What's the Matter With Kids Today?

What’s the problem with kids today?  The answer to that is easy:  THEIR PARENTS!
According to the Fresno Bee, five high school seniors cut down two trees on their campus as a “senior prank.”  School officials expelled the students and transferred them to a continuation school to finish out their senior year.
The students (all seniors and football players) cut down two Southern Live Oak trees, with ten-inch trunks.  The trees were about 14 years old and nearly 20 feet high.  The damage was estimated to be between $7,500 and $14,000.  The boys said this was a prank meant to deprive junior classmates of shade.
Stupid, stupid, stupid…..but they are all “jock heroes,” probably way too used to inflated estimations of their own value and power.
The school did exactly the right thing.
The parents did exactly the wrong thing.  They said that the school “overreacted,” and they got attorneys involved to get their kids back in the school.  The school is standing firm.  Good for them.
“To hire attorneys,” as one of my listeners wrote to me, “teaches these kids that they can get away with ‘pranks’ and that they do not have to respect the law or be accountable for such behavior to school officials.  It will be interesting to see how these youngsters turn out as they mature.  Will they be good citizens?  Will they raise their children similarly to how they were raised?  Will their views change on how their own parents handled this life lesson?  It remains to be seen.  I do hope our community doesn’t read about them again later on down the line after they’ve robbed a store or beaten someone up and again hired an attorney to defend their actions.”
That point, in particular, is why (when people call and tell me that they have “x” number of “beautiful” children) I tell them I don’t care if they have pretty or ugly kids.  I only care that they have decent kids, because the well being of all of us depends on that.

P.S.  Tell me what you think