Overreaction.

An elementary teacher for the Gwinnett County, Georgia school district has resigned due to some poorly worded math problems that were assigned to some students. The questions attempted to teach a little history as well as math. His question about Frederick Douglass was in poor taste. The question asked "If Frederick got to beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in a week?    In two weeks?" Why he thought that was a good idea, he has not explained. He did say his intentions were good, and when the controversy came out, he turned in his resignation before it was asked for. I really don't think he should of had to resign, but some kind of punishment was called for. A suspension without pay could have covered that. Of course, since he did resign it is a moot point. That is not the overreaction that I was referring to with the subject of this post. The overreaction is mentioned in the story where some parents are now requesting that counseling be made available to the students who received these questions. It is ridiculous to believe that simply reading that question would emotionally scar a child. It would not surprise me for a lawsuit to end up being filed over this. It is an unfortunate happening, but life really will go on.

The second overreaction took place at a Subway in South Carolina. A 19-year-old employee there made sandwiches for his friends and charged them $1.50. It's not clear how many friends were involved but instead of firing the young man, the manager had him arrested. I agree that the young man was in the wrong, but having him arrested is going a little too far. I can only assume that this was done as a warning to the other employees, but unless he had 50 friends in there being fired should have covered everything. The way the story reads it was a one time occurrence. Why the harshness in dealing with it only the manager can explain.