Who will Raise Them?

 When I was a kid the teachers at my school were not to be questioned.  They spoke with the authority of demigods and would threaten a just wrath for tomfoolery.  When I was a kid schools were a place we kids actually liked to be, sort of.  

I am able to admit that now in my later adultness.  I am capable of admitting that school was a place where our friends grouped and shared the stuff of childhood with each other.  Schools were the Payton Place of the age.  

Things are different now.  I go to High School every week day during the school year.  After all I am paid to be there.  It's the job thing.  However, the children under our scholastic care aren't like the children of my day.  These kids are more like little adults with the minds of kids.  This, and take my word for it, is not a good thing. These kids are more socially active than I am now, in all respects.  They know things that they shouldn't really know.  They practice things that they shouldn't really practice.  They are doing a young adult thing without really understanding the ramifications of their actions.  

I have to admit, I am an old hippie.  I have seen stuff.  I have done stuff.  We used to skinny dip in the local stream freely without thinking one way or the other about it.  Today, the kids are doing all sorts of stuff by the stream that leads to many teen pregnancies', I don't get it.  Doesn't mom and dad still do the talk?  Or are they leaving that up to us, the teachers?  We, don't go there because having that talk today with the active teen is like  professional suicide.  So the modern teen learns on their own. 

Now, I'm not an ignorant man, I do understand that every generation of teen has their own practices and ways of learning stuff.  Our generation had it's practices, the generation before us also had it's ways, and so forth to the beginning of humaness.  That is the nature of evolution.

I am hoping that in the near future we all go back to some semblance of nurturing where the parents take the responsibility of raising their own children and not leave it up to the greater society.  The old saying, "It takes a community to raise a child" is true, however the parents have to be the first actors in that community.  As Paul McCartney once sang, "Mother Mary comes to me speaking words of wisdom, let it be, let it be."   So my fingers are crossed in hopes society sanes up. 

Peace and Balance,

John