Ungrateful teenagers

TEENAGERS DEFY RULES OF COMMON DECENCY

Back in the days when Dr. Perrin was a teenager, kids went to school to learn. They paid attention and did what they were told. They dressed up to go to school and never wore jeans or anything really casual to class. If they acted up and got in trouble at school, they would be in even more trouble when they got home.

Unfortunately, times have changed, and not for the better. Today’s teens act up in a way that their parents and especially their grandparents would never had dared. Not only that, but they dress in ways that would have been unthinkable a couple of generations ago. Recently 14-year-old Tony Kay Scott, a student at the Redwood Middle School in California showed up for class wearing an outrageous outfit. She was wearing a denim skirt, a brown shirt with a pink border, but the really offensive item was the pair of long socks bearing a picture of Tigger, the character from A. A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh!

Fortunately, the school was doing its job. This young troublemaker was escorted to the principal’s office by a uniformed police officer. From there she was sent to an in-school suspension program called Students with Attitude Problems. The school hoped to nip this attitude in the bud. Had the school not acted, this juvenile delinquent might have shown up for class wearing Mickey Mouse tee-shirts or clothes with pictures of Winnie the Pooh or Piglet, or heaven knows what.

Clearly the girl was incorrigible. Later in the year she was disciplined for other violations of the school dress code, once for wearing a shirt with a butterfly emblem, once for wearing clothes with an anti-drug message, and once for wearing a pink tennis shoe! Obviously this young lady was looking for trouble.

You try to help these kids, and they don’t appreciate it. Instead of being grateful to the school, Miss Tony Kay Scott and her parents went to the ACLU, which is now suing the school district on behalf of the student.