By Selwyn Duke

It’s a story that would shock me, were we living in a sane age.  Eleven third grade students in Waycross, Ga., devised a plot to kill their teacher and were in the process of carrying it out.  In discussing the details of the plan, Local6.com writes:

In addition to the knife being found, the school officials said other
students had duct tape, handcuffs, ribbon and a heavy crystal
paperweight.

The police chief in Waycross said that he believes
the plan may have been developed because one of the students was
punished with some sort of time out . . . .

I don’t mean to paint this in a simplistic way, but part of the problem is evident in the last paragraph.  Let’s get something straight: A "time out" isn’t a punishment; it’s an element of a ball game.  And the issue in modern America is that we’ve become a time-out civilization.

The time out is more than an act; it’s also a symbol of a pathologically permissive society.  To be frank, the time out sickens me, as it is nothing but self-deception, emblematic of a people that has become too weak to punish effectively or even use the word punishment. 

Not that long ago, though, it wasn’t like this.  When I was in elementary school, there were certainly a couple of teachers of whom my peers and I weren’t fond.   Yet to say that attacking them was never even contemplated would be an understatement.  In point of fact, such an act was so far beyond the realm of possibility that it could never even enter our consciousness.  You simply didn’t attack adults, and that was that.

The are manifold reasons why this is no longer so, but they all amount to a deep cultural malaise that has beset our "civilization" — and, yes, I use that word with reservation.  The truth is that however one might describe what is extant within our borders, parents are failing miserably at civilizing their children.   

Needless to say, this topic provides fodder enough for several large volumes, but I’ll touch on one aspect of it.  How do 8 and 9-year-olds reach a point at which they’re contemplating such a heinous crime?  I can tell you that it doesn’t happen overnight.  No, if this was within their realm of conception, I suspect that it was something that wasn’t all that incongruent within the context of their lives.  I’ll explain.

I used to work with children, and I discovered something.  It really is true that if you take care of the little things, the big things take care of themselves.  In other words, if kids can’t even get away with minor transgressions, the major ones usually don’t even enter their minds.

The problem nowadays is that kids are coddled, allowed to get away with anything and everything and, in the name of buttressing "self-esteem," are complimented for simply fulfilling their obligation to not do wrong.  Punishment is either non-existent or might as well be, as it’s so mild as to be ineffective; consequently, they grow up having no fear of consequences.   Thus, they become conditioned to feel (remember that feelings aren’t logical) that they can get away with anything.  Add to this the moral relativism they’re inculcated with and the passion-stoking violence they’re exposed to through entertainment, and you have a deadly mixture.

This won’t change, either, not until we start facing up to our true challenges.  Our real crisis has nothing to do with economics or sub-prime mortgages — although greedy, materialistic people might think so — health care, foreign wars or a lack of change and hope.  The real issue is our severe moral crisis, the one from which all other problems rise. 

As for the symptoms, 11 of them are some kids who live in Ga.  Yet they are only the obvious symptoms.  Less obvious are the tens of millions of children who will never plot murder or commit rape or theft, but who will be inadequate to the task of maintaining a constitutional republic. 

"Our Constitution was made for only a moral and religious people; it is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." — John Adams, 1798

                   Protected by Copyright