© Pierre Maré,
2004 - 2007
Offbeat 118
The kids are going ape, or at least some of them are. Guns seem to be the latest fashion accessory, and the best way to win friends and influence people. Or else. Across the US, ugly news stories are rearing their heads. And the trend, like bubblegum, fast food, and nasty pop, is spreading across that country’s border. Kids aren’t all that discriminating. They are buying into the American dream, even if it is a nightmare.
It doesn’t take much to influence a kid. They are emotional creatures: they think with their brainstems and follow the examples of their peers, particularly post adolescence. If Kid A’s display of emotion and behaviour fits the state-of-mind of Kid B, Kid B will say ‘cool’ and follow. Monkey see. Monkey do. The kids are going ape.
Perhaps the best defense of innocence that the world has, is to put a blanket ban on any news from that particular neck of the woods, and stop the kids from getting bad ideas. But that’s obviously not going to work. The news wouldn’t be half as exciting or entertaining without the US.
According to at least one article on the web, the good kids need help coping with fear: therapy for school-induced paranoia.
I can’t say that my years at school were very happy: there was always the lurking fear of a beating, either from some testosterone-maddened muscle-head, or a teacher with darker depths, no concept of the idea of mutual respect and the certain knowledge that if you whip the square peg often enough it will eventually consent to squeeze into the round hole.
But guns were never regarded as a solution. Nor were knives, and knives were very easy to come by. As for therapy to help deal with the fear of attendance: we just suppressed our terror at the school gates knowing that, as in any good prison, speaking up meant a hard time, or worse yet, the desperation of not fitting in.
So what
do we do about the kids of today? Locking the guns away, and not letting
them get hold of the keys or the combination to the safe seems like a
really good idea. But this simple task seems to have eluded at least a
few gun-obsessive parents with more bullets and civil rights than they
have brains.
Yet by far the best idea seems to be to go with the psychological flow
and put the young ones in therapy.
Although schooling does have its merits, and is as much a part of the natural process as, for instance, learning how to walk and chew gum at the same time, schools are very brutal places.
For a start, kids are brutal. They operate on instinct, in the early years, and in the adolescent years when the brainstem becomes neurologically active. Their goal is to ensure that the environment in which they exist is not a threat to them. Yet other kids have their own ways of doing things, thinking and speaking. So every kid is conflicted.
Secondly, teachers are all too often brutal people. They too need to take control of an inherently chaotic environment. Some are able to do so with respect and positive personal traits. Others, less well equipped, fall back on the tactics they learned when they sat behind the school desk: mental and physical abuse. And no amount of legislation will prevent the deep scars of a cruel word or an unkind comment.
Thirdly, the requirements of a school are brutal. In order to equip kids to deal with the complexity of life and thought, schools have to place kids under academic and social pressure.
And somewhere, amongst all of this, our kids are shaped. In hindsight, and with some degree of foresight, this is a very scary idea.
An adult coping with abusive colleagues, abusive bosses and an apparently impossible workload would automatically qualify for therapy. So why not kids as well? Especially considering that the years when they attend school are their formative years.
There is no pair of rosy-tinted glasses that can hide the ugliness of the school concept, simply because it is a necessity. But there must be at least one solution that doesn’t involve gunfire. My money’s on therapy.
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