How Would YOU Vote?

This story circulated recently on the internet and most of us found it pretty sad:

Teacher Lets Morningside Students Vote Out Classmate

And yet.....how many routinely watch inane "reality" shows that do the same thing and call it entertainment? It's too bad that this mentality has seeped down to touch the lives of 5 year-olds in school classrooms - at the hands of a teacher, no less....but then again, why would it surprise us?

Is it not true that a public school environment is the perfect greenhouse for the seeds of culture to grow? In fact, one might argue that this has become one of the purposes of a public education (to develop or change and grow the culture of a nation).

When the seeds of culture grow and flourish and reproduce we should not be surprised in the least. This situation is perhaps a caricature of the type of socialization (or better yet, "culturalization") one one can expect from today's schools, but it is still a very real likeness of what one should expect day in and day out. As I read this particular story, I couldn't help but wonder how many hundreds of times similar (though different) situations have probably played out in other classrooms, but because no one was indignant enough or hurt enough to complain the media didn't get their claws into it and we've simply never heard about it.

And once it did hit the airwaves, that parents sent their children back into Morningside Elementary School (even the parents of the offended little boy) is what is most head-shakingly sad to me.

Wouldn't you just get a charge if, for once, parents marched on a school and demanded proper treatment of all (meaning students, teachers, administrators and parents), a proper education of their children and a proper say in the day-to-day happenings of the school their tax monies support and their children have been entrusted to?

Then again, we might find ourselves with truly public education if that sort of thing went on.