Lord of the Flies Redux?

What is My Response, My Civic/Social Duty?

The crescendo of news on adolescent bullying is hard to ignore.  To respond, several aspects come to mind:

• cultural change over the last 100 years
• how are we as a society using and losing with information technology
• considering the as-yet-immature capacity for judgment that teens hold, are they unable to take a perspective on what they are doing?
• if there were not Internet or cell phones, would the cruelty be prevalent but just in a different channel?
• what is the ache in the hearts of teens that motivates such cruelty?  Is it the same old bullying, just manifest in new channels? 
• are teens feeling greater pressure to get into college because of the global economy evolution, and thus feeling more performance driven than education driven?
• is any of this cruelty a trickle-down of the national mood from the recession?
• has this generation of parents over-functioned for their kids, thus depriving them of opportunities for learning from struggle, learning gratitude from serving others, and learning from consequences?
• are tweens and teens experiencing less supervision that the Internet seems to justify?

Knowing that, over the years, my children have bullied in one form or another, is there something about the home life of children in the 21st century that is deficient, viz. their ability to be nurtured toward emotional maturity?

Has the post-WWII prosperity in the United States affected us in such a way that we are motivated to be more eager consumers, but less of other qualities embraced in our previous mores?

After several years of having automobiles on the road, the body politic decided to prevent teens from driving until they were 16 years old.  Maybe in 20 years, the collective parenting wisdom will hold that the only computers or cell phones allowed for teens will be strictly limited to education or transportation needs until they are in college.

It is striking that, beginning in the 1960's, for the first time at a broad level, children had a manifest contempt for their parents.  For children in adolescence, this attitude is only increasing.  Curious that this occurs simultaneously with the acceleration of infomation technology, for which the kids are typically far more literate than the parents.

A minority of Americans have an active faith practice:  45% from the studies that I have read. 

Another itchy thing that has to go on the table is the issue of certain practices in secondary education classrooms.  Teachers do a great service for students by provoking them to have their own opinions which they can personally justify, rather than just parrot back what their parents say.  This is worthy, however, a casual student could easily interpret that broad, constructive message as encouragement to disregard their parents' opinions and view them as relics of another age.  In my own experience, my children have come home from school and have brought stories of how their teachers portrayed an issue in a very partisan light and often at odds with our family's values.  This is fine, because I should have done a sufficient job in rearing my child to inculcate whatever genuine values I represent.  I applaud teachers that encourage children to be able to examine and defend their beliefs.  Over the years, however, it is hard not to pick up the scent that "if your parents' values are conservative, break free of these blinders and come over to the enlightened side."  There is a difference in promoting original thought and demeaning the office that parents struggle to serve.

The issue of adolescent cruelty, as well as the gradual demise of the institution of marriage, are pernicious omens for American.  Stable families are the ONLY way to impart hope and self-respect in children.  Children without these qualities do not want to do their school work.  I see them daily in the high school where I am an assistant teacher.   That no one cares about the education of these children, other than some administrator compiling statistics, is a profound tragedy, and the number of such children is growing faster than the growth rate of the population as a whole. 

We Americans owe our children the benefit of parenting to adulthood.  We owe them physical, emotional, spiritual, and intellectual nurturance.  Pretending that the government is equipped to supplant the role of non-performing parents is cruel to the children, judging by the apparent fruits of its efforts thus far.  Therefore, the children are taking on the roles of the characters in "Lord of the Flies," which is one of the points made by Golding.  Children need supervision and nurturance, else the animal nature emerges to dominate behavior. 

It is hard to imagine that this adolescent cruelty is happening under the direct supervision of attentive parents.  Which is to say, let's admit that we can't supervise it, admit that it is a moral issue, and acknowledge that change is necessary in the triangle of parent : child : computer/phone if we want to redirect the outcome.