Teaching, Children, & the Golden Rule (idea)

In the wake of school shootings, gang violence, and child drug abuse the American public lost track of the real issues. How do our children learn what is wrong and what is right? Is it at the expense of the few wayward youths who had no one to help them? Or is it by the way we treat our fellow man? Should our children be taught wrong from right by fear of what will happen to them if they don’t do as we say? Or should our children learn by the example we show them?

Mass mentality has been on the rise within our youths. With many of them spending the majority of their time in day cares from the time they can remember. Unfortunately not all day cares are run in a manner we wish our children to be in. With the rise of single parents, and the need for 2 incomes, most parents have little or no choice in where their children spend the majority of their waking hours. Fewer and fewer parents have the luxury of having a non-working relative, or friend to rely on to tend to their children. So we resort to the only option available, day care. A place where children are herded together and expected to tattle on each other if there is a problem. Sadly it doesn’t stop when they start school either.

Once upon at time everyone learned the golden rule at school. Now our children learn survival of the fittest, prettiest, and richest. Children are in charge of themselves, and mass mentality rules. Children who have no experience or guidance in morals, and as children, are selfish and thoughtless to the hurt their actions cause others. To the child causing the hurt, the memory is short lived. To the child experiencing the hurt, the pain lasts a lifetime.

The adults, (teachers) who once had dreams of molding the future, are overwhelmed. Many teachers are either over or under paid, and discouraged by the lack of support they receive from the children’s parents. There was once a time, where any child would have been corrected by an adult who was around, but those times have changed. Parents who feel guilty for not spending quality time with their children can’t bring themselves to discipline their children, let alone allow someone else to do it. To discipline a child that is not your own now brings an angry parent to your door threatening a lawsuit. This creates chaos within our youth, and uncertainty as to how to act and handle situations.

When a child has been put down and cast out of the herd by their peers, they resort to the only means of defense they know. They don’t go to the adults who did nothing to help them in the past. They stop trying to be nice to the other children to sway them over. The other children learned from past experience what their fate would be if they were to go against those in charge. So the out cast child tries to become one with the pack. Inevitably they fail at their attempt, due to their lack of experience, or they are sabotaged by someone who fears they will be the next out cast.

As the more knowledgeable adults, we should be able to see past the pain of this child. We should be able to reach into ourselves, and remember what it was like to be a child, but many of us never recovered from our own painful childhoods, or are the parents of the children in charge. So we turn a blind eye to the damage we don’t want to admit we indirectly caused, and try to cast out the child who is causing us to face up to our own inadequacies.