h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Yesterday, I went to serve a warrant on teenager for battery. He beat up a kid for "snitching." He and his gang have been harassing the victim since the victim reported being attacked at school last month. My target wasn't home, and we wound up having to wait around for a few minutes after we were done. The investigator that I was with asked, "Sarge, what's wrong with kids these days?"

I keep hearing that kids these days are different than we were young. That's usually followed by something like, "When we were kids my Dad would have beat my ass."

Are kids any different? I don't know. I generally see the worst of it. I see some disturbing trends in the media. Thug life is lionized. But the average high school here has over a thousand students, and I suspect that many of them go about their days without noticing the criminals in the schools who mostly prey on each other and at-risk kids on the margins.

I'm 39, but I remember stuff going on at school when I was young. Another student told me about his plan to sell LSD. We had a student die in a car wreck. One girl in our junior high school was reputed to be sleeping with a coach. All that, and I dropped out two years early, so I'm sure I missed a lot of the drama. When I was going to college downtown at age 16, I heard of the crips and bloods, but I felt safe walking around in the city late at night.

I look at the movies that reflect a view of teenage life, and I don't see a lot of difference between American Pie and Ferris Bueller.

I wonder about some possible explanations:
We notice more now. In most of the United States, there's at least one police officer assigned to every school (I used to be a school resource officer, and it was the best job I ever had). I only remember seeing a cop at school once when I was little. There are mandatory reporting laws and increased oversight of professionals.

Problems are more spread out. Big cities have been dismantling their housing projects and trying to get the populations to spread out in the suburbs with vouchers. The birth places of major gangs are gone.

It could be that I just live in a different place. I grew up way out in the sheltered suburbs of Portland, Oregon without a lot of diversity. Now I live in a more mixed economic area. I'm in the suburbs, but we have several small cities each with the wrong side of the tracks. Also, I live near Atlanta.

Are things different, or are these just the ramblings that people in their 30s and 40s have always said?

Humanity is clearly devolving into a violent, aggressive species of killer ape.....





Oh, ..Wait..

>>Are things different, or are these just the ramblings that people in their 30s and 40s have always said?<<
...and their 50s, 60s, 70s. Probably 80s too though I can't confirm that.

My take on it is that there's no significant difference - but there is in society and in the parents' attitudes.
Not forgetting that the media helps spread bad news, and some of it sticks in some places.

I wasn't alive in the 80's, but things didn't seem too bad when I was still in high school. Also, I could be remembering this wrong but I think juvenile crime is actually supposed to have gone down over the last decade.

I'm inclined to think our views on it have more to do with our age than changes in society. I try to keep that in mind.

I hate rap, but I don't imagine that my parents cared much for heavy metal. On the other hand, I don't know that a lot of metal bands were so closely associated with criminal organizations.

When I was a kid we were up to stuff all the time, always in trouble for this or that.

In the 11 years I've lived in this house I have noticed that the kids who hang around outside the shop opposite are now much worse. The last year or so they have got me so I won't answer the door after dark, I make people come to the kitchen window so I can see who they are. I won't catch their eye as I'm driving about the estate, and this year with the snow I've been too nervy to walk the dogs or even go and get in the car after about 3pm when they all start gathering outside because they've been really violent with the snowballs. I've also had my windscreen shot so I had to have it replaced with an air pistol.

There's been 'attacks' on my vehicles before, and the snowball throwing, but this is the first time they've caused proper damage that I've had to get repaired.

I've wondered if this is my age - and that for the first time I've been single for quite a while, so feel I have no-one to turn to. But no, I really feel that the kids this year are much worse than they have been before. To me, anyway. The kids that were causing problems when I moved in, I keep seeing with little kids where they have grown up.

I don't know what crime rates are doing right now. One of the problems with criminal justice is that our practioners and our academics never communicate.

One of the probelms with messuring crime rates, especially with juveniles, is that it's mostly the result of police reports. At least in my state, the cops hate dealing with the juvenile system. Because of the lack of sanctions and the paperwork involved, a lot of cops try not to deal with kids unless they're working a specialized assignment in a school, child crimes, or gangs.

But I think I'm in danger of hijacking the thread that I started.

Do you ever call the police?

You won't catch me saying this often, but the Archbishop Of Canterbury was bang-on with his Christmas sermon this year: kids are being forced to grow up too fast. Latch-key kids have been headline news since the 1980s, and unsurprisingly, given the burgeoning population of single parents, and even a lot of couples who need to work 9-5 to pay the mortgage. Of course a lot of this is down to irresponsible parenting as well - a depressing proportion of children simply aren't given the opportunity to make the best of themselves unless they grow up and do it themselves. It's no surprise that a lot of kids at my school really enjoy their Food Technology (yeah, Home Ec) lessons: they're learning to make something tastier and more nutritious than Mum is capable of.

The increased pressure on maturity can be easily ascribed to virtually every negative knock-on effect: not least increased levels of drug taking, teenage promiscuity and pregnancy and interspersion with the criminal classes.

