Busted!!!!

From across the pond comes a stupid story rich with buried ethics treasures.

Eleven-year-old Holli McCann was sent home from a week long school trip to the Isle of Wight (where Paul McCartney started vacationing  when he turned 64) because she violated one of the rules of the trip: no chocolate. The Bromet (in Watford, Herts) Primary School’s headmistress, Yvonne Graves, discovered the infraction by surreptitiously reading a private letter that Holly had written to her mother. After perusing the incriminating missive,Graves ordered teachers to search Holli’s room, which they did with the diligence and thoroughness of the FBI looking for forensic evidence of a serial killing, even emptying her toiletry bag into the sink and pulling out the lining of her suitcase. It was all worthwhile, however, because they discovered the yummy but incriminating substance they sought.

After the smoking chocolate was discovered, the headmistress contacted Holly’s mother and told her to pick up her daughter immediately—she had been voted off the Isle. The mother begged  Graves to reconsider, but was refused. She had to borrow money to make the 160-mile trip to pick up her daughter.

What have we learned?

1. The “It’s a stupid rule” rationalization doesn’t wash here, as it usually doesn’t. The time to ask, as Holly’s poor (literally and figuratively) mom did after the fiasco, “What’s the matter with chocolate?” is before the trip, not after Holli’s Hershey binge had been discovered. The rules of the trip were stated in a timely fashion, and participating students agreed to obey those rules. Apparently the punishment for infractions was also made clear: “Good bye.” Yes, it’s  a stupid rule, but having agreed to abide by it, Holly has no ethical complaint against the school. She was the one responsible for her fate.

2. Reading Holly’s private correspondence with her mother was an unethical and indefensible breach of privacy. The fact that a rules infraction was discovered as a result cannot and does not retroactively justify such conduct. That argument is consequentialism, the unethical root of “the ends justify the means.”  Did the headmistress also perform full body cavity searches? What an awful place go to school.

3. Yes, the school was within its rights to send Holli home, and grievously inconvenience her mother. Nonetheless, this ignores the ethical principle of proportion, one of the elements of fairness. OK, enforce your stupid rule, Ms. Graves, but must you maximize the harm in the process? Something short of banishment would have been more kind, compassionate, reasonable, fair and responsible.

4. British private schools are capable of at least as much “no-tolerance” nonsense as American public schools, with the added feature that they are willing to abuse children over not guns, but chocolate.

Does that make you feel better?

Not me.

(And I would like to accept my kudos now for avoiding making the obvious pun this story invites. It took all the self-control I possess.)

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Pointer: Fark

Facts: Opposing Views (which needs an editor. “Isle of White”????)