You may recall that I raised my eyebrows a wee bit at the reaction of the Luther College gunman's parents, who wanted to reassure the world that their son was a good kid. I grumped a bit about the uselessness of a word that can expand to include almost any behaviour.Naomi Lakritz grumped at greater length and brought up some excellent criticism of the modern tendency to excuse all and avoid hurting the self-esteem of our precious progeny, starting with this:
If the 16-year-old boy in Regina who took 300 students hostage this week and pointed a gun at the school's pastor is a good kid, what does a bad kid look like?
The day after the incident ended with the principal wrestling the gun away from the boy, and his subsequent arrest, lawyer Brad Tilling passed on a message from his parents: "They would like people to know that he is a good kid and obviously there was some difficulty the other day."
A "good kid?" An armed hostage-taking is "some difficulty?"
Read the whole thing. She wrote it a month ago, but I suspect it was available only to subscribers before now.
Technorati tags: Naomi Lakritz, Self-esteem, Luther College
No comments:
Post a Comment