Yes - after the public meeting where the police told us they were suprised how much moaning we were doing when they never got phone calls from our street.

Since the van was shot, if the kids are creating and throwing snowballs at me I've been calling 999. Before that I was just dialling the 'non-emergency' number.

The police have told me that when they ring parents to tell them the kids are at the police station they're told to leave the kids in the cell as it will teach them a lesson. They just don't care.

I guess they're just happy they don't have to deal with their own kids, or teach them right from wrong themselves. Which makes me think it's the previous generation that started to go really wrong.

My son doesn't roam the streets, but I've just found out he's been helping himself to my credit card for months to buy virtual stuff online, so there's a general lack of supervision going on even for indoor kids!

There's nothing 'wrong' with being a single parent, but there's a reason it takes two to make a baby. With just one parent, there's not enough time to earn a living, have a life of my own, and do other things I enjoy, while trying to make sure the kid grows up right and proper. It's been too easy letting the computer babysit him. Should I be complaining that the neighbours are letting the police babysit their kids?

I forgot to say, the difference is, he's not terrorising anyone else. His bad behaviour is only affecting *me*. Not the rest of the community.

Bugger! Accidently pressed 'Post' too early - more to follow...

What I was about to say is that there are a surprising number of positives, too. My teaching style largely rests on treating all my pupils like adults: my 11-year-old Year 7s are not treated very differently from my A-Level classes (although I do permit myself considerable swearing in front of the latter - especially when their exam results come in). It tends to garner a very positive response from the most able, and intriguingly the very lower sets who appreciate not being treated like gimboids. The pupils who cause most trouble in my lessons tend to be those with over-indulgent pupils who want to demand everything in life and throw tantrums when I refuse to back down to them.

The postives, though, are terrific. Take your average Sex Ed lesson, for instance. This used to be taught in fraught silence with a horrifically-blushing teacher and horridly embarrassed group of pupils. Today's kids will barely bat an eyelid. They've been expected to learn a lot of fundamentals early and will voluntarily ask questions in intimate and quite gory detail. Many Year 11 girls will happily discuss their sex lives with members of staff.

Elsewhere, Chemistry practicals have - if anything - become much easier to manage as pupils become accustomed to adulthood. The Mummy's Boys get marginalised as they try to burn their biros and drop rubbers in test tubes of acid (although the subsequent hydrogen sulphide is more than enough reason to marginalise them), as children are much more accustomed to adult responsibilities.

Probably the biggest limiting factor is the fact that no-one is teaching elementary social skills to children who are accustomed to speaking their mind, interrupting, trading insults with all and sundry, and using pummelling as a means of disproval. All of these are seen by us as anti-social and unpleasant, and I'm not suggesting for a minute that I disagree. But there is no denial that the world of communications we know today would have been unrecognisable when many of today's teenagers were born; it is unsurprising that methods of interaction are rapidly changing too. Again, this harks back to a need for better parenting: literacy, numeracy and social skills, I suspect, may become the new mandate - not for schools, but at home.

B

>The police have told me that when they ring parents to tell them the kids are at the police station they're told to leave the kids in the cell as it will teach them a lesson. They just don't care.

I get that response sometimes too. Sometimes it's because they think it will teach them a lesson. Sometimes it's because they can't think of anything else to do. Some are too lazy to come get them.

I remember arresting one kid who was detained in the Youth Detention Center overnight. The next day, the parents didn't bother showing up at court. That's a great message to send to a 14 year old. When I was working in the jail some years later and he was an adult, he and I talked for a bit about that.

On the other hand, it's not a new attitude. After a shift briefing the other day, one of the sergeants was talking about his hijinks when he was growing up. He told the story of when he was out shining deer (Shining a light at a deer so it will stay still while you shoot it). The game warden caught them. They tried to run, but they put their truck in a ditch. The game warden dragged them down to the county jail and called the sergeant's dad. The dad asked them if there was an overcrowding problem in the jail, and said that he'd pick him up in the morning.

I've known people for whom the fear of jail whether they went one night or were on probation helped them go straight. It definitely doesn't work for everyone, or I'd be out of a job. Almost all of my business is repeat business.

Again, I think this is all part of the increasing maturity of today's teenager. Twenty years ago, being dragged into the cells and kept for the night would petrify pretty much anyone up to the age of 17. I teach kids five years younger who have been kept overnight by the police and quite enjoyed the experience in an 'I can brag to my friends' sort of way.

I suspect the almost-universal lack of faith in the establishment (fostered carefully since the 1960s) is responsible for this. We don't trust the politicians, the police, the education system or the church any more. What is there left to fall back on?

