Out of Touch?

"According to Chief of Police of Waycross, Ga., Tony Tanner, on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 a group of third-graders plotted to attack their teacher, bringing a broken steak knife, handcuffs, duct tape and other items for the job and assigning children tasks including covering the windows and cleaning up afterward…The plot by as many as nine boys and girls at Center Elementary School in south Georgia was a serious threat, the chief said."

My first reaction was, “April Fool!” But it turns out to be no joke. Let’s see: when I was in the third grade and about 8 years old, my “plots” tended to center around how to smuggle a water pistol into school so my buds and I could get soaked at recess. I think that year I had two or three taken away—never to be returned, by the way. Or how to get excused from a boring class by claiming I needed to go to the restroom. Though, technically, it wasn’t a plot because it involved no one but me. And I remember at recess one day jumping on my friend Eddie’s back while horsing around. Unfortunately for me, he had a pencil in his back pocket and I got jabbed in the leg with its point. The lead tip that broke off didn’t come out until I was in my thirties.

All sounds amazingly innocent and boring, right? Yet, today we have kids the same age developing a pretty well thought out plan about how to take out a teacher. Frankly, I’m astounded. I’m speechless. How did this happen? Where did the idea come from? [Duh, Jerry, ever watch TV?] Where did the handcuffs they were caught with come from? Were there parents completely clueless? Will a follow up story tell us the parents were enraged that the school called the police? Will they be suing the school and the city for false arrest? And what happened to innocent fun? What ever happened to the old thumbtack in the chair trick? Whatever happened to parents who don’t take their kids’ side when the kids are obviously in the wrong?

I know I must sound like some old out of touch coot, but I can’t help but ask what our culture is coming to when 8 and 9 year olds want to attack and kill their teacher and go so far as to gather the equipment and develop a plan to do it.

Can there be any peace when this is what our world is like?

Jerry+