Valuing Childhood
The value of childhood is easily blurred in today's world. Consider some recent developments:The child-murderers in the Jonesboro, Ark. schoolyard shooting casel were convicted and sentenced.Two boys, 7 and 8 were charged in the murder of an 11-year-old girl in Chicago. Continents away,children as young as 11 were being recruited to fight in Congo's renewed civil war.
Children who commit horrible crimes ostensibly act on their own volition4. Yet, as legal proceedings in Jonesboro showed, the one boy who was able to address the cOurt5 couldn't begin to explain his acts, though he tried to apologize. There may have been a motive - youthful jealousy and resentment. But a deeper question lingers: Why did these boys and others in similar trouble apparently lack any inner, moral restraint?
That question echoes for the accused in Chicago, young as they are. They wanted the girl's bicycle, a selfish impulse common enough among kids. But those children just out of second or third grade resort to lethal viciousness.
The pre-teen soldiers in Congo are probably not making their own decisions. But they, too,are caught in a moral void, where the innocence of childhood and the instruction of family and 1s community are
replaced by reflexive violence and killing. Redeeming young lives
The problems of eventually redeeming such youthful warriors can be daunting. Experience in countries torn by civil war, like Mozambique and Afghanistan, attests to this.
Redemption, however, is a practical necessity. How can value be restored to young lives Jistorted by acts of violencez The boys in Jonesboro and in Chicago, if they too are convicted, will be confined in institutions for a relatively short time. Despite horror at what was done, chiidren are not - cannot - be dealt with as adults, not if a people wants to consider itself civilized.
hat's why politicians' cries for adult treatment of youthful criminals ultimately miss the point.
Maybe provision should be made for longer detention of children who commit heinous crimes. But the decreasing years of perpetrators cry out for' a much broader response.
To begin with, the cultural context of youth crime in modern society demands scrutiny. Popular forms of entertainment expose children to material - graphic violence, implicit and explicita sex - that skews moral sensibility. Movies, video games, TV shows, pop music lyrics, and electronic junk mail present children with images and issues that too easily crowd out interests and pursuits more suitable for children. All are
symptomatic of, and contribute to, a mental environment short on moral boundaries.
Many sources of moral void
But the moral void that invites violence has many sources. Family instability contributes. So does economic stress. That void, however, can be filled. The work starts with parents, who have to ask themselves whether they're doing enough to give their children a firm sense of right and wrong. Are they really monitoring their activities and their developing processes of thought? Churches must strengthen their moral instruction. Social critic and author Stephen Carter points out that religious training lies at the core of civilized behavior.
Schools, too, have a role in building character. So do youth organizations. So do law enforcement agencies, which can do more to inform the young about laws, their meaning, and their observance. Internationally, treaties and conventions exist to prohibit the misuse of children in militaries or sweatshops. Pressure to honor them should be incessant.
The goal, ultimately, is to allow all children a normal passage from childhood to adulthood,so that tragic gaps in moral judgment are less likely to occur. The relative few who fill such gaps with acts of violence hint at many others who don't go that far, but who nonetheless lack the
moral foundations childhood should provide - and which progressive human society relies on. The world's need
Speaking to the members of her church, but striking a theme for adults and children everywhere, the founder of this newspaper, Mary Baker Eddy, once said: \children, the world has need of you - and more as children than as men and women: it needs your innocence, unselfishness .0 faithful affection, uncontaminated lives.\
A world that truncates childhood too easily loses sight of the values and qualities - such as faithfulness and unselfishness - that underlie constructive adulthood.
The tragedies visited on us by children who appear to be morally adrift are alarms that can't be ignored.
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