Why make the call?

Though I am a very practical person, every once in a while, I feel that a tilt at a windmill is necessary ( I included the link for those of you who are not familiar with Don Quixote).  I know that the windmill will remain in place, but what it represents, in this instance, does need to be challenged.  This week's windmill was a teacher who decided to punish 5 students by assigning them extra homework.  You guessed it, my kid was one of the 5.  He came home very, very upset.  It's not that the homework took so long -- just over 15 minutes -- it's the principle of a punitive assignment for select individuals based on the teacher's own conclusion that they must not have prepared as he wanted them to.

 I understood that my son was outraged at what he saw as an injustice. I also have a strong sense of justice and get very upset at abuses of power.  Though I  am not quixotic enough to believe that calling  the school will result in getting the teacher to change his methods, and I certainly wasn't looking to get him fired, I still had to do it to register my protest.  Yesterday I called my kid's school to speak to the principal. He wasn't in, so I left a message on his voice mail.  He didn't call me back.

Did I accomplish anything at all?  Yes, I did.  The principal got the message, which he played for my son when he called him in.  Even if what the principal told him made no difference to him, at least he knows that I did my part.  And that is something -- for a child to know that a parent is on his side.   A response to injustice should go beyond a resigned "well, what can you do?"  See http://kallahmagazine.blogspot.com/2010/12/divrei-chaim-time-to-cry-out.html



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