I love being around young people. In fact, I’ve spent almost 40 years as a teacher, principal, and superintendent working with children from pre-school to graduate school. But in spite of my great affection for their energy and the kind of optimism that only comes from being young, I wouldn’t want to be a teenager today given how complicated and convoluted our world has become. For example, when we “mature adults” were kids it was immediately clear who were the “good guys” and who were the “bad guys” (i.e., America good, communism bad; Guys in white hats good, cowboys in black hats bad).
Today’s kids face more temptations and confusing messages in a week than we did during our whole adolescence in the early 1960’s. Rap music (whose 15 minutes of fame surely must be almost over) regularly degrades women and consistently promotes physical confrontation, and it seems as if every television program from cartoons to sitcoms screams sex and violence with every sick joke or “R” rated image. By the end of high school, for example, the average student has watched 15,000 hours of television and has witnessed 18,000 violent television deaths. And today’s comedians have convinced our kids that it isn’t really humorous unless someone else is being made fun of. It is nothing short of a miracle our children are as well adjusted as they are, yes?
Is it any wonder that so many of our children have grown up believing that bullying and violence are the only real conflict resolution techniques available to them? Should we be surprised, based on what they see almost everywhere they look, that most kids believe they have no choice but to resort to violence by fighting when they perceive someone has “dis’d” them (translation: treated them disrespectfully)?
Add to that the misinterpretation by many of us “old folks” that fighting today is still harmless, more like the squabbles we remembered as kids. When I got into a fistfight with Bill Pepper my junior year of high school, we shook hands and double-dated that same night. But things are much different today. Unless you live in a cave you know that today’s fights have a much more sinister and more dangerous tone than ever before. In the school setting these fights may end up involving dozens of people on and off campus, and more often than not may require hours and hours of administrative and teacher time that could have been used to help children with math or reading.
I have come to believe that no fight is harmless, and I believe we can never allow our children to believe either with our silence or by our words that we condone violence of any kind. We must teach our kids how to solve problems with words not fists, with ideas not threats. If society cannot or will not teach our young people that fighting is not the solution to their problems, our grandchildren and their children will surely be destined to live in the future we have created.
We’ll talk again…
Larry
