Lifestyles Ideas Management - Daughter fails math's exam, Dad gets jail

As a father to a young daughter, that headline in a recent article in Today caught my attention. Apparently a father in Ohio who has been ordered by a judge to keep a close eye on his daughter’s education has been jailed after she failed a mathematics examination. He was sentenced to 180 days in prison for “contribution to the delinquency of a minor.”

His daughter, now 18, had a history of school truancy (“You take her to school and she would go out the other door”) and a judge warned her father to make sure she passed her General Education Development tests. Her family said that she passed four of the five parts except for maths, which she has failed several times. The judge’s ruling seemed particularly harsh to the father because, even though he had sole custody of his daughter, she was living with her mother at the time.

”It was my wrong doing, not his. He should not have to go to jail for something I did,” said the daughter, who has an 18-month-old daughter. She described the ruling as “ridiculously wrong.”
The father is appealing and his daughter has promised to retake her tests. The judge has said that if she passes, her father could be freed early. Court officials said that the severity of punishment was rare and reserved for extreme cases where court orders were not met.

When I read the article, I agreed totally with what the daughter said, i.e. that the ruling was ridiculously wrong. What if, instead of appealing, the father willingly goes to prison until his daughter gets her math’s right? But that does not sound like a right thing to do.

I know of one Father who did just that and for an offence much worse than failing in mathematics. Written by Pastor Richard Lim.