Capital punishment is un-Canadian. It is better to spend billions on the likes of Clifford Olson and Robert Pickton than on controlling crime. I guess the problem stems from the fact that criminality is good business for lawyers.
The problem is much deeper than that. Children are forced to attend school. Some are bullied to such an extent that they commit suicide. They have no place to turn because teachers have been stripped of their authority. Getting rid of authority sounds progressive as long as we walk around with our heads in the clouds. What really happened is that authority has been transferred to the bullies. They can punish a victim severely and the teacher cannot do anything about it.
Young people learn at an early age to have no respect for authority. As they reach their teens, they think nothing of setting police cars on fire. Later these same people have the potential for becoming enforcers in criminal gangs.
Teachers’ unions insist on telling us that supervising recess is not their job. Give me a break. Children learn more at recess than they do in regular class. Much of it is not good. It is very much the teacher’s job to protect the whole child all day long. Union militants’ raison d’être is to promote laziness and greed. There is nothing professional about that.
The responsibility does not rest only with teachers. Parents need to wake up. Bullies also need attention before they ruin their own lives with bad attitudes.
Society as a whole needs to stop defending offensive behaviour, that is the bottom line.
Gerry Lepine
Summerland