Institutionlized Selfishness, Clinton and Angry Children on the Rampage - Why are Children shooting Children?
Original Sources
April 22, 1999 Mary Mostert Original Sources (www.originalsources.com
It was 13 months ago that the America was asking itself the same questions about children shooting children that it is asking today. Yesterday's angry young men shooting down students and teachers in cold blood brought back all the same discussions, all the same quick exploitation of the tragedy for political gain in making it ever more difficult to own a firearm is more of what we hear just over a year ago. With that in mind, I dug up my column from last year on the subject. After re-reading it, I believe it stands the test of time. It's still true. Our slide into cultural chaos seems to be right on track.
Mary Mostert
March 26,1998 -How do children get their parents attention in a culture that has put children at the bottom of the family's priority list? Well, ambushing and shooting a few of their classmates with a hunting rifle seems to work. Nothing much else has in recent years.
The massacre in Jonesboro, Arkansas, perpetrated by two boys, Andrew Golden, aged eleven and Michael Johnson, aged thirteen, seems to have jolted the American people. It is the third such shooting in five months, but the first two shootings did not seem to create the same level of public concern somehow.
The airwaves are full of knee-jerk reactions and "solutions" to the "problem" of angry, violent children. What new piece of legislation should we pass to "solve" such a problem.? Can we toughen the gun bans? (Perhaps, but, the crime was committed with a hunting rifle.) Can we pass a federal law requiring children to be tried as adults, when they do this sort of thing? (But, what should be the new age of adulthood? Eleven? Ten? Thirteen?)
Actually, what, exactly, is the problem? Apparently, from reports coming out of Jonesboro, this event happened because the 13 year old Michael was angry at being jilted by his girlfriend and warned that something would happen the next day.
A neighbor of the Goldens, Lloyd Brooks, the father of a 12 year old girl, had warned his daughter to keep away from 11 year old Andrew, who, with his cousin, 13 year old Michael, were arrested for the ambush.
"I wouldn't let her play with this kid because - it's mean to say - he was so demented," Brooks told AP reporter Allen Breed. "He was always threatening people."
Michael Johnson, according to children who knew him, had claimed to be part of a gang, and also "spoke about wanting to hurt people." On the day before the shooting, Michael had told Melinda Henson, 13,: "Tomorrow you all find out if you live or die."
Melinda asked, "What's that supposed to mean?" Michael's only response was, "You'll find out tomorrow."
The two boys talked about hurting people and were angry. Michael took his stepfather's van without permission, skipped school on Tuesday and by Wednesday they had been charged with five counts of murder and ten counts each of first-degree batttery. The President asked Attorney General Janet Reno to "investigate" this, the third school shooting in the last five months. "I do think we've reached the point where we have to analyze these incidents to see whether or not we can learn anything (and) what we can do to prevent further ones," Clinton said.
What, indeed, can we do to prevent further shootings at schools? For a number of years the school violence problem had been escalating to the point that law enforcement agencies recognize the local high schools as a dangerous place to be. The U.S. Department of Education 1995 figures for Crime in the Schools extracted from The Condition of Education 1995 National Center for Education Statistics, Washington, DC; 202/219-1651 revealed:
Data are 1993 victimization rates of high school seniors at school. Percentage of seniors reporting victimization, by type of victimization and race/ethnicity: · Had something stolen: white, 41.6%; black, 46% · Had property deliberately damaged: white, 25.8%; black, 26.3% · Threatened with a weapon: white, 13.8%; black, 23.5% · Threatened without a weapon: white, 23.8%; black, 22.3% · Injured with a weapon: white, 4.3%; black, 6.4% · Injured without a weapon: white, 11%; black, 11.5%
These statistics are five years old. They show that close to half of the students had something stolen and close to a quarter of the black kids had been threatened with a weapon. This is approximately ten times the rate of crimes committed against adults, and indicates a massive amount of juvenile anger.
As I listened to the live reports yesterday telling of two young boys in camouflage garb ambushing their classmates and teachers and filling them full of 27 rounds of ammunition I thought, "Why would such young children be so angry?" And then I remembered a conversation I had a few weeks ago with my daughter Gail Lyon who told me about the anger she is seeing daily in three and four year old children. It is an abnormal anger that neither she, nor other professional teachers in pre-school education have seen before.
Gail's degree is in Family and Child Development from Cornell University. She has four children, the oldest in college, and has taught very young children for nearly twenty years. She, and fellow teachers, are seeing behavior that is different from the behavior of young children just a few years ago.
Others have seen it. Dr. Benjamin Spock, who died just days ago, said in one of his last articles that "We are a deeply troubled society."
The role of parents traditionally in all societies is to "socialize their children," Gail observes. From their parents they learn the acceptable behavior for the culture into which they have been born and to which they must learn to adapt. Once in America that meant children learned the acceptable limits of behavior. Children, once upon a time, were expected to show respect for their parents and teachers, for example. At home, school and church, telling the truth, obeying the law and being married to the person you had sex with were the guiding principles of normal, civilized behavior. Civilized behavior meant you reined in your emotions - especially anger - and resolved problems without physical violence.
These social values are no longer taught or, apparently, valued by most Americans, if the polls are to be believed. Gail calls this failure to teach those values "institutionalized selfishness." All that seems to drive most people today are their own personal desires. Some of the most prestigious members of society in recent weeks have defended the notion that the personal behavior of the President of the United States should be of no concern to the public. If he lies, fails to control his sex drive, uses a battery of lawyers and high-priced spin-doctors to destroy anyone who disapproves of his conduct, that is acceptable.
If the President of the United States is not be expected to rein in his sex drive or tell the truth, what kind of reining in of emotions should we require of 11 and 13 year old boys? In recent weeks, the media have criticized those who object to the President of the United States exposing himself to Paula Jones, asking for oral sex, and sexually assaulting Kathleen Willey when she asked him to help her get a job. If that's OK behavior for the nation's 50 year old leader, what are the social boundaries expected for a 13 year old who has just been ditched by his girlfriend? How much anger, violence or physical response is too much?
The President now wants to know: What is causing this kind of behavior? Well, Mr. President, what has caused your kind of behavior? If character no longer matters in presidents, should it matter for 11 and 13 year old boys? If the nation's top executive can use anger, power and position to get sexual services from women he casually meets, and receive a 67% approval rate from the people, as the polls claim, is this not, then, the new social standard for all males, including resentful 13 year olds? If the president can destroy the lives of women who object to his unwanted sexual demands, is it OK for 13 year olds to take the matter one step further and just shoot the pesky females who won't cooperate?
Perhaps to find the source of the problem in Jonesboro in his home state of Arkansas, the President might try looking in the mirror.
To comment: mmostert@originalsources.com
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