Texas judge jails honor student for missing school
Published: 30 May, 2012, 00:07
Diane Tran, 17, is on the honor roll at her high school, works full time at a dry cleaners and spends most weekends making extra cash by helping out a local wedding planner. But when Tran isn't busy earning straight-As, she goes to jail.
She might have a scholarly record that has made her the envy of the rest of Willis High School in Houston, Texas, but her peers aren't exactly praying to be just like Tran after a judge recently sentenced the eleventh grade student to an overnight stint behind bars. Never mind the magnificent grades and go-getter attitude: Judge Lanny Moriarty was not impressed when Tran recently missed another day of school.
"If you let one run loose, what are you going to do with the rest of them? Let them go, too?" Moriarty asks local [TV station] KHOU. The judge has found a solution for truancy in Texas, but it might not be the best one -- Tran's community and the rest of America is now up in arms after the 17-year-old star student was imprisoned by Moriarty for missing another day of school.
This is a great illustration of the conflict between what we /think/ we're teaching our children, and what the State /wants/ our kids to learn and how the State /wants/ to teach it to them.