Childhood and teenage altercations or conflicts are also handled with a similar sense of a denial of winning and loosing. The mildest of infraction or argument is met by authority figures with an overzealous punishment in an effort to avoid “another Columbine.” No conflict is ever allowed to play out to its own natural conclusion. I would argue it is this very denial of natural resolution and victory or defeat that has contributed to our current situation of school violence.
Very few kids taste that sense of being pushed around and standing up for themselves. Conflict is messaged and denied until it builds and explodes in a mushroom cloud of anger and violence. Schools are pressure cookers of high expectations, cool and unrealistic parental pressure. Pushing anger and feelings of “not belonging,” or otherwise “loosing” farther back on the burner only allows the potential energy of this violence mushroom cloud to grow. Rather than allowing some pressure to be released through a couple of after school fracas and a winner and looser to emerge – the pressure builds and…
This line of reasoning could go on for pages and pages, an entire book even.
Neat tip: Win, loose, live life.
4 comments:
back to back neat tips. someone is feeling prolific. i must disagree with you here though. while im am opposed to the current parenting trend that seems to discourage active competition with clear winners and losers, i do not necessarily see the connection with that and the decade long increase in school violence. the softening up of our youth through "ties" does not, in my mind, correlate with school violence (and i think you would have a difficult time finding and empirical evidence to support such claims). School violence has been much more closely associated with bullying (and industrial goth music, i think). in bullying, its often those deemed by adolescent societies as the "winners" who bully and terrorize the "losers" until the "loser" can no longer take it anymore and the mushroom cloud of anger explodes.
It is difficult to quantify the impact that the few wins and countless losses have had in my life. Certainly, from a professional standpoint, losing is a realilty that needs to be strategically managed. In fact, taking losses on business transactions is an effective tool to capitalize down the road in many cases. It is equally important to remain humble and earnest through the successes of one's career knowing that sustained success is the only true form. I think Uncle Jerry is suggesting to never let your kids win in anything. Beat their asses in everything from checkers to hoops. That way, when they finally beat you in something (hopefully not beat you up) then they have officially arrived into manhood and will use that as the starter pistol to sustained success.
no solution here, just more questions. the social worker in me agrees with paul, although there may, in my opinion, be some link b/w the proposed "theory of the tie" and school violence. however, i think there's a larger, systemic problem facing kids today that's so ingrained in everyday life that it's nearly impossible to pinpoint (the whole trees from the forest thing). i speculate that the two biggest players in this problem are entitlement and access. kids are very entitled to a sense of fairness (maybe b/c they always tie?), as it's no longer acceptable for adults to respond to "that's not fair" with "whaddayawant? life isn't fair". even "losers" at school are cool now amongst other "losers", and they all get together and have parties on weekends and go to prom together and shit. entitlement is a huge problem, inasmuch that everyone wants to reason with kids b/c it's the only "fair" thing to do. parents are afraid to discipline their kids for fear of being reported to CPS, and teachers can't tell a kid to sit down and shut up without an investigation being launched and their jobs put in jeopardy. then there are those rare occasions when kids do decide to resort to old fashioned fisticuffs and duke it out in the McDonald's parking lot after school, and the "loser" comes back later with a bat, knife or gun and some friends b/c he can't accept the initial outcome of the fight. so even when there is a definite winner and loser scenario, it's not being accepted or respected and that's a problem. maybe it's b/c we haven't been through a draft and shipped off to war or something. access further compounds entitlement, as we were armed with maybe a few torn out pages of the anarchist's cookbook that taught us how to make the clump or get high off toothpast and orange peels(doesn't work), while today kids are texting school shooting plans on iphones, watching beheadings on youtube while masturbating in their own feces to guns and ammo. i just subscribed to ranger rick.
peanut butter and clump sandwiches, those will make you forget how to win.........
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