Here’s a link to a story about Louisiana requiring that all electronic teacher-student communications be documented. This reminds me of an earlier story out of Britain where parents were kept outside of a playground, away from their own children, because some of them might be pedophiles. Some teachers have inappropriate relations with students. In fact, much of the time that Teachers Make The News is when they are caught in inappropriate relations. Therefore it must be going on all the time. And some parents do abuse their children. And most adults who abuse children are parents at some point in their lives. So parents are suspect and must be monitored.

Should we ban new mothers from unsupervised contact with their newborns? Infanticide(killing a child who is under 1 year old) is committed at a higher rate by mothers than fathers. So, following the logic displayed above…

“Parents Raise Child To Become Productive Adult” never makes it to the headlines. “Teacher Helps Students Master Curriculum” – same deal. News falls into a few broad categories:

1 ) Big things that will affect us even if commonplace (government programs, taxes, legislated social change, etc)
2) Unusual things that are counter to a good social order (mothers leaving children in hot cars, priests doing things they shouldn’t, etc)
3) Updates on things of common interest (weather, sports, entertainment)
4) Disasters
5) Helpful Hints (computer updates, car maintenance, cooking tips)
6) Today’s Feel Good Moment (Easter Egg hunts, puppies bringing smiles to shut-ins)

I think we usually do a good job of keeping categories 1 and 3-6 in their proper mental places. But we are prone to overgeneralizing, and that can cause us to place category 2 items into category 1. Daniel Gilbert spends a little time on this in Stumbling On Happiness – my short review here.

A bit too much of that and we end up treating everyone as a potential criminal. Of course, I’ve only cited two examples myself, and only one of those was from America.