I have long lamented that growing up in the Rogue Valley (something I did a couple of decades ago) doesn't offer much in the way of fun and exciting passtimes for the local youth. In Southern Oregon, teens were (and still are) making a lot of our own entertainment - for some, it is productive - FFA, 4H, sports, reading, music, etc... For others, it may be substance use, sex, or apparently driving fast.
I've written about it before, so I can't say I am surprised. I can't say I am pleased. And I am (for now) at a bit of a loss re: a solution. I generally reject legislating to ban behaviors. The alternative is to a: effectively model expected behavior and b: provide access to acceptable consumptions of time.
We have cut funding for schools, for school-based extra-curriculars... we have raised the costs of recreational pursuits to the level that socio-economic "average" families cannot afford to involve their kids in things. We have forced the norm of a two-income household to maintain socio-economic viability, so there is far less parent/child contact time during the average day / week / year. And we have somewhere, sometime, when I wasn't looking, radically re-framed accountability and expectations - WHO is responsible for what Junior is doing?
As I sit here in the lobby of a college building in Minnesota, enjoying my spring vacation in sunny 40 degree St. Paul, local news is dominated once more by a school shooting. Columbine, Jonesboro, and Thurston are now joined by Red Lake. National coverage isn't as prominent as Columbine - I suspect because the recent event is on a Reservation. Coverage aside, while shootings and speeding seem unrelated to some, I think it speaks volumes that we are so disconnected from youth that such incredible disregard of life is displayed in so many variations.
I read somewhere recently that we (society) can blame liberals - specifically "culture of death" pro-Choice liberals - for "teaching our kids to not value life." Sorry. That is a red herring - a distraction of unsound reasoning and poor (if any) logic. I think a far stronger case can be made that we (society) is teaching kids that we don't value THEIR lives - we won't fund their schools, we won't protect the environment they will inhabit when we are dead, and we will leave them with all the bills for the things (wars, tax cuts, anti-ballistic missile systems, etc...) we have decided were higher priorities. Very few of these choices were made by or supported by liberals, btw. If you tell (directly or implicitly) someone that they have little or no value to you, don't be stunned if they assign little or no value to life themselves.
Speeders in Medford, Shooters in Minnesota - both are a product of an America that has devalued life - not life of the unborn, or the terminally ill, but the life of the downtrodden - the tired, the poor, the huddled masses - the life of the young, the brown, the gay. My country.
I am on vacation. I spent yesterday looking at Omni and 3-D movies of Antarctica and Mars and thinking "I'd like to go there" after both presentations - I think the common thread is the utter lack of people in both locales. I suspect I am turning into a pessimistic cynic or something. Could it be because so many of the humans I see on my TV or read about in my newspaper are blaming ME (ie: a liberal) for all of our current problems? And all the while, I am blaming them?
I must ponder this. Something vacations are good for.
UPDATE (by John 12:25am, Weds): A fund for Red Lake High School is being coordinated by Wells Fargo Bank - specify The Red Lake Band of Chippewa Memorial Fund - any branch, including those in Southern Oregon can accept donations. If an online mechanism is established, I'll get that link up, too.
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