First grade murderers or "everybody down! - It's an elementary student!"
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
Generally we Americans have always looked back with wistfulness on our childhoods and while we've been at it, have included our own children in the nostalgia. "Oh, little Johnny" we say "you have it so good,it's so simple being a kid." We remember being in trouble for such horrible things as putting gum into the hair of the girl who sat in front of us in class. We can dreamily recall being told to "be quiet!" as the teacher taught from the front of the room.The silly little fights we had on the way home from school with the class bully. Those were such simple and wonderful years. But inasmuch as those days are gone for my generation, they are also gone for the youth we now find ourselves raising. Today near Flint Michigan an elementary schooler, a six year old girl was shot to death by a classmate.Unfortunately this is not an isolated incident. For the past four years our nation has watched communities bury their young who have been putting guns to each other's heads and pulling the triggers. This has happened within a town close to mine and even in our own school, children have been sent home for carrying guns. There is a very real fatalism in the attitudes of many kids today. I believe I would share it were I the same age. I suppose I was the lucky one, I should have cherished my junior years, I never knew how few children in my own culture would get to live them.
There has been much hand wringing concerning all of this. Our news institutions have gone on at length asking just how such tragedies among our youth could take place. Everyone seems ready to place blame and deliver the ultimate answers that fit the news cycles. I think, however the old tune "All you need is love" would remedy much of these problems our children seem to face. If we could address them in all of our encounters with the will to give them our love, I believe our schools and streets would become safer places. And just maybe kids would start to consider poor gum placement as the ultimate trespasses in the world.
There has been much hand wringing concerning all of this. Our news institutions have gone on at length asking just how such tragedies among our youth could take place. Everyone seems ready to place blame and deliver the ultimate answers that fit the news cycles. I think, however the old tune "All you need is love" would remedy much of these problems our children seem to face. If we could address them in all of our encounters with the will to give them our love, I believe our schools and streets would become safer places. And just maybe kids would start to consider poor gum placement as the ultimate trespasses in the world.
