Letter by Gwendolyn K. Perry
The Advocate
April 7, 2008
This letter to the Advocate projects an idea that parents should be held accountable for the way they raise their children. She signs her letter saying that she is a teacher, and throughout her letter, this can be seen in the way she scolds parents for their children's disciplinary problems. However, the entire first half of her letter is nothing but generalizations about the society we live in and she uses extremely big words, one right after the other, and it really takes away from what she is trying to say. You can tell she is trying to sound smart and educated and almost make the reader feel stupid. She doesn't have evidence of why she wants these courts for parents except that behavioral problems in students stem from the way they are raised. "We cannot afford to become complacent, comfortable nor negligent when the security, safety and stability of our lives and society could be drastically altered by generations to come. It is impossible to ignore the behavior of some of the youths in our communities. It is not inconceivable that some of the leaders of the future may be those who may think very differently from the older and wiser generation today." I am not sure what she is talking about but it completely lost me and made me think that she is simply trying to sound smart instead of projecting an innovative idea.
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6 comments:
That is a very good point. The first part of your learning comes from your parents. Your morals, ideals, and even how you speak comes from your parents. It can't all be blamed on the parents though. When children become teens, they are most likely to imitate thier peers, but saying that you pick your peers by similiar interest that are learned from parents.
Parents should be held accountable for how they raise their children. I think that a teacher would know better than anyone about this subject because they spend the most time with the children a day. Even though children are a reflection on the way they see their parents act, the parents are not totally responsible. Kids can acquire bad behavior from siblings, classmates and other adults. The article could have been better if the author would have given facts or statistics about the studies of this issue. It seems like a weak arguement based on opinion.
I also think that although parents play a big role in their childrens lives, they can only do so much. Children all the time do things because of their parents, their siblings, and their authority figures, but they have the final say so. They are incharge of their own lives and they have to make their own decisions.
I wonder if this woman actually has children or if she's just bitter from dealing with brats all day. Parents can be held criminally responsible for negligence and physical harm to a child and civilly responsible for damages caused by the child. Other than that I challenge anyone to tell a parent how to raise their child and see the reaction they get.
From working with small children at a pre-school for the past two years, I can definitely tell the type of parenting a child receives by the way they act. Another factor is who their friends are or who they are around. There are a few children who will act up when they are hanging out with certain people. To have a separate court to deal with this would be unconstitutional. Parents have the right to raise their children however they wish; however, the author does make a good point that parent's need to take on more responsibility for their child's actions.
This was a very interesting idea that I had never really thought up before.While I do feel that the way you are raised has a major impact on the person you become, I don't feel that is all up to the parents. It is also the experiences and the personality of the child that shapes who they become. I do not know how the way in which you are raised could be objectively decided in the courts. Everyone has a different opinion on that issue, and I doubt that they would be willing to listen to the other side.
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