Should parents take the rap for misdeeds of kids?
At the height of the Columbine High School massacre, I’m sure many of us have tried to deal with the “whys” such carnage had to happen. Indeed, there are no easy answers nor would we in fact arrive at one that answers our concerns. You can’t blame the parents for they too must cope with so many unanswered queries as guardians of the kids that murdered schoolmates. The two kids are gone and won’t be around to explain whatever pushed them to the limits of a heinous crime that seem to replicate beyond Columbine’s school borders.
But then for years Hollywood has brought violence into films it produces and have acknowledged that they are part of the problem for promoting it in most action films they have filmed in the past three decades. And although most people refuse to accept television as a powerful medium of violent films, one need not hear the audio to absorb violence from the tube. It’s a medium where fantasies are born from ruined marriages to carnage in the evening news. Now you tell me that such isn’t so and you tell me too that women who are dedicated watchers of soap operas aren’t into promiscuity.
All the violence and sex in these films are fueled by the gradual shift from firm to loose discipline in families between the NMI and Maine. With a myriad of competing temptations fully displayed on television screen, we’ve also failed in the most important teachings for our siblings–spiritual development. At such a fragile age as adolescents, kids normally look for some firm anchor upon which they can rest for a while in order to get a glimpse of everything that is happening around them. When this anchor is missing, all the harbored anger they’ve kept in themselves could easily be unleashed in the dangerous game of intimidation taken out on guns, explosives, poisonous chemicals or some weird cult.
The solution to violence in school campuses can’t be treated permanently by short term answers like statutory requirements making parents accountable for wrongs committed by their children. And not when violence has been allowed viewing by our young people for the past 30 years on the most powerful tube–television. We must begin at the source of this beast–Hollywood! Why do you think there emerged the Public Broadcasting System in recent years? It’s a commitment to play family programs, an alternative to all the sex and violence played by conventional television stations. It’s a good and noble start to quell the powerful influence of violent films.
Sure, the moguls have made their millions while they leave behind a ruined society especially among ignorant young minds who needed peer approval by emulating what they’ve viewed and learned from television tubes. It’s pure rough waters and parents are only a part of the entire equation.
Highway rage
On my way to work yesterday morning, I noticed a huge rig snaking between lanes at about 45-55 miles an hour. I tailed (UIC’s HE 2454) all the way to Puerto Rico. The driver must be in a hurry in that he never slowed down even in front of MPI’s building. I quizzed myself whether the driver of this huge monster parked his brains in his back pocket for it must never occurred to him that he could easily inflict death and serious injury when his rig smashes another vehicle as he attempts to negotiate between lanes.
And this isn’t the first time that I had to follow rig speedsters in the public highways. The next time this happens, I will simply call DPS or 911 and report the license plate number, time and the recklessness that is used to intimidate smaller vehicles. Frankly, it’s pure stupidity that truck drivers use their size to willfully snake their way through heavy traffic. Take note please because next time you might not be so lucky.
