If you are the Generals from Chesapeake, Virginia, your kid not only gets punished for coming home with a bad report card, but his punishment makes front-page news.
It’s hard not to end up in the paper when you have your 15-year-old standing near a busy intersection wearing a chest-to-trunk poster board displaying his bad grades for hours on end.
According to reports, Trenton O’Neal’s parents were fed up with their teen’s lack of effort in school and decided to publicly humiliate him.
“He hadn’t been trying at all,” the boy’s dad, Rev. Donald General Jr., pastor of Perfecting Saints Church of God in Christ in Virginia Beach told local news reporters. “He’s not even handing in work he does when we supervise him. My wife and I are not going to give up on Tre.”
To that end, the Western Branch High School freshman was made to stand in public wearing a sandwich board featuring his grades and message that read: “My Future = Shaky!”
The teen’s parents say there is no excuse for their son’s lousy grades. What’s more, they claim the boy is wasting away his educational opportunities, and is an embarrassment considering both Generals have several academic degrees.
One mother who drove by Trenton during his 6-hour punishment applauded his parent’s resolve.
“These kids need to take their grades more seriously,” the mom of one of Trenton’s classmates told reporters. “This has a serious impact and should make other kids think, ‘Wow, I don’t want my mama doing that.'”
So, what do you make of this type of “punishment?” Do you feel that the boy’s parents were right to have him display his poor grades in the manner they did? I’m not sure embarrassing a child in such a way will suddenly make him a top-notch student. But, I could be wrong. What do you think?
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