How many times in the past have I complained about “Kids nowadays,” how lazy and self-centered and ignorant they are? Not like my generation!
The answer is, never that I can recall. I can’t remember old-manning teenagers about the good ol’ days, ever.
Matter of fact, when a discussion in one of my high school English classes led to a moment when it looked like it was time for me to Tut-tut my students, I’d often say, “You know, right about now, I’m supposed to tell you what’s wrong with your generation, how young people used to be polite and mind their parents and turn in their homework and join in marches for civil rights and protest the Vietnam war back in my day. But it’s kind of hard for me to old-man you when my generation’s slogan was ‘Sex, Drugs and Rock ‘n Roll.'”
Maybe as a teacher I wasn’t supposed to say that. Setting a bad example and all. Except it’s true. Children of the 60s have plenty to be red-faced about when we think about some of the things we said and did. And as for the 50s, well, we 60s college students were the ones who condemned our formative years for their lock-step conformity, racism and sexism. It would have been beyond hypocritical for me to praise the “Father Knows Best” era.
To my last day in the classroom, I maintained the students I had in the final years of my career were as good as, maybe even a little better than, my first students 30-plus years earlier.
The kids are all right. Always have been — acknowledging the obviously stupid, irrational, dangerous behavior which is part of growing up (also part of being a grown up, as this grown-up can attest). All the way back to the youth of ancient Athens running wild in the agora and, according to the leaders of the city-state, having their minds corrupted by that rabble rouser Socrates, the kids have been all right. When youth do truly awful, vicious, violent things, they’re likely mirroring the society they live in.
Yeah, but can today’s kids take their eyes off their phones? Can they put down the video game controllers? Apparently so. The students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School are saying, “Yes, we can” and taking action after seeing their fellow students shot and killed along with some beloved teachers. They may just end up leading this country to a better place when it comes to gun violence. A few years back, right here in Tucson, students in the Mexican American Studies program said “Si se puede” as they fought for a TUSD curriculum they believed in, fighting a government mandate which has been condemned in a federal courtroom for having racist origins.
Will the spirit of those wonderful young people at that Florida high school spread to other youth across the country? Will it be picked up by adults who will help further the cause? Early indications are, what the Marjory Stoneman Douglas students have begun isn’t going to stop any time soon. Students across the country are walking out of their classrooms in support. Three nationwide marches are being planned between now and April 20. There’s no telling what’s next.
True, the momentum may slow. The grieving Florida students may move on with their lives. Their efforts may not lead to significant changes in our gun laws. But if that happens, I certainly won’t fault them, any more than I fault the parents of the children shot at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012, or the Tucsonans following the Gabby Giffords shooting in 2011, or so many other groups of people which have tried and continue to try to bring a bit of sanity to our gun laws but have so far made little headway.
If the Florida students and their supporters manage to symbolically smear the blood of the shooting victims on the NRA logo — so next time it’s a little easier to fight the well-funded front men for the gun industry — that will be something. If they manage to help “Vote them out!” — help kick some NRA apologists out of office — that will be a significant victory. And they could accomplish far more.
Right now, I’m putting my money and my hopes on the younger generation.
This article appears in Feb 22-28, 2018.
The kids are killing kids. They are not all right. Why lie to yourself? I guess it is easier to blame the NRA which promotes gun safety and proper use of firearms.
The NRA hasn’t (only) promoted gun safety and the proper use of firearms for decades, Roger P. Now they buy politicians from governors to Presidents. If you don’t mind because you agree with their methods and their viciousness, thats fine. But its a far cry from democracy, and it seems to be a case of American exceptionalism that we are the only country in the world that suffers this kind of gun violence. I hope the kids, from Sandy Hook to Marjory Stoneman Douglas can shame our legislators into reviewing their priorities so that they will stop valuing their guns over our children.
Who doesn’t buy politicians BPH? The NEA surely has for 50 years. Yet they did nothing to protect teachers and students. Do you blame Chevrolet for drunk driving fatalities?
Let’s outlaw violent VR video games and psychotropic depression meds for the future of our youth, and then vigorously enforce existing laws. Our schools should be safe havens for learning, but not indoctrinating.
