Why you get to do the things you do

On the first day of school, back in September 2005, Martha Cothren, a social studies school teacher at Robinson High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, did something unforgettable.
On the first day of school, with the permission of the school superintendent, the principal, and the building supervisor, she had all of the desks removed from her classroom.
When the first period kids entered the room, they discovered there were no desks.  Looking around, confused, they asked, “Ms. Cothren, where are our desks?”
She replied, “You can't have a desk until you tell me what you have done to earn the right to sit at a desk.”
They thought, “Well, maybe it's our grades.”
“No,” she said.
“Then maybe it's our behavior.”
She told them, “No, it's not even your behavior.”
They came and went, first period, second period, third period, still no desks.
By early afternoon, television news crews had started gathering in Ms. Cothren's classroom to report about a crazy teacher who had taken all the desks out of her room.
The final period of the day came and, as the puzzled students found seats on the floor of the deskless classroom, Martha Cothren said, “Throughout the day no one has been able to tell me just what he or she has done to earn the right to sit at the desks that are ordinarily found in this classroom.  Now I am going to tell you.”
At this point, sher opened the door of her classroom and twenty-seven US veterans, all in uniform, walked into the classroom, each one carrying a desk. The servicemen placed the school desks in rows, then stood against the wall. By the time the last soldier had set the final desk in place, those kids began to understand, perhaps for the first time in their lives, just how the right to sit at those desks had been earned.
Ms. Cothren said, “You didn't earn the right to sit at these desks. These heroes did it for you. They placed the desks here for you and now it's up to you to sit in them. It is your responsibility to learn, to be good students, to be good citizens. They paid the price so that you could have the freedom to get an education. Don't ever forget it.”

A little lesson, courtesy of my friend Doug Coe; checked at Snopes.