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Teachers, Garbage men... The DA and judges in Atlanta love to throw low level employees in jail for doing their jobs. Maybe they are too dumb to realise that th

Teachers, Garbage men... The DA and judges in Atlanta love to throw low level employees in jail for doing their jobs. Maybe they are too dumb to realise that these employees more or less do what they are told. No one below the district level should have been on trial for this. I agree with you to hold the actual loan officer liable is dumb. They were following directions. [1] http://fox17online.com/2015/03/09/garbage-man-to-spend-30-days-in-jail-for-picking-up-trash-too-early/ http://fox17online.com/2015/03/09/garbage-man-to-spend-30-da...

kjs3 12y ago
So knowingly cheating in order to get a bigger bonus for themselves isn't criminal because they were told to do it? Pretty screwed up world you live in from an ethics perspective, but then I've heard all sorts of "they might be crooks but they shouldn't be held accountable for it or anything" sophistry around this case.
- Lawtonfogle 12y ago
  Being told by an authority results in people going against their morals for the majority of people. Look up the Milgram experiment.
  - eli_gottlieb 12y ago
    >Being told by an authority results in people going against their morals for the majority of people. I think it's somewhat simpler: for a lot of people, obeying authority is their morality.
- wehadfun 12y ago
  1. Cheating on some childrens exam should not even be a criminal offence. If people went to jail for fluffing up their progress we would all be in jail. 2. Disobeying your boss is usually not a good career move. This is not an ethics issue this is a "do you want to pay rent this month" issue. 3. Why not quit? A software engineer in the valley could go downstairs and work for another software company, a teacher would have to relocate to find another employer because the local district controls 95% of the local teaching jobs.
  - kjs3 12y ago
    1) It wasn't a "some" children, it was hundreds. It wasn't "fluffing", it was done to extract bigger bonuses they were not entitled to. Theft is a criminal offense. 2) They had a teachers union to protect them; they could not be summarily fired without due process. And if you don't see "I'll do anything to pay the rent", even if that was the case here, as "not an ethics issue", I suggest you learn something about ethics. 3) There are, what, a dozen distinct school districts in the metro Atlanta area. So, yet another specious argument. I get that some people want to paint this as a "poor put upon teachers at the mercy of evil administrator". It's an even more compelling narrative for the defense now that the head evil administrator is dead and can't be called into court. But what the trail showed was this was a bunch of teachers who got together as a group and said "We'll get a bigger bonus if we fake these test scores. If that hurts kids so be it and management has our backs".

kjs3 12y ago

So knowingly cheating in order to get a bigger bonus for themselves isn't criminal because they were told to do it? Pretty screwed up world you live in from an ethics perspective, but then I've heard all sorts of "they might be crooks but they shouldn't be held accountable for it or anything" sophistry around this case.

Lawtonfogle 12y ago
Being told by an authority results in people going against their morals for the majority of people. Look up the Milgram experiment.
- eli_gottlieb 12y ago
  >Being told by an authority results in people going against their morals for the majority of people. I think it's somewhat simpler: for a lot of people, obeying authority is their morality.
wehadfun 12y ago
1. Cheating on some childrens exam should not even be a criminal offence. If people went to jail for fluffing up their progress we would all be in jail. 2. Disobeying your boss is usually not a good career move. This is not an ethics issue this is a "do you want to pay rent this month" issue. 3. Why not quit? A software engineer in the valley could go downstairs and work for another software company, a teacher would have to relocate to find another employer because the local district controls 95% of the local teaching jobs.
- kjs3 12y ago
  1) It wasn't a "some" children, it was hundreds. It wasn't "fluffing", it was done to extract bigger bonuses they were not entitled to. Theft is a criminal offense. 2) They had a teachers union to protect them; they could not be summarily fired without due process. And if you don't see "I'll do anything to pay the rent", even if that was the case here, as "not an ethics issue", I suggest you learn something about ethics. 3) There are, what, a dozen distinct school districts in the metro Atlanta area. So, yet another specious argument. I get that some people want to paint this as a "poor put upon teachers at the mercy of evil administrator". It's an even more compelling narrative for the defense now that the head evil administrator is dead and can't be called into court. But what the trail showed was this was a bunch of teachers who got together as a group and said "We'll get a bigger bonus if we fake these test scores. If that hurts kids so be it and management has our backs".