Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Re: GUNS and stuff

[Paul Anderson <hacker@geeky1.ebtech.net>]

On Wed, 15 Mar 2000, David Buchner wrote:

> Perhaps you
> could elaborate on what you mean by "child culture." I think I have some
> sense of what you're getting at, but it's only a sense...
>
Schools do not teach proper behaviour, and since schools are often used as
foster parents, the children are allowed to develop their own culture
without proper instruction on correct behaviour.  This child culture
emphasizes drinking, drugs, poor grades, rude behaviour, etc. as ideals.
If these traits are not valued by a student, [he|she] is unrelentingly
attacked by the other students.  If one is even the slightest bit
different, they are tortured on a continuous basis in this child culture.

Teachers, today, are incapable of controlling this mess.  Because of their
legislative impotence on the matter, the children come to regard them as a
joke, leading to a general disrespect for any matter of authority
whatsoever.  Children that undergo this torture usually suffer severe
emotional damage, when combined with the stress of homework(some students
have 7 hours of homework a night!) and parents who are unwilling to help
in finding a remedy to the solution, the children can go nuts out of
desperation.  That is what happened with the Columbine shootings.  Many
have blamed violant TV programs and computer games(like Doom and Quake)
for these problems, but they are not the cause, they are a symptom.  The
child is often using these games as an outlet to try to cope with the
torture they must endure daily at the hands of their peers.

The primary difference between youths today and previously, with regards
intelligence, is that firstly, teachers had real authority and could
prevent this child culture from developing.  Secondly, children where
often encouraged to look into their interests more - they had to, no
television back then so all you could was either read or do something
creative.  Today, we have teletubbies and pokemon taking the place of Mark
Twain and Popular Mechanics. 



---
Paul Anderson
paul@geeky1.ebtech.net
http://www.sellad.on.ca/~paul