What is this World Coming To?

I was going to try to focus on fun topics for the next week or so leading up to the holidays, but recent news items are just begging for a rant. Actually not a rant, just an expression of dismay and perhaps a discussion about the absurdities of human nature, which is one of the reasons I write this blog. I think we all need to express our frustration with some of mankind or we might explode from trying to hold it all in.

One of the stories I read today was about a south Texas couple who put an aborted 7-month-old fetus in a gift box under a Christmas tree after they were unable to flush the remains down a toilet. The couple has been charged with abuse of a corpse and tampering with evidence. Police believe the woman used pills to induce an abortion last week, then called an ambulance after she began bleeding and told doctors she didn't know where the fetus was.

This is so absurd, I don't even know what to say. What were they thinking? Or were they even thinking?

A story I read yesterday also made me shake my head in disbelief. Apparently some parents in Detroit are so unhappy about the students there doing poorly on standardized tests that they want the teachers and administrators to go to jail.

That's right. Jail.

After release of a report showing fourth and eighth-grade students with the lowest math scores in the nation, Sharlonda Buckman of the Detroit Parent Network is reportedly pushing for prison time and civil lawsuits against teachers and officials in the school district who are not doing enough to educate the city's youth. She is reported to have said that someone needs to go to jail for this and it shouldn't be the kids.

I agree that educators need to be held accountable for their work, but this is a bit extreme, don't you think? Especially since the educator is only one third of a whole that makes for successful learning. The other two-thirds are parents and the student. And they all need to work together in harmony, not be setting up adversarial positions on something so vitally important as education.

And if any authority or court acts on this absurd request, I will really lose all hope in humanity.

What are your thoughts?