is that the parent can get through to the kid and this will motivate the parents to do their job better.

[Samm]

http://www.myfoxmemphis.com/dpp/news/033009_Memphis_City_Schools_Fight_Truancy

Apparently the City of Memphis is looking at their school statistics and going after the problem.

Fewer than 70% of Memphis students are graduating from school. Some schools have graduation rates below 50%. Desperate situations call for desperate measures.

Memphis has assigned truancy officers to hunt down these kids and bring them back to class for the first offense. Further offenses will have the kid going to one of four Memphis "truancy centers" and continued defiance can result in parents being locked up if the parents are letting their kids run wild.

The implications of such a dropout rate are staggering.

A High School Dropout is:



Twice as likely to slip into poverty.
Making an average of $9,200 less income per year.
Eight times more likely to wind up in jail or prison.
Costing the US Economy over $90 Billion per year in squandered opportunity.

If this isn't criminal, it oughtta be!

I agree it is a serious social problem and in the extreme could even perhaps border on the criminal, but putting the parents in jail, which will result in them losing their job (if they have one) will not get the child into school. Jail should be reserved for criminals who are a physical danger to society, not for some sort of social experiment to get kids to do what is best for themselves.

[countmein]

My oldest one knows that if she attended a school and did anything wrong, she will pay the cost. IF she were to skip school, I would see to it that it would never happen again. How? Well for starters, I would dress in the most embarassing thing I could find and would attend classes with her for at least a week or two. She would NEVER try to do anything like that again. Just the thought of it would be enough to keep her in line, mainly because she knows me well enough to know that I would do it. I have made it perfectly clear that if I ever catch her sneaking around or lying to me, I will make it to where she would be too embarassed to show her face for a loooooooong time. I don't embarass that easily and I would do whatever it took to get her back on the straight and narrow, even sacrificing a little of my own dignity.

[gdoane]

I agree it is a serious social problem and in the extreme could even perhaps border on the criminal, but putting the parents in jail, which will result in them losing their job (if they have one) will not get the child into school. Jail should be reserved for criminals who are a physical danger to society, not for some sort of social experiment to get kids to do what is best for themselves.

It depends on how the parents are jailed. Many inmates at Sheriff Joe Arpaio's "Tent City" are actually on work release and go to jobs every weekday, returning to the jail at night and on weekends.

The way it works in Arizona, you'd never find a "danger to society" type in jail anyway because those guys go to prison. Jails are for low-level offenders sentenced to one year or less on misdemeanor raps.

These truancies are serious matters which endanger the child's future and the child's present as well. Unsupervised children getting caught up in gangs, drugs and mischief are endangering themselves and others. It's a bad situation and if the parents aren't going to deal with it then who can be held liable for dealing with this issue?

The parent is assumed to hold a responsibility for their children. Failure to meet that responsibility is a crime of child neglect.

If authorities don't get cooperation from parents to deal with truancy then the issue simply will not be solved. Naturally, gaining cooperation from the parents would be desirable voluntarily but when the carrot approach fails, the stick approach is a needed option.

[Samm]

It depends on how the parents are jailed. Many inmates at Sheriff Joe Arpaio's "Tent City" are actually on work release and go to jobs every weekday, returning to the jail at night and on weekends.

The way it works in Arizona, you'd never find a "danger to society" type in jail anyway because those guys go to prison. Jails are for low-level offenders sentenced to one year or less on misdemeanor raps.

These truancies are serious matters which endanger the child's future and the child's present as well. Unsupervised children getting caught up in gangs, drugs and mischief are endangering themselves and others. It's a bad situation and if the parents aren't going to deal with it then who can be held liable for dealing with this issue?

The parent is assumed to hold a responsibility for their children. Failure to meet that responsibility is a crime of child neglect.

If authorities don't get cooperation from parents to deal with truancy then the issue simply will not be solved. Naturally, gaining cooperation from the parents would be desirable voluntarily but when the carrot approach fails, the stick approach is a needed option.

So who is responsible for the child while the parents are in jail? This is not a simple black and white issue... parents go to work expecting their kids are going to school. If the kid does not go to school what do you propose the parent could do about it?

[Hoobeedoo Bejesus]

For the record...

I'm a liberal and I take full responsibility for my children.

My kids teachers have my cell and office number and are encouraged to call me for even the slightest issue. It is guaranteed there will be hell to pay if those numbers need to be used by the teacher.

[Broseph]

On a talk radio station, I learned that state wants to sentence parents to community service or jail time if their child is delinquent from school.

Now this seems odd to me because, if a teen or child is deemed responsible enough to do a host of things, why shouldn't they and only they be responsible for the consequences.

Plus if parents are being told more and more that they have a limited right to discipline their own child and enforce standards and rules; then at the same time tell them if their child does something wrong or doesn't go to school, the parent is responsible?

If you give someone the freedom and responsibility to make a good decision or bad one, shouldn't the person making that decision be held accountable?

Politicians are always in favor of harsher laws & tougher penalties. Why?

1) It helps them look 'tough on crime' and gets them votes from the much more socially conservative older generations (who, by the way, vote a higher % of the time than other age groups) that favor those kinds of stances... since aforementioned generations are not affected by them. Easy to give orders when you aren't affected by it.

2) Kind of a tie-in with #1. It helps them keep their careers in tact. Part of the reason I favor term-limits. It would keep law-making from being a career.

