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This Mom Is Making Her Son Wear a Sign with His Terrible GPA on It

A Florida mother is taking a Scarlet Letter approach to her child's education. Is there any chance it will work?


Ronda Holder is so disappointed with her son's poor academic performance that she's resorted to shaming the 15-year-old on the streets of their Tampa Bay, Florida, neighborhood. Holder said the last straw was when her son, James Mond III, failed even his P.E. class. That's when she made a sign detailing Mond's abysmal grade point average—1.22—and forced the boy to walk up and down a busy street corner for hours on end.

Neither Holder nor her husband graduated high school, but she says she wants better education for her son, who she says seems to have no interest in academic achievement. "You take the phone. You take things from them—it don't work," she said. "So embarrassing is the best thing. He don't like to get embarrassed."


Local psychologist Stacey Scheckner told Tampa Bay's Fox 13 that Holder's embarrassing punishment isn't healthy for Mond, but Holder says her son is going to have to walk the streets wearing the sign every day until his grades improve. The end result, she hopes, will be a son who won't ever have to walk the streets again: "I don't want any of my kids to stand by the side of the road asking for change."


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