Kids will be kids, but they won't always be
To paraphrase Bubbles from the brilliant Halifax-produced television sensation, Trailer Park Boys, the Greek philosopher, Plato, was the smartest man who ever lived.
Plato, who was born in 429 BC and died in 347 B.C., observed and wrote about a lot of things in his 82 years. One of the many things he noticed about life in ancient Greece was juvenile delinquency.
"What is happening to our young people?” he wrote. “They disrespect their elders. They disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets, inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?"
Sound familiar?
Well, not to take anything away from one of humanity’s greatest thinkers, but hello for stating the obvious.
Plato touched on a problem that was old when cave kids were throwing rocks at saber tooth tigers and sneaking fermented grains behind the family cave.
Young people have been acting out for as long as there have been people who are young. A lot of it’s harmless, something to look back at when you’re older and say, “Why did I ever do that?”
Some of it is not so harmless, like drug abuse and violent crime.
It’s interesting to note that Plato disapproved of poetry and plays. He thought they corrupted young people and made them imitate the bad deeds they saw and heard. Sounds kind of like all the talk in recent years about television, video games and music being a bad influence on young people and making them imitate the bad deeds they see and hear.
I think we’ve got to look a litter deeper than that. It’s easy to lay blame on things like videos or movies as being the cause of all our youthful woes. Young people were just as steeped in trouble 2,500 years back in Plato’s day without MTV and Stallone flicks. And smart or not, Plato was way off when he started knocking plays as being bad for kids. Remember, he was getting up there in years and was probably beginning to feeling cranky about all that confounded dramatic stuff.
I don’t think the majority of kids in this city are mean or bad. I think they’re frustrated by the lack of recreational facilities available to them. So some of them gather outside the movie theatre or in the parks or in the woods and get up to no good because they’ve got nothing better to do.
Well, it’s about time we found a few more wholesome things for them to do. There is a movement afoot with the city’s new Youth Strategy and with the new Assets program to do just that. We need to throw our wholehearted support behind such endeavor’s, and to listen to what they can teach us.
Folk wisdom has it that children are the future. They are the ones who are going to look after us when we are old; and they will be running the show when we have shuffled off this mortal coil. We’ve got to take a serious interest in our youth and teach them respect for the things in this life that are good and decent.
They are not going to learn those things on the streets. They’re going to learn them at home from their families. Remember that.
Plato, who was born in 429 BC and died in 347 B.C., observed and wrote about a lot of things in his 82 years. One of the many things he noticed about life in ancient Greece was juvenile delinquency.
"What is happening to our young people?” he wrote. “They disrespect their elders. They disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets, inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?"
Sound familiar?
Well, not to take anything away from one of humanity’s greatest thinkers, but hello for stating the obvious.
Plato touched on a problem that was old when cave kids were throwing rocks at saber tooth tigers and sneaking fermented grains behind the family cave.
Young people have been acting out for as long as there have been people who are young. A lot of it’s harmless, something to look back at when you’re older and say, “Why did I ever do that?”
Some of it is not so harmless, like drug abuse and violent crime.
It’s interesting to note that Plato disapproved of poetry and plays. He thought they corrupted young people and made them imitate the bad deeds they saw and heard. Sounds kind of like all the talk in recent years about television, video games and music being a bad influence on young people and making them imitate the bad deeds they see and hear.
I think we’ve got to look a litter deeper than that. It’s easy to lay blame on things like videos or movies as being the cause of all our youthful woes. Young people were just as steeped in trouble 2,500 years back in Plato’s day without MTV and Stallone flicks. And smart or not, Plato was way off when he started knocking plays as being bad for kids. Remember, he was getting up there in years and was probably beginning to feeling cranky about all that confounded dramatic stuff.
I don’t think the majority of kids in this city are mean or bad. I think they’re frustrated by the lack of recreational facilities available to them. So some of them gather outside the movie theatre or in the parks or in the woods and get up to no good because they’ve got nothing better to do.
Well, it’s about time we found a few more wholesome things for them to do. There is a movement afoot with the city’s new Youth Strategy and with the new Assets program to do just that. We need to throw our wholehearted support behind such endeavor’s, and to listen to what they can teach us.
Folk wisdom has it that children are the future. They are the ones who are going to look after us when we are old; and they will be running the show when we have shuffled off this mortal coil. We’ve got to take a serious interest in our youth and teach them respect for the things in this life that are good and decent.
They are not going to learn those things on the streets. They’re going to learn them at home from their families. Remember that.
posted by Street Wise Guy | 2:25 PM
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