Last month in Bartow, FL , two children ages 11 and 13 were home after school. They found the next door  neighbors two year old cocker spaniel puppy and lured him over to their yard. Next, they strung the dog from a tree using a chain. While the dog was dangling from the tree fighting to breath and stay alive, the children had the idea to take a weed-whacker  and  sever the dog’s paws and tail. Then, finally as a grand finale, they  slit the animal’s throat. Next, they gathered the pieces of the animal and put them into a foam cooler. That was it as far as they were concerned until the dog’s remains were found. The boys were connected to the incident and consequently arrested.
        Feeling sick yet? The issue now is what to do with these children. Cruelty to an animal is a third degree felony. So, do we try the kids as adults and stick them in prison for awhile? Or as juveniles and leave them to rot in a juvenile detention center?  What to be done with these children turned monsters is not determined  yet. The better question to analyze is why  the incidence of juvenile violence has so rapidly increased. If this story wasn’t enough to justify the feeling that something is terribly wrong with today’s youth start looking at the newspapers. Animal cruelty is just the beginning of the heinous crimes committed by children. Stories of 10 year old boys molesting 7 year old little girls. An 8 year old who is already so racist she can’t stand to be in the same room as a white person. An 11 year-old pre-meditating murder of a classmate due to childish words spoken in a playground.  Better yet start paying attention to the children around you.
        Violence really has become a moral to these kids. With kids our age it started as a joke when we were in elementary school 10 years ago. If someone made you mad, you would say, "I’m going to kill you." Did you really kill someone? Did you premeditate murder? I don’t think so.  However, if there was a dispute at the summer camp I worked at this summer, and a threat like that was said, we would be concerned. Partially because we know what some kids are capable of and more often than not because we never knew what type of weapon they could get their little hands on. Another example, my best friend’s little brother is in 6th grade at a suburban elementary school. He was telling us how stupid the new dress code policy is at school. He is mostly upset because he can’t wear his chain wallet. Why is that a concern we inquired?  He announced to us that he and his friends were going to brawl with some other neighborhood groups of kids and he might need the chain as a weapon. Putting the conflict resolution stuff to work, I asked what the point was. He couldn’t come up with one but he did point out that both sides already had knives and someone in his group was going to get a gun.  Turns out the next day, there was a locker search and they found several knives and a small caliber gun. What does all of this have to do with childhood? All this being said, fighting is normal for kids. The problem is when the normalcy of a childhood squabble is ended by a blood bath.
        For answers, you can turn to the standard excuses for violence- television, evil music and blood thirsty video games. You can quote statistics such as the ratio of public school children to PTA members being 7:1 as an example of the lack of parental commitment. You can talk about the break down of the family unit, child abuse, latchkey children, and a lack of guidance etc. Where are the real answers? More importantly, what are the solutions to the onset of violence?
I just don’t know. What I do know is that as a socially conscious adult who spends a lot of time with children from all spectrums of society- ghettos to mansions- I am scared.  Hatred is rampant whether due to race, economic differences or imagined conflicts. People don’t relate to each other. People prefer to have online friends rather then real ones. Many people seriously lack self-fulfillment and consequentially self-respect. Without a feeling of self worth, people can not function well with other people. Are these the problems we are seeing with some of our troubled youth? Definitely. However it is not the traditional troubled youth that has me concerned but the children who have all the right environments and support systems yet they still continue to go haywire. Incidentally, on a whole mental illness percentages are increasing in all age brackets. Why are drastic numbers of people going crazy?
        My final project for my printmaking portfolio was to create a piece embodying "My World."  That was really hard for me to do. There are so many things that are important and need to be fixed in this world. What I ended up doing was  a mixed text and image print. The text was a block consisting of all the things I would like to see happen in the world. Besides the obvious things like food, shelter and care for all people and animals- respect and the ability to communicate honestly were priorities. If these things really existed for and by everyone many of the "-ism’s" of  our society would disappear.  I established what I felt was necessary and I could do to make the world a better place, but how to make any of my world come to be? By trying to empower young people through the arts, plantings, teaching them how to teach other people how to do things, and generally taking the time to spend quality time with kids who need that time from somewhere. Is this going to solve everything? Of course not, and hey, it may not change anything but at least I can say I try.
        I got to do that work in Americorps the last two years and with graduation rapidly approaching, and unsure of my chosen career path, I decided to take my commitment a step further- the peace corps. When I tell people about my upcoming departure for the peace corps, most of them ask why I would make such a commitment. I think that being isolated from my routine of idealistic, do-gooder by day and hardcore kid by night, or at least Sunday matinees, will help me really get to the bottom of what I can do to help. For me to get away from all of it, I really do have to leave the country. Scary, eh? Anyway, it does comfort me that I am not the only one (there are 6,500 peace corps volunteers serving at anyone time)  willing to spend 27 months in a foreign country dedicated to make life a little better for those to come.  Much of what I have just talked about came from the fact that I finally have time to pay close attention to what goes on all over the world by reading newspapers, searching the web, and I really hate to admit this, but also watching TV. When I was in college, I knew that all of these societal problems existed from being observant about what was going around me at the school I taught at, or the after school and summer programs, but I never really had a time to reflect on what all of those little incidents added up to or that there were horrendous events happening with children all over the world because I was so busy doing what I had to do. I love it when people think college students are so informed. If you would spend some serious time pondering why you think the world has become like it is and any ideas you have to make things a little better, I would love to hear them. Finally, if you have the time and the inclination there are a million people (and animals)  who need your help right now.

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