LETTERS: PARENTS SHOULD TAKE RESPONSIBILITY

To the editor:

As I sit here and think about the court case relating to the Web dispute between Woodland School District and a student, I start to remember how things were when I was growing up not that too long ago and not here in the Bible Belt where things seem to be a little more stringent.

Dad taught me the difference between right and wrong, and Mom was always there. The phrase "day care" was not in our vocabulary. Welfare was called "relief," a holdover from the Great Depression, but people were too proud to admit receiving it. Our schools started each day with a prayer and a pledge to the flag. I had more than one paddle broken over my butt for acting up, and when I got paddled, I deserved it. I never told my Mom or Pop that my teacher paddled me, for if I did I would have gotten it worse from either one of them. I along with most of the kids were taught to say please and thank you instead of gimme. I often wore hand-me-downs, but our clothes were always clean, and we wore our baseball caps with the brim in front to shield our eyes from the sun as they were designed to do. To look sloppy or stupid was abhorred. Convicted murderers were executed promptly instead of languishing years and years on death row filing appeal after appeal. When tragedy struck, we dried our tears, stuck out our chin and went on with life instead of beating our chest and holding countless sessions with a psychologist to tell us how to cope. And newspapers presented both sides of an issue without a political slant.

Contrast that with today. In most homes, both parents work, not really because of what they need, but rather because of what they want.

The TV has become the baby sitter. We are of the mentality of protecting our children almost to the point of hysteria, but they are readily sent off to school where teachers are expected to become quasi-parents. They are latter dumped off at some after-school activity where some coach is expected to take over. After the kids grow up, Mom and Dad hand them a fistful of dollars or a car and tell them "Have a good time, see you later" so Mom and Dad can have some peace and quiet, unwind and find themselves.

Our leaders -- and that means our parents -- now set the example of not what is right or wrong, but how much can we get away with. The media provide coverage with a definite political slant.

Our courts are clogged with so many frivolous lawsuits that we are becoming the laughingstock of all other jurists around the country. We don't have a criminal justice system anymore, just a legal system. It seems like no one is held responsible anymore for his or her actions. Maybe the biggest lack in our society today is our unwillingness to admonish someone whom we know has done wrong. Maybe the parents of that student should have used the space behind the woodshed instead of asking the A.C.L.U. to intervene and pumping things into their son's head making him think he is beyond reproach. Or maybe the school district could do what the Bethlehem School District in Pennsylvania did at the beginning of this year. A schoolteacher who was the target of a 14-year-old's derogatory and threatening remarks on the World Wide Web sued the parents who are responsible for their son's behavior.

Whatever happens, I think most reasonable people know that what the student did was wrong. And I believe his parents should be held responsible for whatever comes out of this circus without the animals.

ANDREW J. WIESNER

Marble Hill