Missed direction
I had an epiphany earlier this fall. At least I think it was an epiphany. Maybe the rest of the world just started being morons all of the sudden. But I think that they've been morons for a while now, so I'm betting on the epiphany.
It started with the rash of school violence earlier this fall. School violence was never that important to me before. But now, with my wife teaching at Lake Mills High School, it's a lot more significant to me. So I spent some time thinking about it. And I realized that school violence can be stopped. But none of the "causes" really caused anything, and all of the "solutions" being talked about on the news programs would just make the problem worse.
The reason some kid wants to shoot up his school is that he feels disenfranchised. Not because he played some video game, or listened to some singer, or read some book. He feels that he has no voice and no place in his social structrue. But what solutions are being talked about? Metal detectors, extra security, teachers with guns? All of these ideas deal only with the most violent expression of the problem. We are trying to medicate the symptoms while ignoring the illness.
Now, I know that treating the symptoms is sometimes the only option. There is no way to ensure that every child feels validated. But I have talked to people intimately involved with the school environment (teachers, coaches, parents) who are seemingly oblivious to the problem and recognize only the symptoms.
And then one night, I was watching TV, and Dateline's "To Catch a Predator" was on. And during almost every commercial break, the local news station advertised a segment during their evening news about "protecting your children." Now, don't get me wrong, I am all for protecting and monitoring your children online, but at some point, don't you have to ask yourself why your 13 year old daughter is looking for sex online? Blame chatrooms all you want, but I think something bigger might be going on.
So I started thinking about the Christianity I grew up in. And the whole idea of Christian schools in general. And I can't remember how many times a preacher warned us about the evils of tv, rock music, movies, even unapproved books. But tv doesn't make you rebellious. Rock music doesn't make you drink in high school. Movies don't make you impregnate your high school girlfriend. They were so afraid to let us be unsupervised, even for a second, because we might start fornicating, or listening to devil music, or some other sin. But they never really questioned why we all tried to fornicate or listen to devil music or do anything that we weren't supposed to as soon as they turned their backs.
It seems to me that our instinct is to create a cause and effect scenario that we can easily understand. Take school violence. We want to say that the child played to many video games, and now he went and tried to bring a gun to school. It's simple. So we condemn the video games and put metal detectors up in our school. And we never actually try to figure out what we can do to help this kid.
The government is great at this. Last week some guy put a Fake Boarding Pass Generator on his website. Basically you could go to his website and create a fake airline ticket, and put any name, date, and flight number you wanted. He did this to point out the ridiculousness of our present airport security procedures. And it's not like he's the first one to figure this out. While researching this issue, I read at least 4 articles written in the past 3 years to point out that you could defeat the security checks pretty easily. So what did the government do? Knocked down his front door and confiscated his computers. What did Congressman Edward Markey do? Call for his arrest, because "we should not tolerate any new loopholes making it easier for terrorists to get into the front door of a plane." Why are we only not tolerating easier ways to exploit loopholes? Why aren't we fixing the loopholes?
I'm sorry if this doesn't seem very focused. But I have started seeing this trend everywhere, and it is driving me nuts. And I didn't want this post to be only about any one of these issues, because we do this in every area of our lives. I wanted to talk about all of this because this idea is holistic. This is something I have been trying to think about in every context of my life. Whether Jess and I are fighting, or I am watching tv, or I am reading the newspaper-- I keep taking a second look and realizing that I am ignoring the real issue.
It started with the rash of school violence earlier this fall. School violence was never that important to me before. But now, with my wife teaching at Lake Mills High School, it's a lot more significant to me. So I spent some time thinking about it. And I realized that school violence can be stopped. But none of the "causes" really caused anything, and all of the "solutions" being talked about on the news programs would just make the problem worse.
The reason some kid wants to shoot up his school is that he feels disenfranchised. Not because he played some video game, or listened to some singer, or read some book. He feels that he has no voice and no place in his social structrue. But what solutions are being talked about? Metal detectors, extra security, teachers with guns? All of these ideas deal only with the most violent expression of the problem. We are trying to medicate the symptoms while ignoring the illness.
Now, I know that treating the symptoms is sometimes the only option. There is no way to ensure that every child feels validated. But I have talked to people intimately involved with the school environment (teachers, coaches, parents) who are seemingly oblivious to the problem and recognize only the symptoms.
And then one night, I was watching TV, and Dateline's "To Catch a Predator" was on. And during almost every commercial break, the local news station advertised a segment during their evening news about "protecting your children." Now, don't get me wrong, I am all for protecting and monitoring your children online, but at some point, don't you have to ask yourself why your 13 year old daughter is looking for sex online? Blame chatrooms all you want, but I think something bigger might be going on.
So I started thinking about the Christianity I grew up in. And the whole idea of Christian schools in general. And I can't remember how many times a preacher warned us about the evils of tv, rock music, movies, even unapproved books. But tv doesn't make you rebellious. Rock music doesn't make you drink in high school. Movies don't make you impregnate your high school girlfriend. They were so afraid to let us be unsupervised, even for a second, because we might start fornicating, or listening to devil music, or some other sin. But they never really questioned why we all tried to fornicate or listen to devil music or do anything that we weren't supposed to as soon as they turned their backs.
It seems to me that our instinct is to create a cause and effect scenario that we can easily understand. Take school violence. We want to say that the child played to many video games, and now he went and tried to bring a gun to school. It's simple. So we condemn the video games and put metal detectors up in our school. And we never actually try to figure out what we can do to help this kid.
The government is great at this. Last week some guy put a Fake Boarding Pass Generator on his website. Basically you could go to his website and create a fake airline ticket, and put any name, date, and flight number you wanted. He did this to point out the ridiculousness of our present airport security procedures. And it's not like he's the first one to figure this out. While researching this issue, I read at least 4 articles written in the past 3 years to point out that you could defeat the security checks pretty easily. So what did the government do? Knocked down his front door and confiscated his computers. What did Congressman Edward Markey do? Call for his arrest, because "we should not tolerate any new loopholes making it easier for terrorists to get into the front door of a plane." Why are we only not tolerating easier ways to exploit loopholes? Why aren't we fixing the loopholes?
I'm sorry if this doesn't seem very focused. But I have started seeing this trend everywhere, and it is driving me nuts. And I didn't want this post to be only about any one of these issues, because we do this in every area of our lives. I wanted to talk about all of this because this idea is holistic. This is something I have been trying to think about in every context of my life. Whether Jess and I are fighting, or I am watching tv, or I am reading the newspaper-- I keep taking a second look and realizing that I am ignoring the real issue.
posted by oneweekend at 9:32 PM
7 comments