B

>>The pupils who cause most trouble in my lessons tend to be those with over-indulgent pupils who want to demand everything in life and throw tantrums when I refuse to back down to them.<<

There's a parenting TV programme on here at the moment that told the story of a children's birthday party clown who got punched in the groin by a five year old boy. The boy laughed, even when the clown said that it hurt, and then sat down. No-one (adults) did anything. The clown has been entertaining for 30 years and says without a doubt children are much worse behaved than they used to be, but also that the adult's behaviour has changed. The thing that stood out was that parents were too scared to do anything about their children's behaviour. This seems to be because (a) they don't want to be seen to be mean to children, and (b) something to do with not hurting the child's self esteem

The parenting TV guy and the clown said that it's the upper middle class kids that are the worst because they have such a sense of entitlement.

I find this alot with the people I know raising kids - there's this idea that it's bad to tell kids what to do, that they have to learn to think and make sense of the world and make decisions and that the parent's job is to facilitate that. I'm sure that's important at some point but I cringe now when I see friends expecting their primary school age children to make decisions that they're too young for.


In general so many things have changed in the last 30 years. Drugs are far more available in schools than in the 80s. We lowered the drinking age here (from 20 to 18, which means instead of getting into the pub at 15 you can get in a 13 now) and then we permitted selling of premixed spirits (alcopops), both of which have entrenched a much worse drinking culture (and it wasn't that great before). There's a whole bunch of flow on effects from that including increased STDs and date rape.

When I left school in the mid 80s there was unemployment but there was still this idea that getting a job was possible and all our parents had worked for most of their lives. Now there are people who have grown up watching adults struggle with unemployment and low incomes and there seems to be much more a sense of acceptance that this is just how it is.

I'm sure there are geographical differences here. Maybe the US went through those kinds of changes earlier.


Nice to see you back Two Bit.

We have the same problem here. In gangs and our thuggish sub-culture, it's a mark of pride to go to jail.

Jails are probably nicer now than they've ever been, and will probably continue to improve. After having worked in a jail, it's a lot easier to work in one that's well run. The booking area of a well-run jail is a bit like a doctor's waiting room. Things can get pretty dingy in the back if your staff doesn't ride the inmates some.

A night in jail can scare some, but many times it teaches people that jail is survivable. That's why I hate "scared straight" programs. The original program actually increased criminality.

As far as trust of public instituions goes, I think there is an interesting change there. I've been watchin Life on Mars, and there's a scene where an inmate dies in 1973. A detective goes to the house to notify the inmate's mother, and she says, "If you can't trust the police, who can you trust."

The level of police accountability is so much higher now than it was thirty years ago, but back then the word of a police officer was gold. Now it is my impression that juries want to believe the police, but they're not 100% comfortable unless an officer-witness has some sort of corroboration.

Again, I'm in danger of taking things off topic.

>Drugs are far more available in schools than in the 80s.

Really? I don't think I would have had a hard time getting drugs when I was in school in the 80s.

>When I left school in the mid 80s there was unemployment but there was still this idea that getting a job was possible and all our parents had worked for most of their lives. Now there are people who have grown up watching adults struggle with unemployment and low incomes and there seems to be much more a sense of acceptance that this is just how it is.

I suspect that this is something that comes and goes. I read a book of essay's about DNA's work recently. One of the essays discussed the economic times in the early 70s that may have influenced some of Adam's stories. Tough economic times are generally something that just comes and goes.

On the other hand, we do have groups in the United States where they don't see jobs on the horizon. They're the ones that have been taken care of by the government all their lives. Their housing is provided by Section 8 vouchers and dinner was bought by food stamps. What do you do with a kid from a family where no one has ever worked a meaningful job?

>Nice to see you back Two Bit.

Thanks,

Not in the slightest - your thread, after all. Plus you agree with me, which is generally a good thing, in my mind.

Perhaps it's just US becoming 'old', but if there is to be any pressure to maintain the standards to which we are used, there will need to be a radical overhaul of the system that does it.

On the flipside, change is inevitable, and currently it is happening so rapidly that our stagnated society cannot deal with it. There may be a breaking point, but it will probably be one that the elders don't recognise and the youngers embrace.

B

>>Really? I don't think I would have had a hard time getting drugs when I was in school in the 80s. <<

That's probably the difference between the US and NZ. I got my drugs from my brother's friends who were several years older, had already left school and had the cash and contacts. But no-one was buying drugs at school, or if they were it was uncommon. The teens I know now buy their drugs at school (or from school friends), and the choice is *much bigger than it was. It's in their faces, whereas when I was that age you had to go looking for it.

>>Tough economic times are generally something that just comes and goes.<<

Again, possibly a geographical difference. White NZ hasn't seen poverty like this since the 1930s. That's a long time, and that ended relatively quickly, but I don't see an end to the underclass that's been created in the past 20 years, at least not within my lifetime). Maori have a different experience of course, for historical reasons.


>>What do you do with a kid from a family where no one has ever worked a meaningful job?<<

Stop expecting cheap foreign labour to support our excessive lifestyles so that our neighbours can all have jobs again?

I get frustrated by todays yoof sometimes (as I get older I suppose), but there I can't blame them for there not being enough jobs, that's down to our generations. I also can't really blame them for not having the skills or vision to get out of a poverty trap they had nothing to do with creating.