Information Related to "Youth Violence: Who's to Blame?"
| Audio/Video |
Youth Violence:
Who's to Blame?
What's behind the frightening epidemic of youth violence? The prophet Isaiah envisioned
a time when children would oppress their elders. Are we living in those days?
by Howard Davis
In the 1960s Bill Roberts forever
abandoned youthful innocence for the killing fields of Vietnam. Not long ago something
happened to Bill that brought back the terror he felt years ago in guerrilla warfare.
His recent brush with death was not in a war in Southeast Asia. It happened in Portland,
Oregon, a prosperous city of a million and a half people. The enemy wasn't Vietnamese
guerrillas but gun-toting gang members in a school yard.
Mr. Roberts serves as principal of a school attended by my children. He is still
a soldier, but his fight is with the explosion of youth violence that began 20 years
ago in America.
With the American prison population up to 1,800,000 from 750,000 in only 10 years,
violence among young people affects every stratum of American life.
Easy solutions are hard to come by because the problem with youth violence is not
a trend fueled primarily by desperation and poverty. It is driven by powerful forces
and influences that lead some children to treat other human beings as if they are
of no more value than the electronic video-game figures they mindlessly kill off
by the hour for amusement.
With the lines between fantasy and reality confused and blurred, some American youths
have received the unmistakable message that it is entertaining to kill. The two teenaged
gunmen who killed and maimed 35 students and teachers at Colorado's Columbine High
School in May laughed as they roamed the classrooms and hallways and gunned down
their victims.
Does our culture teach children that killing people is not a big deal? Violent movies,
video and computer games, and many television shows certainly send that message.
Strangely, many violent teenagers are possessed of a sense of invincibility. Not
only do they evince no fear of God, they have little fear or understanding that they
could be killed as easily as the fictional characters on a video-game screen.
Explosive Violence
After a 15-year-old boy confessed to the May 1998 shooting of 22 students and
his parents in Springfield, Oregon, commentators pointed out that explosive violence
had crept from the poor, inner-city communities of the 1980s and early '90s onto
the manicured lawns of suburbia.
Related Information on UCG Sites:
Table of Contents that includes "Youth Violence: Who's to Blame?"
Other Articles by Howard Davis
Violence: