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Getting a rise out of one’s elders is perhaps the
greatest joy of adolescence. I suspect this has always been so; if
George Washington really did chop down his father’s cherry tree it
was probably just to see the look on the old man’s face.
With no cows to milk or crops to harvest, kids today
have considerably time on their hands than in Washington’s era, or
even a few decades ago. Many fill their hours with increasingly
creative rabble rousing, and as the culture of the day seems to
believe that right and wrong are relative, some parents are
reluctant to draw lines.
When children test their limits a parent’s proper role
is to put an end to the mischief if it goes too far and to harrumph
and sputter if it is merely annoying. What good parents realize,
and children do not, is that the bluster is really more of a warning
than real irritation, like the buzz of an electric fence. If it
helps kids achieve their minimum daily requirement of aggravation
and move on to more productive activities, so much the better.
But things have changed; maybe George could not tell a
lie but he still got a whippin’. Today the matter would be chalked
up to the boy just expressing his individuality.
Witness San Mateo, California, just across San Francisco
Bay from the hometown of so-called “American Taliban” John Walker
Lindh, where high school students have formed what they call “The
Satanic Thought Society.” A club flier claims its purpose is to
demonstrate that “Satanism is not the practice of resurrecting hate
and violence through evil spirits, nor is it a cult religion wherein
people worship a horned beast symbolic of the leader of hell.”
It is those things and more, Disney-fied or not, though
I doubt that’s what drew the 35 or so students who attended the
club’s first meeting last month. More to the point, the San Mateo
County Times reports one of the co-founders admits he started the
club to “rile things up a bit.”
Well, in a word, duh.
They have their principal fooled, however. “These young
men are really interested in the philosophical teachings of
alternative religions,” she gushed. According to the
district superintendent, “I (want) to make it clear that these
kids are being supervised properly and they have an outstanding
adviser.” Maybe, but my guess is this won’t show up on his resume.
I favor allowing voluntary religious clubs and prayer in
public schools and understand why a school might permit the group on
that basis. I’d rather the administrators weren’t delusional about
it, but that’s for the good people of San Mateo to fret.
What alarms me is that parents who presumably wouldn’t
let their kids dash in front of trains or play chicken on the
freeway would allow this blatant flirtation with spiritual
disaster. Whether ones believes that Satan exists or thinks he is
merely a myth, why would anyone allow a child to embrace the icon of
ultimate wickedness for any reason, youthful high jinks or not?
We’re not talking about shoving a potato up a tailpipe here; evil is
real and one need only read the news to see that thoughts lead to
actions.
Perhaps we have so thoroughly defined success by
material and educational achievement that we’ve forgotten the soul.
Or maybe, like education, we’re content to leave that to the
schools.
Call me old-fashioned but I believe both are the
responsibility of parents. Most of the members of the Satanic
Thought Society will probably tire of it when the fuss dies down and
find other ways to amuse themselves, but they risk a pileup with
this game of spiritual chicken just the same. When it happens,
they, like John Walker Lindh, will have their spineless parents to
thank. |
