First They Came....
One of the things that always drives me nuts is when I write something critical of China and a reader points out a similar example in the United States. Fine.
It drives me even nuttier when I write something critical of China and someone writes to ask why I don't write the same sort of piece on the United States. Hey, check out the title of this blog.
\Worst of all though is when someone tries to use a similar problem or situation in the United States to justify what is clearly a bad practice in China, as though two wrongs make a right.
But I could not help but compare and contrast when I read a New York Times story today about a middle school principal in Sichuan Province whose caring and concern and -- most importantly -- action, may have saved lives in the recent earthquake. This principal's school did not suffer a single fatality and this was probably due to his having made sure the school was as earthquake proof as he thought it should be, Beijing's weaker standards be damned. As he so perfectly put it: "If I knew there was a hidden danger, and I didn?t do anything about it, then I would be the one responsible.? The Yuan stops here.
Now the contrast.
My youngest daughter attends View Ridge Elementary School here in Seattle, Washington, probably the best, and certainly the best funded, public elementary school in the city. The other day, I was reading a Seattle Times article, entitled, "School's culture failed to stop abuser," detailing how a convicted child abuser had managed to get away with so much for so long. The article seemed to lay much of the blame on a principal who came across to me as far more interested in going along to get along than in protecting elementary school students from sexual abuse. I assumed this principal had been pushed out of the Seattle school system, so imagine my shock when I read this line:
"[Terri] Skjei declined to comment for this story. She is now principal at View Ridge Elementary in Seattle.
My daughter's school!
I was furious. Furious nobody had ever told us that our new principal had this history. Furious my daughter had been attending a school whose principal I now perceive to be morally bankrupt.
A few days later, we parents received a bureaucratic letter vaguely referring to a newspaper article, but not mentioning Ms. Skjei nor even that our school's principal had been in the article. The letter described View Ridge's well formulated protections against sexual abuse, but ignored how we had been deceived and made no mention of what we should do if we no longer wanted our children in the presence of this sort of person. It said nothing of what the school would do regarding future hires nor what we should tell our children about the moral fiber of their school leaders.
Fortunately, my daughter will be graduating from 5th grade tomorrow so I will never have to face having to decide whether to pull her from a great school she loves to one headed up by someone I can stomach. I feel for those left behind who now have to deal with a principal [and a school board?] who appears to me could learn a lot from another principal on the opposite side of the Earth.
