2 I had found the article while looking for Scarlet Letter readiness resources.
3 I should preface this with telling you that when I was in high school back when water was invented, I hated The Scarlet Letter.
4 After having read the first 75 pages I felt that my teacher should have worn a scarlet letter "A" for "Abuse".
5 Seriously. I started taking rides to the Golden Gate Bridge and thought about jumping, but I realized that I would get bay smell in my hair, which at one time was an legitimate worry.
6 I just thought it would be cool to get away from the book and do a nice swan dive.
7 Then I remembered it's a reasonable good bet that you would hit the water like a pavement. Decided against it.
8 I thought about getting a whole bunch of my friends together and walking around my teacher's house with torches and yelling, "Burn the witch!"
9 I had NO idea why we had to read that book. I thought it was beyond boring. I thought it was agonizing.
10 Of course, that's from the perspective of a teenage boy who was more interested in playing basketball after school, going out with my friends, and doing everything I could to have fun. The Scarlet Letter just didn't fit into the scenario.
11 Horrid.
12 I think now that I wanted more than anything not to have to do any homework when I got home from school, and that The Scarlet Letter became my sworn enemy. I hated Dimmsdale, I hated Chillingworth, and I particularly hated Pearl.
Pearl Prynne.
13 Why did they TALK so weird anyway?
14 And why did Hawthorne write the damn thing? He's a MAN, isn't he?
15 Yeesh.
16 So the irony is that as a teacher of English 3, I HAVE to teach either that, or The Great Gatsby, which I ALSO thought was child abuse.
17 WAY too symbolic. And I couldnt care less about people in the Jazz Age back then anyway.
18 As you can see, I was pretty deep.
19 Basketball. Gatsby. Basketball. Gatsby. Basketball. Basketball.
20 That just kills me. I was the proverbial reluctant schoolboy.
21 What's funny is that now I like both those stories.
22 But it requires a bit of a spoon feed, because I'm in front of a group that has guys in the class who are exactly like I was. Telling them that doesn't help. Karma rears its lovely head.
23 And that's how I came upon the article about the judge. Like some guy was convicted of running a fake fundraiser, and was found guilty. The judge made the guy where a sandwich board through the village square. It said on it, "I AM A CONVICTED THIEF."
24 Ah, public humiliation!
25 Another guy had beaten his wife, and the wife was absolutely mortified when people found out. The man couldn't care less--until the judge forced the man to spend time in jail AND publicly to apologize to his wife. The guy hated it.
26 Some shoplifter had to pace around in front of the store he robbed, wearing an advertisement. The article went on to say
"Mothers brought their children to see the pacing criminal as an example. And the offender himself, who has since moved to another state, wrote the judge to say the shaming, in the long run, was the best thing that ever happened to him."
27 I was astounded because that was just ten or twelve years ago. I'm surprised that judge didn't put people in stocks.
28 Naturally the students enjoyed reading about this. Some felt it was a great idea. Others said what I would instantly have felt: some guys nowadays would be proud of doing idiotic things.
29 I told my students that I was thinking of putting some stocks in the classroom for minor offenses. I thought it'd be great for the guy coming in late from lunch to have to get in front of the room and have his head, arms and legs sticking through some pieholes.
30 I say we should bring back dunce caps.
37 Nah.
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