Violence In Schools

I've often read articles on the rising tide of violence in schools. These articles paint a bleak and foreboding picture, an apocalyptic futures when our schools turn into battlegrounds for warring tribes of, usually dark skinned, hellions.

Bullshit.

Violence is as natural as breathing. We as a species evolved from animals, and to a large extent are still animals. Just because society says violence is wrong does not mean society is right. Violence is not only perfectly natural, it's healthy. So, we have several generations of men and boys who have no idea how to handle aggression. They are told to not fight in the park, the school yard or at home. They are told that violence is wrong without exception. So when these men and boys get angry, when their natural aggressions surfaces they have absolutely no idea how to handle it and the result is all too obvious. Road rage, senseless brawling over parking spaces, kids resorting to knives and guns to stop bullies they are told time and time again not to fight back against.

So now that we have the problem what do we do about it? We stop ignoring the basic human need to fight. I tread once that you don't truly love your children unless you allow them to get punched in the face. I couldn't agree more. School is not a nice place, kids are not nice people, bullies exist and the only thing they respect is violence. So, why not provide a forum for that violence? A ring, gloves, headgear and rules. Make it known from day one that if you have a problem you take it up in the ring after school. Bring boxing and wrestling back to American schools. If you stop treating violence as evil then violence will soon stop being a problem.

Hide it, ignore it, and it only becomes unhealthy. Teach kids that it's an acceptable, controllable response and it will become a healthy response.

Kids These Days....

I saw this spoof of a Calvin and Hobbes comic and felt that it expressed my feelings on what exactly is wrong with our society more succinctly then I ever could.



I'm not going to speak to the message, anyone who has ever read Calvin and Hobbes the message should be clear enough. I only want to try and convey the sorrow I felt reading that. It hits far too close to home for comfort. I was never medicated and I guess I never did get around to thanking my mother for that. I guess I should. Thanks mom for letting me be a kid.

Cyberspace, The Final Frontier!

I'm taking a course on Computer Crime.

Last class the professor, though such a title is a stretch, showed an episode of Frontline detailing the dangers of youth on the Internet, the big, scary, Internet.

The special touched on cyber predation as well as cyber bullying, the dangers of a large amount of personal information freely available in cyberspace as well as the escapism teens are finding in cyberspace.

..... duh.

I'm sorry, maybe it's just me, maybe I'm just jaded having grown up as a member of the "Entitlement Generation" up to my eyebrows in technology but for the love of god how is this a shock to anyone?

Parents, refuse to actively participate in the raising of their children, their children naturally seek a social network for support, as they find the cyber domain to be as comfortable, if not more so, then real space they are obviously going to move into the cyber realm. Is this what scares parents? Or is it the parents technical incompetence? Should the fact that parents simply can not, will not, choose to not supervise their child's activities online result in punishment of the child? Is MySpace now going to have to report to every parent when their thirteen year old daughter is dancing in front of a web cam?

How can they be so oblivious? How can parents of teens in this day and age not know? How can a parent be surprised at finding scantily clad pictures of their daughter online when by the age of thirteen she has most likely had one or more sexual partners? How can traditional values and norms ever hope to be applied to a generation that simply does not exist in the same space as previous generations?

Cyberspace is the new rock and roll, the excesses of rock are merely finding a new home in cyberspace, the escapes most of the last generation found in concerts and music my generation finds in MySpace, it makes even less sense to fight it then fighting rock and roll did for our grandparents.