What ever happened to the school of hard knocks?

I was reading a post today from one of my favorite bloggers (http://rapidcityjournal.com/blogs/editor/?p=631) regarding the wishes of a young girls parents. The parents asked the Rapid City Journal to remove a story from their archives detailing the drug arrest of their child. Their fear was that when potential employers Googled this girl's name the first entry that came up was the story of her arrest and that could prevent her being hired by said company.

The Journal refused using the reasoning that they "Couldn't erase history" and that the reporting on the arrest was factually accurate. The parents are now trying to go through Google to have this post removed.

This is one of many examples of parents denying their children one of life's most valuable and character building principals - accountability. While wanting to protect their child from any possible or further embarrassment is something I can understand is that path the right direction to go down? I struggle with society's need to preserve self esteem in our children and letting them learn their lessons the hard way.

What ever happened to letting children take responsibility for their actions? I am not suggesting that parents not protect their children from danger or even allow them to be set up for failure but I am suggesting that they allow them to feel the bumps and bruises that go along with poor choices. This girl got in to a car that was stopped and found to have drugs in it. The facts are simple, whether she got in knowingly or not is beside the point; she was associating with a person carrying drugs. Unless she was forced into that car against her will it appears that she might have made a poor choice.

Her parents would be doing their daughter a great disservice by trying and clean this up for her. Instead, her parents could let her take responsibility for her actions and suffer the consequences and allow her to learn a valuable lesson OR they could fix it all for her and allow her to learn nothing. Well, maybe not learn anything - she might learn that she can do whatever she wants without impunity and that mom and dad are nothing but suckers put on earth to clean up her mess.

At the Bulletin, we get many requests from people to "keep their name out of the paper" - especially in the Blotter section. Whether it be the embarrassment or shame we understand that desire but we have never allowed it to happen - at least in the 10+ years I've been here. The reasoning is simple - You shouldn't have put yourself in the position of having your name put in the Blotter section of the newspaper. Sorry 'bout your DUI - but maybe you shouldn't have driven drunk. Sorry about your MIP but you are just 16 years old. Sorry that your Grandma is going to upset with you but you should have thought about that before you made your choice.

It's all about accountibility. I really wish parents would not take that lesson away from their children.

Credit crisis. What credit crisis?

I may be in the minority here, but I'm not buying that there's an emergency in the financial markets that demands a bailout. I'm with the members of the U.S. House of Representatives who bucked the leadership Monday and sided with the majority of American people, who don't want $700 billion handed over to the Treasury Department. Call me libertarian, but I'm for people answering to their own mistakes and the markets dealing with adversity without Big Brother trying to control our fate.