@Roger P – You’ve got to be kidding. The N.R.A. long ago abandoned their former major activities of teaching gun safety and promoting firearms for sporting use. They’ve become an advocacy group for extreme interpretations of the 2nd Amendment rights and supporting the firearms industry, from whom they receive substantial contributions. And, of course, the N.R.A. also is a major campaign contributor to politicians who toady to their line on no gun laws.
The narrowing of discussion on American mass shootings in schools to a discussion of gun control oversimplifies the complex realities that lead to these tragedies and excludes consideration of so many issues and policy changes that should be seen as relevant:
1) securing school campuses through reliable perimeter control — it’s worth noting that the shooters in Florida and at Sandy Hook were not currently enrolled students and should never have been allowed on campus. Perimeter control at schools is an obvious first step to take and easier to address quickly and successfully than a massive shift in the regulations and enforcement mechanisms associated with gun access system-wide.
2) the strength and extent of school-internal systems for meeting the needs of students who struggle behaviorally, socially, academically — and, obviously, how much funding is available for counseling services.
3) the quality of the relationships and networks in neighborhoods and what community-based (school external) supports are available when family-internal systems of behavior monitoring and intervention fail.
4) a pervasive culture of “violence solves problems” in multiple sectors of America from law enforcement to foreign military interventions to the entertainment industry’s celebration of graphic violence in film after gory, disturbing, PG-rated film.
Others could be listed. Our polarized political system and the media that feeds it pounce on tragedies like this and turn them into artificially narrowed policy discussions that (in the current context) are thought to be useful in mobilizing the support bases for midterm elections. That is part of what is going on in the media’s reaction to Florida and not to acknowledge it is naive.
As for the idea that keeps surfacing that the NRA is the only obstacle to sane gun policy, that is so drastically reductive that it shouldn’t need comment, but in the current context clearly it does. The reality is that ideologies that were formed during the English Civil War of the 17th C. and the American Revolution of the 18th C. have strong and widespread fan bases in the U.S. The notion that your own government is potentially your enemy and you have a right to arm yourself in case it (and the military and police forces it can mobilize) encroach on your freedoms is still with us and will probably never completely disappear from this country. The NRA is one servant of this widespread popular notion; it is not the master. And as our government’s weaponry becomes more dangerous and sophisticated, so does the weaponry acquired by people who feel the need to arm themselves.
I agree with Safier, children and young adults hold the keys at this moment, to effecting change in public opinion on gun control. It is their lives on the line. They are the most powerful special interest group fighting the insanity espoused by the NRA and its water carriers in our elected legislatures. Hopefully, they will succeed in gathering support for restrictions on gun ownership where we, adults, have failed dramatically.
Have any of you even thought about what will be used after guns are not available? So banning everything is your only answer? Ignorance abounds when emotions control legislation.
The “most powerful special interest group” is money, always has been, always will be. All that touching youth protest in the 1960s. And here we are. A constant diet of violence at home and abroad, massive income inequality, mass incarceration, indenturing large cohorts of our population with crippling undismissable student debt. Take your eye off the ball of labor advocacy and organizing — or imagine that it doesn’t matter if you take corporate donations and, after all, identity politics is a better cause to back — and the net result is what we have: no one but the owners of capital have a say in law and policy. Academics publish their monographs and activists set up their “Occupy” camps, all to no avail. They have no traction in a system where money is the only thing that really matters.
“Children and young adults hold the keys to effecting change?” Nope. Student activism is easily exhausted in this system, much more easily exhausted than it was in the 60s when the cost of attending Berkeley was not $60K per year, as it is now. These days after a triggering event students may adopt protest as one of their extracurricular activities for a time and then the reality of the need to get credentialed for a profession and the need to pay the massive bills associated with that will take over.
We’ll see whether the media continues to take an interest in this issue after the mid-term elections. Currently with this and with other issues, they are assisting their funders in the battle for control of the federal law and policy making body. If they can mobilize enough citizens to help them change the majority, with “GUN CONTROL!” as one of the conspicuous carrots they wave, they will be free to enact the laws and policies that really matter to them.
Roger P, thanks for your comments. I am starting to look at this whole thing differently as the truth starts to come out. You can’t believe half of what you see and hear, let alone read.
https://constitution.com/school-shooting-plot-exposed-wont-believe-set/