“Is it right to join a gang?
Is it right to kill a man?
Is it right to buy a gun?
Is stabbing people fun?
It’s wrong!
This is a song about right and wrong,
And those things are wrong!
Is it right to sit up straight?
Is it right to clean your plate?
Is it right to clean your room;
Learn facts about the moon?
It’s right!
This is a song about wrong and right,
And those things are right!”
From the Adam and Joe song, “Right and
Wrong”
Do you know the difference between right
and wrong? If you think that you do,
then how did you learn? Did you learn
from experience? Did you learn at
school? Did your parents teach you?
Mostly we learn what society calls right
and wrong by being punished when we do something wrong, and praised when
we do something right. If you steal your
classmate’s toy at nursery then the teacher will tell you off. If you say sorry then the teacher will
probably show happiness.
But what if your parents never tell you
off? What if you can always get
everything that you want, and are never punished for breaking society’s rules?
Umm... you become American president?
But this is not a point about Donald
Trump. I wanted to write about a young
man from a rich family who got into trouble, and used an interesting legal
defence to excuse his actions. When
Ethan Couch was 16 years old, he drove a car well above the speed limit, lost
control and killed 4 people. His blood
tests showed that he was drunk and had taken illegal drugs.
At his trial for manslaughter, his
lawyer argued that he suffered from “affluenza”. This is a combination of the words
“affluence”, meaning wealth, and “influenza”, a disease. The lawyer argued that Couch could not be
held responsible for his actions because his life of extreme wealth had
left him unable to tell the difference between right and wrong. According to the lawyer, being rich was like
an illness for Couch, damaging his moral sense.
Couch certainly seems to have had an
unusual upbringing. According to
Wikipedia, Couch used to drive to school when he was just 13. When the head-teacher complained about this
to Couch’s parents, Couch’s father threatened to buy the school if the
head-teacher kept complaining. That’s
hardly strong parenting.
But don’t we learn right and wrong from
more sources than just our parents? And
judges rarely show leniency to poor people because they have had a tough
upbringing. Can they really be lenient
towards rich people because they have had such an easy upbringing?
The judge did not initially sent Ethan
Couch to prison. He put him on probation
for ten years, which meant that he could stay out of prison as long as he
stayed out of further trouble. But one
of the conditions of Couch’s probation was that he had to avoid drinking
alcohol. And he was caught on camera
drinking at a party, and eventually sent to jail for two years. He has just been released from prison this
week.
I hope that somebody played him the song
“Right and Wrong” by Adam and Joe when he was in prison. It has some good tips about what is right and
what is wrong. And I hope he stays out
of trouble in the future and leads a good life.
Vocabulary:
to stab someone – to push a knife or other
pointed weapon into someone to wound them
to praise (passive, to be praised) – to
show approval
to tell someone off – to scold someone; to
criticise someone for doing something wrong
manslaughter – the crime of killing someone
in a way that is less serious than murder
to be held responsible for something – to
be blamed for something
an upbringing – the treatment a child
receives from its parents throughout its childhood
leniency – a lack of strictness; having
more forgiveness than expected
probation – the release of a criminal as
long as he or she shows good behaviour
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