How this ended up on MTS, I don't know.

[conuly]

O NOES! ITS STUPID! SHE SAVED LIVES!

Here's the thing. Unless her school has a rule that states "discipline for breaking school rules shall be suspended (no pun) if, while breaking the rules, the student does something moderately heroic" the fact is they really have no choice but to punish her for skipping school.

Because she was, in fact, skipping school.

Unless her school is set up very oddly, I imagine that the only way to go home before the end of the day is to go to the office and tell them you're sick, and then wait for a parent to either pick you up or tell them to send you home. And she didn't do that. Which means she was skipping school and, yeah, breaking the rules.

And she says she was sick, but I said that all the time. And half the time I just either came home anyway or else never left home to begin with. I didn't "skip school to come home", I did it so I wouldn't have to go to school. I had no real desire to do anything, so I defaulted to going home and watching TV, or reading, or playing video games. (This all assumes she really did intend to go home, of course - she may have meant to just stop at home and pick something up before going out again, or to take the bus near to home and then do something else. Or maybe she was really sick, I don't know.)

"But she did something heroic!"

Yeah, through coincidence. And despite what everybody over there is claiming, she didn't really "choose" to be a hero. She kinda had that choice thrust upon her, as the other choice was "sit here and get seriously injured or killed, along with the driver and all the little kids". Not much of a choice.

"But don't they cancel out????"

No, they don't. They're two unrelated things. "Sure, he robbed a bank - but he gave some of the money to charity!" It doesn't really work that way, or at least, it shouldn't.

Okay, if she'd skipped school for the specific purpose of committing the heroic deed... maybe. "Yeah, he robbed a bank - but he only did it because it was the only way he'd be able to ransom his wife from the nefarious evildoers, and all the rest of the money went to the poor!"

Or if you said the policy was wrong, that the punishment was too much for the crime, okay. But I really fail to see how a day of Saturday detention is really that arduous. I mean, it might be, but... really? It's probably not.

Comments

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

It's a matter of the severity of her infraction vs. the value of the good deed she did. Skipping school is a rather minor infraction, unless she has a pattern of doing it. You compare it to robbing a bank, but the analogy doesn't work IMO because robbing a bank is a serious violent felony. Skipping school is a nonviolent victimless breach in protocol. They could have let this one go without any risk of demolishing people's respect for the law.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

I should add that i see this as a case for exploring the distinction between consequentialist and deontological ethics. The deontological approach worries me because of how easily it devolves into moral absolutism, and how well it supports authoritarianism. In contrast the consequentialist approach lets us consider a situation from numerous different ethical perspectives at once - there is less risk of becoming slaves to the rules.

[conuly]

But the problem with that argument is that if she'd been on a totally uneventful bus ride, she would have gotten the detention. That's not fair.

[siderea]

Fairness and justice are more often opposed than is widely realized.

If the application of punishment for skipping school is discretionary -- as it may well be -- dispensing with it in this case as an explicit reward for her heroism might be the wiser choice.

[conuly]

I can see that argument, if you say it sensibly like now. I guess I just got my dander up a lot because the mirror argument (not doing so is stupid) is so... not right.

[siderea]

I can see it both ways, too. Another potential solution is that she is both punished and rewarded, though that's tricky to handle successfully.

We don't know a lot of circumstances which I expect go into this sort of decision, like, is this the first offense or has she had a lengthy problem with skipping class? How plausible is her excuse for not calling in sick? How sick was she? How rigid is the school being and how rigid are they supposed to be (and according to whom)?

[conuly]

All right, all right, I'm convinced now :)

To be totally honest, I was more upset over the fact that it was in mock-the-stupid than baffled that my opinion wasn't the only one. Because I don't think this is really, y'know, a mockworthy story.