Tampering with Public Records Messes with Private Lives

Today we'll be talking about the Pennsylvania mother who is in deep trouble for hacking into a school's computer system and changing grades. Ms. McNeal was a secretary at her daughter's school, and she'd stolen her coworker's password to alter student data. Not only did she raise her daughter's grades, she also reduced the grades of two other students in the class to balance the totals.

This mother was charged with 29 counts each of unlawful use of a computer and tampering with public records. Yet, does that even begin to cover the enormity of impact her actions had on those children? Their lives will probably never be the same. Granted, those two other kids are lucky the woman was found out and the school corrected the changes she made before they graduated, but what did this experience teach them? Even more importantly, what kind of message did her actions send to her daughter?

Isn't it a shame this mother didn't show her daughter she had enough confidence in her abilities to let her handle her responsibilities? Not only did she show her how to avoid work, she taught her how to get by at the expense of other innocent people. That is an even more tragic and insidious form of child abuse: this parenting style is guaranteed to produce an adult who lacks basic life skills. It's really too bad all they could charge her with was "tampering with public records"; she'd tampered with children's souls.

This kind of unhealthy competitiveness can sometimes cost society very dearly. We parents should really ask ourselves if it's our child's dreams we are trying to promote at any cost, or are we following our own selfish motives? That's how much potential harm one can cause when altering public records; they are just an reflection of what goes on inside our lives. Think about it.