Choosing Principals over Principles

There is a reason why, when we begin the task of instilling virtue in children, we begin with the story of George Washington and the cherry tree.

Accountability is the foundation of character.


There is not a wit of difference between the highest set of principles and the lowest, if there is accountability to neither. Both are just talk.

Because character is taught only by modeling;
character cannot be taught without role models.

If we want our children to grow to embrace honor
and courage and character,
someone has to show them what it looks like.

Someone has to model courage and accountability;

someone has to walk the talk.


Or children will learn only to talk the talk.



There is an abject lack of personal accountability in the leadership of the APS.
There is an abject lack of personal accountability in a growing number of students in the APS.


The relationship is causal, not coincidental.


If Paula Maes, the school board, and the superintendent, could defend there abdication as the senior role models for 90,000 students in the APS, they would.

They can't. Their position is completely indefensible.
They are reduced to stonewalling the question.

Stonewalling is the only defense of an indefensible position. There is no ethical defense for stonewalling.

They are enabled their stonewalling by Thomas J Lang and the Journal.

If Thomas J. Lang and the Journal reported to the community that, the leadership of the APS has excepted themselves from accountability to the student standard of conduct; if they reported the APS leadership's abdication as role models, the stonewalling would end.

Role modeling would be restored to the list of the obligations of leadership in the APS.


Shame on Thomas J. Lang, Kent Walz, and whomever else at the Journal is engaged in the cover up of the ethics and accountability scandal in the leadership of the APS.

Every student who graduates APS and has no idea what it means to be a good citizen, trustworthy, responsible, respectful, caring, and fair, can thank Paula Maes, Thomas J Lang, Kent Walz, and the Journal for their plight, and ours.

To educate in the mind, and not in morals,
is to create a menace to society. T Roosevelt

The stakes are not inconsequential.
And neither is the damage that is being done.