What would be nice though would be an acknowledgement that what you said could be read as offensive.
I do not understand why Kat was upset by dw's comment:
I had 2-3 teachers in high school who gave a rat's ass about me or about education. The rest were too busy getting drunk or writing out detention slips or planning on their retirement to teach.
I do not see any "lumping of PS teachers" in his posts. They seem to me to be quite specific to his own experience. His anxiety that Annabel might experience something similar seems reasonable for him as her parent, and his resolve to see that her school experience is better than his own seems laudable.
But seeing that Kat found that post offensive, it becomes apparent that I should apologize for my comment:
Doctors treat diseases. Nurses treat people.
which was much more general, flippant, and dismissive.
I apologize to any who were offended by that remark. I am sorry to have implied that doctors do not treat people, or that they might not care about them as much as nurses do, or that nurses don't do more than deal with people. They do.
dcp, instead of fueling the issue with sarcasm, it might be more productive to state your opinion forthrightly. If you disagree that posters don't need to apologize for an unintended offenses (which is what I assume is the point of your post), could you explain why you think so?
To me, this very clearly says that public school sucks. Here, you are saying that Annabel is going to receive a substandard education because she will be in a public school.
Then let me rephrase:
I am OK with Annabel going to public school, but I'm afraid she'll never get pushed and prodded by her teachers and peers to be the intellectual superstar we all know she's going to be. It WAS very easy FOR ME to just put on the cruise control and float through primary/secondary school without reading a book or studying, esp. if the school's purpose is less about educating and more about self-preservation and order-keeping. Then I hit college and had no study habits.
I apologize for any anger and confusion the original wording caused. It was not clearly expressed as my experience and my experience alone.
I don't know what to say right now. This board has meant a lot to me for several years now, and I have a lot of friendships here I'd hate to lose.
But I just can't be here as things stand, so I'm leaving. My email is good, and I'll probably post on LJ.
Thank you for the clarification. I've taken my issue to bureau at this link [link] since I'm actually more bothered by a pattern of behavior that is disruptive to the community.
No, that wasn't sarcasm. That was sincerity. I do not understand why Kat was offended, but I recognize that she is. I do not maintain that posters don't need to apologize for an unintended offense. I recognized that my comment might easily have been found offensive. So I apologized.
No, that wasn't sarcasm. That was sincerity
I'm sorry I read that wrong. (Just a tad sensitive right now.)
Wow. I'm not sure what to say. I feel I shouldn't ignore what happened last night, but I also feel like we need to move on.
So, this morning I'm offering somber timelies. I'm really sad to see Susan go, but I understand why she felt she needed to.
ION, I can't believe Thanksgiving is next week. I can't believe this week is almost over. I made it! Well, assuming that I make it through today, which it seems I will. Yay! Take that, asthma!
Temperatures have dropped 60 degrees here in 60 hours. I'm still trying to thaw out over a cup of tea.
You'll make it through today, vw, so YAY!
We've already got our plans for Thanksgiving (made with relatively little pain) and the dog sitter is all lined up so I don't have to worry about that.
