tangomonster
Full time employment: Posting here.
- Joined
- Mar 20, 2006
- Messages
- 757
I don't know why I'm so bothered by the incident in Northern Virginia where a high school student called up the school system's superintendent at home and then the superintendent's wife left a nasty message on the kid's phone....which the kid later posted on line and it got picked up by all the news media:
http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/printedition/2008/01/25/harassed0125.html
I guess it's just because it seems to me to be so illustrative of what's wrong with society today: the lack of civilized behavior and the refusal to admit that anyone has done something wrong. I do believe in free speech. I think kids should question authority in some cases. But this was just a kid who was disappointed that he had to go to school. Calling the superintendent at home to protest seems so inappropriate to me. Of course it was crazy that the superintendent's number was listed, but the kid should not have been harassing him at home. And then to post the superintendent's wife call on line was also obnoxious---but the kid defends it as free speech and says that his generation has different ideas about privacy.
And the superintendent's wife is also a piece of work. I understand that it is disturbing to get phone calls from irate students (supposedly some were made in the middle of the night asking if there would be a snow day), but her message on his voice-mail was way over teh top.
So---are these isolated incidents or is this pretty typical of people today---not respecting privacy, not admitting any wrongdoing, being incredibly rude?
http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/printedition/2008/01/25/harassed0125.html
I guess it's just because it seems to me to be so illustrative of what's wrong with society today: the lack of civilized behavior and the refusal to admit that anyone has done something wrong. I do believe in free speech. I think kids should question authority in some cases. But this was just a kid who was disappointed that he had to go to school. Calling the superintendent at home to protest seems so inappropriate to me. Of course it was crazy that the superintendent's number was listed, but the kid should not have been harassing him at home. And then to post the superintendent's wife call on line was also obnoxious---but the kid defends it as free speech and says that his generation has different ideas about privacy.
And the superintendent's wife is also a piece of work. I understand that it is disturbing to get phone calls from irate students (supposedly some were made in the middle of the night asking if there would be a snow day), but her message on his voice-mail was way over teh top.
So---are these isolated incidents or is this pretty typical of people today---not respecting privacy, not admitting any wrongdoing, being incredibly rude?