This is the punishment that a 6 year old boy in Oregon received for being late after his mother's car wouldn't start.

Wow. Apparently the only time Reddit stops mocking people who say "Won't anybody think of the children?", is when you decide to go full "mob with pitchforks" thinking about the children.

This kid was put behind a SCREEN AT LUNCH which, as a punishment, is NOTHING. The arguments (and insults, there are a LOT of insults) being made here to tar and feather this school and teacher are as bad as they are numerous, but I do want to touch on two of the main themes here in the hope that some of you will stop confusing feeling sorry for a kid with good judgment.

FIRST "Socially isolating a child from his peer group is humiliating and abusive. It is bullying behavior that hurts the child and will probably hinder his development."

Seriously? By this standard it's hard to imagine [i]any[/i] punishment that would not count as child abuse. Take the most commonly recommended and employed form of punishment presently used by parents and teachers: time-out. The very act of putting a child in time-out (or in the corner or in detention) is constituted by isolating a child from their peer group! (And it's almost always done with full knowledge of their peer group.) How is that not hurtful and abusive behavior?

And to hear how some have raged over the fact that this punishment took place during lunch and therefore cut into his time with his friends, you would think the idiots so enraged forgot during the time spent forming that thought that this was supposed to be a punishment. It's SUPPOSED to be unpleasant.

The standard implicit in all the rage and fury in this comment section seems to be that any punishment that is unpleasant is excessive punishment, and would rule-out even punishments as seemingly innocuous as time-out. This isn't an argument against this child's punishment, it's an argument against punishment PERIOD.

SECOND. "It wasn't this kids fault! His parent's car keeps breaking down, so he can't always make it to school on time, should he be punished for that!?"

I understand the point here, but this argument completely neglects the practical necessity for rules. You know what? Parents lie. Grandparents do too. Do you really want to give every parent veto power when decided whether rules are going to be enforced in the school system? Is it just tardiness or does in extend to missed homework and bad test scores?

In addition, one of the reasons rules are set up in the first place is to ensure that one standard is being applied to everybody. Do you really want the same principal you are all convinced is an awful, stupid person to begin using her personal judgment on a case-by-case basis instead of having a set of rules that everybody knows and everybody is expected to follow? When other children complain of a double-standard, that they feel in their case too it is okay to be chronically tardy, do we let it slide for all of them as well, or do we have the Reddit mob tell them to go 'eff themselves?

Long-story short, this kid has been chronically tardy and was innocuously punished in a way that is practically indistinguishable from being put in time-out. Reddit should stop saying "who will think of the children!?" because you do it more than anyone else.

/r/pics Thread Link - i.imgur.com