America is a great place to live.... for now!!!

I didn't go to school today because I needed to un-wind a little bit. On Tuesday, after a wonderful, relaxing Labor Day week-end I headed to my favorite continuation high school or academy if you will. As I approached the school I saw this student walking toward the school entrance, wearing the largest and longest white tee-shirt ever made (exaggeration). I thought to myself, where is he going? He was suspended last week and shouldn't be here, not to mention wearing that big white shirt! I was out of the car and at the entrance gate. I reminded the campus guards that this student should have been suspended and should not be allowed onto the campus. After calling his mother and flipping me the bird or should I say the birds, since he used both hands, and ranting and raving all out into the street, he left the campus with his mother.
Whenever I have an issue with one of the students, the principal will ask me to sit in on the parent conference. We have an unwritten agreement that if the students doesn't satisfy me that they understand that there behavior was unacceptable, they don't get a chance to come back into my lab or maybe the school. The mom and the student comes into the lab for the parent conference. As it turns out, this student had had an altercation with the English teacher on another day. He had been given a three day suspension, which he never served. The parent needed an interpreter so we had to wait for the principal to go out an find an interpreter. With the interpreter in place, I explained that for her son to be allowed back into the lab he needed to understand that his behavior was unacceptable and would not be tolerated. The mother's response, through the interpreter, was that her son didn't even know that he was suspended and he shouldn't have to apologize because he didn't get a written notice of his suspension and he had done nothing wrong.
The English teacher explained that the student had spat into the trash can in her classroom. When she admonished the student about the unsanitary practice. His response was "at least I didn't spit on the floor". After much back and forth between the teacher and the students, the teacher suspended the student for 3 days. The mother's response, via interpreter, "If he had asked to go outside, would you have let him; my daughter asked to go to the bathroom and the teacher didn't let her"

As I sat and listened to this non-English speaking, indignent mother, defending her, out of control, son over and over. I tried to imagine a parent from the USA in another country, not speaking the language, in a similiar situation being as indignant as this mother and getting away with it. Oh! I didn't mention that the mother had, via the interpreter, told the principal that he should stop talking and let her talk. I was just dumbfounded. This to me was about much more than a misbehaving student. The fact that we have been so liberal and nice and kind and afraid to be accused of racism, that we have created a situation that requires the principal to provide an interpreter for a "non-english speaker" to tell him to shut up and let her talk.