I just read an article about the murders in Littleton, Colorado. Another article, I might add -- ever since Sam Donaldson's heavy-handed conclusion -- that 'the gothic subculture' (dark and sinister) is the root of the problem with Violence Among America's Youth, I've found myself hunting down articles --especially op-ed columns -- about the recent rash of school shootings.
And I've come to the conclusion that it's certainly not the gothic subculture that's killing our nation's kids. I think it's just the opposite, and we're blind to it.
We're killing our kids with progress, with maturity. We're killing our kids by turning them into miniature adults -- complete with oftentimes overwhelming stress, complete personal freedom, and a increasingly competitive environment where the weak are crushed so the strong can appear stronger.
It's just like the real world. And not all kids are equipped to handle it.
Adults snap all the time. The postal office worker. Ted Kazinski. Charles Manson. And less obvious examples: the high-school teacher who had a breakdown and moved back home to live off his mother's pension; the homeless man who, one day, simply walked away from his corporate job to wander the streets looking for the aliens he is sure inhabit our planet. Even benign situations can reflect the same general dissatisfaction with one's lot in life, the rejection of the world's values: an artist who hates his wage-earning bartending job. He quits, to wander the world drawing caricatures and living off the kindness of strangers.
They can't handle the pressure; they can't make the grade. And though we may wonder at their oddity, they're free to leave the world they don't understand.
But the ones who kill... when they are adults, we call them monsters. And we can rationalize it -- they were abused as children, they had psychopathic tendencies, they spent their entire miserable lives as social outcasts. They were turned into monsters, the evolved, they grew into what they became over a long period of time. Unloved by parents, unable to find solace in friends or in themselves, unable to find a place where they fit in or where they mattered. Sometimes they're just insane, and we accept that, too.
We're not surprised when children mimic Dad's speech or pantomime Mom's make-up routine. Why are we so surprised when children lash out at the people that abuse them the same way some adults -- pushed too far, unstable to begin with -- lash out at their peers? These kids don't have a choice. They can't leave their lives behind because there is still someone else at the wheel. They've got all the dangers of the real world, but none of the control. Day in, day out, they have to return to a world that hates them, doesn't understand them, and, probably, will never help them figure out why it is they are different. They're trapped in an educational system that's failing them, where it succeeds for so many others.
Education has changed. High school is filled with Advanced Placement classes and preparatory internships, more like college in the workload and academic expectations. College, now, is more like the working world, with more students than ever paying their own way, working full-time to finance their own education. Schoolchildren are pitted against other schoolchildren in beauty contests and sports competitions and academic melees that determine their self-worth... not only to themselves but to their parents, their friends, and everyone else around them.
We're expecting more and giving less. To finance Suzie's Violin lessons, Mom's practicing law full-time. Bert needs $300 to play in an elite soccer tournament in New York? Dad works overtime at the office. We think we're giving our kids more when we're actually really only EXPECTING more and giving less. It's not the same thing.
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