Getting the Whole Story

Earlier today as I was listening to the radio, they were talking about the following story . The story is about a pilot (with 30 years flight experience) of a passenger plane who told the passengers that he was not qualified to land the plane because there was heavy fog in Paris, so he turned the plane and went back to the original destination. When the radio news person reported on the story, he said that the pilot told the passengers that he could not land the plane. The DJ's then began criticizing the pilot. Having had read about the story yesterday, I was frustrated that this pilot was being criticized when he did exactly what he was supposed to do. It was not that he could not land the plane due to lack of flying experience, but that he was flying a new plane and had not been trained to land it in adverse conditions. Why couldn't the news person explain the whole story? Surely he read the entire new release and not someone else's explanation of it.

That makes me think about how often we do the same. How often do we quickly judge a circumstance without getting the whole story? I know that I often do it with my students. If a student does not come to class or turn in his or her work, I assume that he or she just doesn't care about his or her school work. At times this is the case, other times there is more to the story. I am working on not being too quick to judge or make assumptions, but I'm also not the type of person who likes to pry into other people's problems.