Filed under: News, Race and Civil Rights
Well, well, well - all of you who blame our current crop of hellion young people on bad parenting, now have a chance to put your vote where your mouth is, at least in Detroit. Prosecutor Kym Worthy has had enough of these little monsters and their trifling parents and wants to propose jail time for the neglectful parents who have shown no interest in their children's education.
Worthy's proposal would require a parent to attend at least one parent-teacher conference a year or face up to three days in jail, according to Maria Miller, Worthy's press secretary.
The proposal, which Worthy presented this week at a Detroit City Council meeting, would exempt parents whose children are performing exceptionally well or who are otherwise actively engaged with their children's teachers. Parents who are unable to travel for health reasons also would be exempt.
In an interview with George Stephanopolous on Good Morning America (video below), she explained that jail time would not be mandated for simply missing one parent-teacher meeting. A parent would have three chances to make it to the conference and missing a conference could even be replaced with a phone call.
In other words, if you can't find time to drag your lard-a*s to the school to talk about your barely-literate child, and then can't even squeeze in a phone call to the teacher in between happy hours, then you should be dealt with harshly.
The prosecutor's point is largely that the majority of crime committed by juveniles generally have two things in common. The child has a history of truancy and the parents or parent is not involved in the child's education.
I personally think she has a point. This is a proposal clearly designed by desperation. Our cities are just fed up with parents who take no responsibility for their children and their education, because in the end, greater society ends up paying the costs. More simply: When Lil' Man has no parental support in his education, he eventually loses interest himself and ends up hitting me upside the head in order to steal the $2 in my wallet.
Children who have no education are destined to be a burden on society whether in the form of public assistance or the prison system. In the 21st century, there is no place for an uneducated child. Our neighborhoods can't check out of the educational process and then scream about 29% unemployment in their communities.
Unfortunately, as tempting as this proposal is, you can't legislate parental interest in children's education. Personally, I would love for Detroit to implement this law to serve as a test case for the rest of the country to see what impact it has.
Hard times call for desperate measures. Something has got to wake up these parents as to the importance of their children's education and if they can't be persuaded with reason, maybe a little jail time will do the trick.