When encouragement, support, and the usual punishments don't work for parents who want to see their children take school seriously, what are their options?

One Oklahoma mother chose to motivate her wayward fourteen-year-old daughter by subjecting her to some good old-fashioned shaming:

EDMOND, Okla.--Tasha Henderson got tired of her 14-year-old daughter's poor grades, her chronic lateness to class and her talking back to her teachers, so she decided to teach the girl a lesson.

She made Coretha stand at a busy Oklahoma City intersection Nov. 4 with a cardboard sign that read: "I don't do my homework and I act up in school, so my parents are preparing me for my future. Will work for food."

"This may not work. I'm not a professional," said Henderson, a 34-year-old mother of three. "But I felt I owed it to my child to at least try."

Questions that come to mind: When--if ever--is public humiliation an acceptable parenting technique? How effective is humiliation as a motivator in a case like this? It's clearly a deterrent--Coretha isn't going to want to wind up back on that street corner--but it can't in itself make Coretha care about learning or about preparing for her future. Does this matter? Finally, what's next? What will Mrs. Henderson do if Coretha, whose "turnaround" has been brief and whose motivation might well prove short-lived, returns to her old ways?

Actually, I think we should have more public humiliation. The more the better. For some people, being shamed seems to be the only way they actually respond. Very often when fines, punishments, jail, don't work, this does. For kids, it has the added power that kids lose out on the coolness factor. You may as well ask a kid to put toothpicks in their toenails rather than do something like what the article describes. Shame them a few times, and odds are whatever the problem is will diminish because they know their friends will see them, and we all know what peer pressure can do.

Public humiliation is great and it works wonders. When we were kids, my older sister took something from the local FedMart (I was too young at the time to know what was going on). When my mom found out, she marched my sister right back in and made her explain to the manager what she'd done, and made her give it back (was a lib balm or something small). All I remember was her crying like crazy, begging to not have to do it, but my mom made her.

She never stole anything again. At least, not as far as I know. :)

Unless of course you get the kind of person that could care less and acts like an idiot in public all the time anyway.

While I sympathize and I think this is pretty funny, it's pretty pathetic parenting.

You can't make up for years of spoiling your kids with a stunt.

It would have been funnier and more real had mom stood next to daughter with a sign that said, "Can't parent for s***."

I was going to post some suggestions about handling this more effectively, but the truth is that nothing works with people for whom nothing works. Still, I can't resist a parting shot...

How about this? Mom gets fined $500 for every less than B her daughter gets from now on and $100 for every class daughter skips. Who knows, Mom might finally find her Inner Competent.

I actually don't see evidence that the kid has been spoiled. She already had lost privileges and that didn't straighten her out. Perfect parenting does not equal perfect child. I see a mother who cares about her daughter and is trying her best to get her to shape up. She did stand with her daughter on that street corner, after all. Lots of parents can't be bothered.

I don't see anything wrong with public shaming.

But I'm even more confused by this comment: "but [public humiliation] can't in itself make her care about learning or about preparing for her future."

How bizarre a point to make. So what? For as long as there have been teenagers, there have been teenagers who didn't care about learning or preparing for the future. That's why the parents MADE THEM STUDY. Duh. If they cared all by themselves, there'd be no need for the "FIRST you do the homework, then you can watch TV" or "if you don't have a B average, you can't date" or "if you don't get your grades up, you can't play sports." Consequences work.

Of course this doesn't make them care. The issue is to make them learn ANYWAY, even if they don't care, and do it long enough and widely enough that maybe they'll find something they like to learn, or at the very least, they'll be literate enough to hold down a job until they do want to learn.