Readers — Get a load of this. For their senior trip, some students from a Philly high school went to Williamsburg, VA for four days. When eight of them got into trouble for causing plumbing damage in a hotel bathroom, they were sent home, on a train. So can you guess what the problem is, according to the media (and livid parents)?
These “children” (aged 17 and 18, I presume) were on the train “unchaperoned!” For five whole hours! And, of course, “Anything could have happened!” as one mom predictably lamented.
You know what? Something DID happen. They screwed up and got sent home. But being on a train with your friends in your later teen years is NOT an unacceptable risk — because it isn’t a risk at all. It’s no big deal! Treating it like it’s the equivalent of sending a three-year-old on a solo cross-country Greyhound trip MAY be the reason the kids were such jerks at the hotel: They’re used to being treated like babies.
Let’s hear it for the school that is not caving in. Instead, it is pointing out the students signed a contract before the trip that said they could be sent home if they got in trouble. And they did and they were. Without a chaperone. Imagine that. – L.
How dare a school treat 18-year-olds like adults?!
Filed under: Crazy Parents, School and Zero Tolerance and Bullies, Uncategorized, Walk to School / Stay Home Alone / Wait in Car | Tagged: adolescence, children on train, school trip, treating teens like babies, unaccompanied minors are fine, unsupervised on a train | 65 Comments »
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