3) More people under the eye of the government = more government power. Just look at what kind of programs the American government sponsors. Almost all are welfare or warfare, and all of those increase the scope of government.

It has nothing to do with government looking out for children. That's the cheapest line to use to get your idea more votes: It's for the children. If it was really for the children, the government wouldn't be focusing on using the legal system to place parents in prison, thus taking the parents away.

[gdoane]

So who is responsible for the child while the parents are in jail? This is not a simple black and white issue... parents go to work expecting their kids are going to school. If the kid does not go to school what do you propose the parent could do about it?

Well, one thing we probably have in common is that at some point in our lives we were kids. My parents could do PLENTY.

My mother had the classic motherly threat... "Go To Your Room And Wait Until Your Father Gets Home."

That's like the closest thing to a death sentence a kid can receive. Mom is so ticked off that she's not even bothering to put up the smackdown. You're getting a Dad-class smackdown.

Dad comes into the room and announces that Mom has placed a bounty on my head and that nobody eats until corrective action for my misdeeds have been performed satisfactorily.

Defiance was not an option. Teachers were allowed to perform corporal punishment and if I got a whooping from a teacher, there's another whooping where that one came from when my folks found out about it.

My upbringing was very much about spare the rod and spoil the child. No rod was spared.

[gdoane]

Politicians are always in favor of harsher laws & tougher penalties. Why?

1) It helps them look 'tough on crime' and gets them votes from the much more socially conservative older generations (who, by the way, vote a higher % of the time than other age groups) that favor those kinds of stances... since aforementioned generations are not affected by them. Easy to give orders when you aren't affected by it.

Criminals obviously can't vote unless they've had their civil rights restored, which makes them politically unviable. Which I think they should be, as part of the punishment for the crimes committed.


2) Kind of a tie-in with #1. It helps them keep their careers in tact. Part of the reason I favor term-limits. It would keep law-making from being a career.

For term limits to happen, you'd need legislators to basically vote to shoot themselves in the foot and that's just never going to come to pass. Ted Kennedy has like a total brain tumor, he's about 90 years old with one foot in the grave and the other foot on a banana peel and he's going to stay in office until the body starts to stink.

Term limits are never, ever going to happen. Not with the guys who crave a lifetime of power having to be the proponents of the limiting of their own power.

3) More people under the eye of the government = more government power. Just look at what kind of programs the American government sponsors. Almost all are welfare or warfare, and all of those increase the scope of government.

Yep, they just bought GM and Chrysler. Can't go much further than that for increasing the scope of government.

It has nothing to do with government looking out for children. That's the cheapest line to use to get your idea more votes: It's for the children. If it was really for the children, the government wouldn't be focusing on using the legal system to place parents in prison, thus taking the parents away.

It's not prison, it's jail and it's just a smack to wake the parents up. The parents aren't doing like Birdman of Alcatraz sentences of 100 years, it's just a night or so in jail to get their full and unchecked attention on dealing with the kid.

Bad parenting is unleashing monsters on society. Something has to be done about that. The parents of monsters like Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris (the Columbine High School killers) were rotten to the core. That's more than a little incompetence. Their kids had guns on their beds in their rooms and mommy and daddy didn't notice.

Steps have to be taken. Parents raising mass murderers is a serious problem. Parents enabling gangbanger offspring and acting like it's all society's problem instead of an issue of their parental competence and the attention they need to pay to their own kids is a load of BS (Barbra Streisand) that I don't think we can accept.

Bad parenting is killing kids. Stopping it will take drastic measures, even unpopular measures but the alternative is kids out of control and a Lord of the Flies outcome as a result.

[Samm]

Well, one thing we probably have in common is that at some point in our lives we were kids. My parents could do PLENTY.

My mother had the classic motherly threat... "Go To Your Room And Wait Until Your Father Gets Home."

That's like the closest thing to a death sentence a kid can receive. Mom is so ticked off that she's not even bothering to put up the smackdown. You're getting a Dad-class smackdown.

Dad comes into the room and announces that Mom has placed a bounty on my head and that nobody eats until corrective action for my misdeeds have been performed satisfactorily.

Defiance was not an option. Teachers were allowed to perform corporal punishment and if I got a whooping from a teacher, there's another whooping where that one came from when my folks found out about it.

My upbringing was very much about spare the rod and spoil the child. No rod was spared.

Living in the past does not solve today's problems...

[psyko kat]

So why jail the parent. Jail the kid and make them go to school in jail.

YEH, what you said.....Grrr!!!!!

[gdoane]

Living in the past does not solve today's problems...

The past didn't have a lot of today's problems because the society of the past wouldn't put up with it. Kids respected their elders and followed the rules "or else" and we've lost the "or else" because of touchy-feely modern psychology.

Teachers can't spank students, parents can't even swat a kid without getting reported and what happens is a disrespect for authority that didn't exist back in the day.

These problems were solved in the past. Going back to the good old days is a good idea.

[Samm]

The past didn't have a lot of today's problems because the society of the past wouldn't put up with it. Kids respected their elders and followed the rules "or else" and we've lost the "or else" because of touchy-feely modern psychology.

Teachers can't spank students, parents can't even swat a kid without getting reported and what happens is a disrespect for authority that didn't exist back in the day.

These problems were solved in the past. Going back to the good old days is a good idea.

I don't disagree with any of that... but it (going back) ain't gonna happen so there is not any benefit of rehashing it.