Most of us survived our teen years with some regrettable / idiotic behavior. I’m certainly no exception to that. The viral video of the group of teenagers from a private Catholic school in Kentucky mocking Native American Nathan Phillips looks like a very powerful teachable moment to me for both the students involved and their parents.

When you’re caught red handed treating your fellow man poorly for no reason at all, there’s an opportunity here to send a message to the teens, their parents, and the rest of us.

As someone whose father was an educator and raised a daughter who is also an educator, I can tell you that one reason the public school systems are broken is because so many parents view their school district as having an obligation to babysit their children. Schools set a standard of behavior and if the line is crossed, they do frequently use suspension as a means to remove disruptive kids from school grounds. I’ve heard stories about how effective this is because parents’ lives are disrupted big-time if they have to leave work mid-day and come pick up their kid from school. Even worse if it’s a multiple day suspension and they have to make arrangements for watching their kid because the babysitting service has put them in a time out.

Politics and MAGA hats aside for a minute, the behavior was mean and disrespectful. It stopped short of being violent thankfully.

I’ve never been someone to be quick with an “off with their heads” verdict especially when it comes to teens. I was suspended once in high school for fighting. Had I been caught doing the other 99 things I shouldn’t have been doing, it would have been an even 100. Let’s face it, kids do dumb things.

There’s chatter on Twitter about expulsions. I actually think a couple of weeks off school on a severe suspension combined with community service would be more effective. The parents will have to deal with their worst nightmare — nobody to watch their kid during the day, and the kids will get some time to think about behavior modification.

Now back to politics not aside. It seems like there may be a pattern here. For the past two years when I see videos posted of racist rants at Walmart or in general, one group of people treating another group of people poorly, why are there always so many of these red hats in the pictures?