LETTERS: START BY LISTENING TO OUR CHILDREN

To the editor:

On Dec. 1, Gary Rust's column included an excerpt, "Where did it all begin?" The author, Clarence Schultz, names not one factor, but a whole range of social and political influences which he feels are to blame for the moral degradation and unconscience-ing of our youth. This bit is interesting not for its novelty of thought, but for its degree of evolution. It is the latest and most advanced model of wrongheaded and lamentable thinking on the subject. The author, like many if not all of his predecessors, is content to settle for the easiest and most deceptive form of action available: finger pointing. Finger pointing always carries with it the unspoken solution to any problem: "This thing is bad. Fix it, and all will be well." Yet rarely does it do anything practical besides assuage our consciences and dissuade us from any real action. It is easy and complacent. Should we be surprised that it holds such popular appeal?

It is no revelation to any thinking creature that our society is rotten to its solid-gold core. And, without a doubt, some if not all of the factors mentioned by Mr. Schultz have a bearing on the plight of our children. Yet this knowledge does us little good, for it is incomplete. It is satisfied with naming a cause rather than a feasible solution. It looks at the pieces rather than the big picture. And, more importantly, it looks through the wrong eyes. That is, it tries to solve the problems of children with the understanding of fully grown adults who have forgotten what it is to be a child. Sadly, even if they did remember, they could still never be these children.

For it is the particular doom of the present generation of kids to be caught between youth and adulthood. Though we always accept without comment the confession that the child programs the VCR more effectively than the parent, it is just this sort of discrepancy which should clue us in to the differences between the children of today and those of 30, 20, even 10 years ago. These kids are different. They are smarter and more advanced, not because the genes are better these days, but simply because they have to be. They have a global village to contend with, and they have a television and an Internet which brings every part of that immense village right into their home. They are the targets of our vast capitalist machine that, from the moment of their birth, attempts with nearly unfailing success to make them over into its own image. They are continually acted upon by more factors than it is possible to count or even comprehend, and it is too much. They have neither the benefit of age nor of experience to process those factors or this world. They are kids, with kid thoughts and kid games and kid dreams. Yet they aren't. And it must be more difficult than adults, especially adults who grew up in quite a different world, can understand, to be lost in such a way with no frame of reference.

Mr. Schultz and many others would have us believe that it is a question of morals and of accountability, and I do not deny that possibility. But there is quite a bit more to the story than the absence of prayer in school and the fact that we don't spank our children. There is also the Old Navy advertisement, and the war in Bosnia, and the newest computer, and all of the other aspects of a world too massive for any of us, let alone a child of 10. Perhaps it is not that children have no conscience, but rather that they have no rallying point, no stable ground and no identity to cling to.

What is to be done? Perhaps we should ask the Speak Out caller who took a few brief seconds to eloquently advocate listening to our children. Is it so simple as merely this? Of course not. But listening is in the very spirit of the remedy. I speak not of a "return to the family" as so many others do, though such a thing can only help the present situation. In its purest form, what I suggest goes well beyond the traditional boundaries of the family. It is for all of us, parents or not, to be invested in children. It is to listen to them and be honest with them. It is to play with them. At times, it is simply to sit among them. But, most importantly, it is to begin to understand them and treat them for what they are: remarkable creatures simultaneously both fragile and resilient, both playful and serious, both young and old. If we can manage this, then it is my guess that we will discover our children have the potential to teach us as much as we can teach them. Not only can they show us how to program the VCR, but perhaps they can also tell us about a foosball game or a first kiss those delights of youth we laid aside long ago when someone convinced us that adulthood was good and proper and right.

ADAM M. COX

Cape Girardeau