Wells resident Julie Seedorf’s column appears every Monday. Send email to her at hermionyvidaliabooks@gmail.com.

This past month the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that a student had no intent to violate school policy when accidentally carrying a pocket knife to school. This ruling happened in my school district, and will change the way incidents are handled in the school district.

I am not here to debate the rights and wrongs of this particular incident or to make judgements about it. I want to address our attitudes the past few years surrounding what happened, and some of the thought processes many of us older people had during this incident.

One of the comments that was bandied by people my age and older was this: “We had guns in school. We sometime put our guns in our lockers because we were going hunting after school.” And — “I always carried a pocket knife to school.” I, myself, probably at one time or another had a pocket knife in my purse and didn’t think anything of it. Of course this was in the ’60s. We have to move forward from our ’60s attitudes because the world has changed when it comes to weapons and safety in schools.

We as kids did not feel unsafe with those guns and knives in the school because the landscape was different than the scenario today. Violence such as school shootings and other situations did not happen. Schools for the most part were safe zones, except for possibly getting disciplined by the school system. I don’t know what happened in larger schools, but I do know that was what played out in the the school system in our small town.

We also must remember in the ’50s and ’60s discipline was very different in our schools. Teachers could discipline the children and occasionally that discipline came with a swat or an order to “bend over and grab your knees” before the paddle came out. It wasn’t unusual for a ruler to be swatted over the knuckles in our grade school. I can see our principal in high school grabbing a kid from the stairs and pushing him into the office roughly, and then listening from history class across the hall, to the tirade about the kids behavior.

Behavior that is now tolerated in schools was not tolerated back in the ’50s and ’60s. Was the way punishment doled out right? I don’t know, but I know it deterred many from misbehaving. Discipline today and the way we deal with our children is kinder, softer and less aggressive. At times I do wonder if the kinder, softer approach has made our children more aggressive.

Parents back in the days when I was in school supported the school system, and if you were in trouble in school, you were in trouble at home. Mom and dad were not going to save you.

Teachers today no longer are able to discipline the way we were disciplined. They have to put up with behaviors and attitudes that impede their teaching ability. Many parents no longer support the teachers and school system when it comes to discipline of their children. We, too, grew up with the words “kids will be kids,” and that was taken under consideration, but we also knew there were consequences to our actions. We knew how far the “kids will be kids” statement would go when it came to those consequences.

Good kids versus bad kids has always been in question. My fear on things being handled on a case by case basis in schools today, because of the Supreme Court ruling is the fact, like it or not, kids with known problems may be treated differently than the perceived “good kid” because of their record and their heritage. Same incident, different outcome.

From my own experience a couple of things happened that changed my perception of this favoritism. First I want to say that I don’t like the terms I used above, good versus bad when it comes to kids. All kids make bad choices at some point in their life. I don’t believe there are bad kids, just kids who for some reason haven’t had a good start or a chance in life, or they make bad choices and can’t get out of them by themselves, and we as a society label and feed those choices because we believe they can’t be helped, or can’t change — or we are too scared to become part of the solution.

Years back, I and a high school principal and counselor in another community where I lived were chaperoning a dance and checking in kids to the dance. The principal warned we should be looking for alcohol. We were checking in some “good” kids at our table, and we smelled alcohol. A group I had talked into coming that had a lot of trouble with alcohol in the past were standing behind the “good” kids. We pulled that group aside and talked to them. We let the good, never been in trouble kids, go on in. We made a mistake and when all broke loose later in the evening, it was those good kids, and we missed the signs because we were judging. I learned a big lesson that night and that is to look beyond past behavior. Those “good” kids made a bad choice that night.

We need to move on to the year 2016 and leave what we did in the past in our schools go. My generation has to move forward and support today’s rules. It is no longer the ’50s and ’60s. Telling the new generation what happened then does not solve what is happening now. As I write this column there was another school shooting in Texas. School has just started.

People my age have to help the parents today in the world we are living in cope with the way things are playing out in our homes and schools. We have to accept maybe the old way wasn’t the best and quit judging happenings today by our old standards, whether we agree with the new way or not. We all need to be in this together to go forward.

I had great kids but those great kids made mistakes. They made bad choices sometimes, and as a parent I had to recognize that my kids weren’t perfect, and they had to accept responsibility for those mistakes. As a parent that is your job to recognize that and love them no matter what.

As for all school children this year, I pray every morning they will be safe. Support your schools, support your teachers and let them help raise a great generation who know how to be responsible and make good choices for their lives.