Thursday, April 3, 2008

Free Write - April 3

I was reading the news the other day, when I came across a story that triggered thoughts on another subject. In Georgia (USA), some 8 year old third graders had been scolded by their teacher for something insignificant, and they decided that they needed to teach her a lesson. They came to school with handcuffs, duct tape, and a steak knife. The plan was to knock her unconscious, handcuff her and tape her to the desk, then stab her with the steak knife. First of all, when I was 8, I didn't even know that rebellion was an option. If I got scolded, it was my fault, and I had to face up to it. Second, even if I HAD decided to rebel, the idea of physically harming an adult was the furthest thing from my mind. Where did these kids get the idea from? The police chief in the area blames it on video games and violence. I tend to agree with him on the video games part of it, but not the violence part. The last 500 years or so have been the first time in the history of the world that kids did NOT grow up with violence. British children in the 800s saw Viking raiders torch, murder, and rape. Roman children saw executions, sieges, and sackings. But they didn't turn into little homocidal freaks. At least, not in comparison to their times. But for some reason, our age seems incapable of bringing up children with an "appropriate" understanding of violence. It's not that being exposed to violence makes someone a murderer. I grew up playing soccer, and I am not David Beckham. That may be a bit of a stretch, but this is my reasoning: I played soccer on a team. I went to practice, ran laps, played drills, got yelled at by the coach, won and lost games, and saw everything that it takes to become good at that sport. I didn't just see a soccer game and immediately think that I could become amazing with no effort. I didn't play FIFA on my XBox and then suppose that those hours in front of the tube would translate into real world skills. How does this relate to 8 year old kids in Georgia? They may have seen violent actions on a video game, and thought that no real world consequences could come of their decisions. Children who grew up in another age saw what physically happened when someone was stabbed. They saw the blood, hear the cries, and knew (even if they only experienced it once) that being stabbed or stabbing someone brought with it actualized results. So, in my mind, it was not the violence that corrupted those children in that third grade class, but the FALSENESS of the violence they had seen. Everything is capable of traumatizing and warping a person, if no context or support is given to the person.