Friday, November 18, 2005

oddly enough

here are a sampling of the news stories i came across in my daily morning online reading today:

In New Jersey slogan search, everyone's a comedian -- old news for me, but probably new for most of you... NJ needs a slogan, and people are... well... people.

Angry? Take it indoors! -- a university in china has built an "anger room" with lots of sandbags for punching... it's a cute article until the commentary at the end which is a bit sobering.

Communist sentenced for wearing red star -- a Budapest story for once!... i think it the american writer tried to make it sound more ironic than it really is in context, but still...

here is the one that got me going through the "oddly enough news":

Mom Makes Teen Stand on Street With Sign -- exactly what it says. there's a debate over whether this was a good thing or not, and the picture with it is yahoo's "most emailed picture of the day". I think it actually says something that the mother stood by her daughter during this punishment. I think we also live in a society that so much focuses on "do what works for you", or "do what makes you feel good", and doesn't so much support people correcting other people, even though I think that's a large part of a parent's function until you're an adult -- not to control you, but definitely to both punish and to encourage you. ( hopefully more of the latter than the former, but i think the former is necessary at times as well ). agree? disagree? what do you think?

and finally, here's the story that totally makes my day... it comes from japan:

Radish in intensive care after murder attempt -- exactly what it says, and a must read... my favorite line is: Asked why the radish -- more often found on Japanese dinner tables as a garnish, pickle or in "oden" stew -- had so many fans, town spokesman Jiro Matsuo said: "People discouraged by tough times were cheered by its tenacity and strong will to live."

happy friday!
Posted by at

2 comments:

klh75 said...

In response to the mother who made her daughter stand on a street corner with a sign, I do think it is good that the mother stood with her. However, I also think there is a line between punishment and humiliation. There is a line between allowing parents to make their own rules for punishment and abuse. I think is humiliating and I think it is borderline emotional abuse. Try finding a tutor or talking to a teacher about extra help or use that time to work with the child on math and science yourself rather than forcing the child to do something this humiliating.

12:02 AM
lara =) said...

obviously no one reading the news story knows the whole story, but my guess is that the mother had tried other things first before this. (the article hinted at that when it said the girl had already given up some extracurriculars on account of bad grades too).

yes there is a line between abuse and correction, and if this was a first resort idea for correction, then yes it's a bit extreme. but i think from time to time there are situations where someone has to do something to get the child's attention and snap them back into reality too -- always accompanied with discussion, not just making the child do something, but making there be consequences of some sort for repeated bad behavior, and if the old consequences aren't doing their job, then there need to be new ones.

i don't know enough about this situation in particular to decide one way or the other if it's extreme, but i do also know in my time working with kids in the past and from the stories upon stories my mom has from years of working with kids, that sometimes someone has to do something out of the ordinary to catch a child's attention and stop things from getting out of control.

2:19 AM

Post a Comment