What we need both in Toledo schools and in society at large is not “progressive thinking” but regressive rules. By that I do not mean a return to corporal punishment, but a return to consequence. If a student does poorly they must fail. If a student has consequence to personal actions they will eventually change their behavior.

Just heard on the radio that we have changed the cultural understanding of drinking and driving. It used to be the norm that cop would at the worst follow you home and at best merely tell you to drive more carefully, now the social and monetary costs are just to high for most people to take the chance to have one for the road.

The complaint is not that unions are inherently evil, but without consequence they do not have to worry about individual actions, thus initiative for doing more than one has to declines. If I could eat anything and not gain weight, I would. Those that govern us do not have to live under the same rules and restraints that we have to. We could fix everything the bozo’s in the government have enacted upon us if we simply made everyone live under the same laws they pass and there would be NO exemptions for anyone (read Geithner, Rangel, etc…).

The moment you allow someone to lose the consequence of their actions they act without regard for how their actions effect others. It starts in the school and extends to society. just make rules that both students and teachers have to live by and students will gain respect for the value of their work, because there is a true positive and negative consequence.