This column was published in The State News in the 18 November 1999 edition.
The papers this year have been filled with the misadventures of children under the age of eighteen; conspiracy, murder, rape and mayhem to be more precise. Children are being expelled for making hit lists and threats, and are being locked away for life when they act out their feelings.
What's going on? Why is this happening now? When I was in high school (1968) and harassed for being queer, why did I simply drop out of school when I could have taken one of my daddy's guns and blown my classmates away instead?
I'm not sure. I think I felt that I could run away from my problems, that somewhere, sometime else things would be better. I don't know if I would feel that way today.
We compared our schools to prisons back then, at least in terms of freedom of expression. We published underground newspapers to voice our concerns.
Little did we dream that three decades later we would be the generation of parents who are relieved that schools have metal detectors, security guards, surveillance cameras, and backpack searches.
Has so much changed in the thirty years since I graduated from high school that we have to truly make our schools into prisons?
There have been changes in the world: the population has doubled; air travel is common; people's lives, loves, and careers are more mobile; computers are ubiquitous; the news media routinely expose everything about everyone; and the world wide web is leveling cultures at incredible speed.
Have you noticed that my comments reflect a white middle class view of a world that has never in fact been particularly safe? I was a pampered brat living in an artificial oasis. I was afraid of nuclear war, but of little else in my day-to-day life.
I grew up in a cocoon of fantasy, All I knew about most of the people on this planet came from the pages of National Geographic Magazine. I believed the world was basically a benign place. If I behaved myself I would grow up to do and have whatever I wanted.
Has anything really changed other than that the white middle class can no longer isolate and protect itself from life as it is lived by most people? Are we simply not so special any longer, and throwing temper tantrums because of that?
If this is so, we aren't going to solve the problem of school safety and youth anger and violence by trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. We aren't going to be able to return to safety the mostly white, mostly middle class schools where the well-publicized misdeeds have taken place.
Anger and violence is a problem all over the country, from the home to the workplace, on the road and in the schools. Focusing on violence in the schools ignores the overall problem of making life safe and enjoyable for everyone.
I have my own ideas about some things that need fixed.
We need to figure out where the leisure time promised by technology has gone. What was it Thoreau said, "We have become the tools of our tools?" Are we more than the tools worked by a consumer-based economy? Is there more to life than shopping?
We should not treat children like little adults. Children need space to take risks, make mistakes, fail, and get up and try again. I worry that we are building a society in which many children cannot safely take the "learning risks" they must take if they are to grow up to be responsible adults.
I think much of the popularity of sports in school is that a good sports program allows its participants to take risks. But not all children are best suited to the popular sports.
Some children do best with unpopular sports such as chess or fencing. (I confess this was my young self.) Some children show their cunning and daring not in sport but in art or music or performance. What is the price of eliminating those programs from our schools?
We need to take a good hard look at what it is that children have to look forward to now when they grow up. What does this world look like to today's children? If that picture isn't so pretty, how can we make it better, for everyone?
Children are our future. Not just "our children" but everyone's children, This isn't going to be a white middle class country much longer. Now is a good time to begin to work to make the future a better place for all of us.