Where's

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

a policeman
when you need one
to blame the color T.V.?

http://www.news4jax.com/news/15761895/detail.html

They are not learning this from cartoons. :confused::confused::confused:

[BeautifulBurnout]

You only have to read Lord of the Flies to know that unfettered kids are evil little buggers.
Tanner said the parents of the children accused are, "Shocked, saddened, and surprised. This is their worst nightmare."

You're damn right this is their worst nightmare. I really can't comment on what was going through the minds of these kids, but I sincerely hope that this is a wake-up call for their parents to actually try and understand where this kind of behaviour is coming from and take some responsibility to address it. It is too easy to blame it on cartoons/video games/tv shows/whatever else. :(

[cacophony]

awwwwww WHY does no good news come out of georgia?! it's always the really stupid, embarrassing shit!

[gillenium]

How could this many 3rd graders opt into a plan like this? It boggles my mind. You'd think at least one would be like "Uh... no, this is bad" and tell a teacher or a parent.

Kinda scared for the future of our country right now.. Although, I agree with some of you that it's silly to blame TV and videogames and all that, I do think TV and videogames are part of a more socially violent trend that's affecting all aspects of kids' lives now. Couple that with the decreasing standard of American parenting and you've got a recipe for crap like this.

[Deckard]

Although, I agree with some of you that it's silly to blame TV and videogames and all that, I do think TV and videogames are part of a more socially violent trend that's affecting all aspects of kids' lives now...
I agree, and it's yet another of those circular self-fuelling things - culture influencing behaviour influencing culture.... chicken and egg stuff that makes it very hard to tackle.

And like you say, there are other not insignificant factors more generally (with the usual caveats about recognising them as generalisations and not drawing simplistic direct correlations)... standard of parenting, change in family structure, change in attitude to authority figures, inequality (and perceived inequality), change in lifestyle and diet, a sense that the world owes you a living, a triumph of sensation over fact, of emotion over reason, of personal enjoyment over consequences... etc etc.

Slightly unrelated, but I was going to start a thread a while back on the way our* culture seems to have developed into one that almost celebrates cruelty, cynicism and selfishness. About how people years ago seemed so much more humble, less cynical and conducted themselves with so much more decency and consideration for others. I know this all probably sounds so cliched, but sometimes when I look at what makes us laugh now on TV, the cruelty, the humiliation, something as simple as the way a chatshow has evolved or how the news is delivered.... I do question whether it's really for the better, and where exactly we're headed if we remain on this path. Yeah I know, going off on one here, but it's something that's become increasingly apparent to me, even if it makes me feel like an old git for saying so.

*I'm referring to what might be arrogantly described as popular Western culture.

[chuck]

bloody old gits.

next thing you'll be wanting the cane back.

Someone blame the teachers. Loafers all of them - only work 9 till 3, get bloody long holidays, and they're still going out on strike. Communist, mung bean hippies the lot of them. N. bloody U. bloody T.

Nuts to the lot of them.

it's either that or bloody myspace. rubbish. all of it.

[dubman]

LOL.

jesus it's like an anecdote from transmetropolitan or something.

bwahahahahaha.

[Deckard]

Well naturally, it's all the teachers' fault. :p

("bring back the birch... a good stint in national service is what they need... etc etc etc")

[BeautifulBurnout]

bloody old gits.

next thing you'll be wanting the cane back.


:p
Yeah. And?

[Deckard]

He doesn't mean for adults, Jaynee!

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

He doesn't mean for adults, Jaynee!

Though, I have no problem with that.

Wait, that sounds wrong. I, personally, don't get into S&M.

[BeautifulBurnout]

I do have a problem with using any kind of implement to hit a kid with. But it has gone waaaay the other way where, even though smacking a child is not illegal here, it is seriously frowned upon these days. That is a whole 'nother debate, though.

I don't think this story is necessarily about lack of discipline so much as lack of understanding of these kids by their parents. Surely the kids wouldn't just suddenly do something like this out of the blue for no reason. There has to have been some kind of a build up to it with the teacher in question, and maybe the parents just weren't listening to their kids when they tried to talk about it?

I support my son's school wholeheartedly when they discipline him for whatever reason. However, I am the first on the phone if he has been bullied in class (as often happens because of his red hair) and the teacher has done jack shit about it because he/she is either unable to control the chav element in the class or can't be bothered to intervene. There really are some teachers who are scared of the kids they teach and won't intervene when there is trouble.:(

[cacophony]

this is being discussed everywhere and i'm damn lazy. so i'm just going to copy and paste what i said elsewhere:

watch the pbs documentary "raising cain" sometime. it's about the early childhood development of boys and girls, and the way we react to some of the ways kids act out their development. i don't know that i think it's entirely abnormal for kids to entertain violent imagery. studies have found that kids who aren't even exposed to violent media will still draw pictures of people getting stabbed or play war. that age, in particular, grapples with the concepts of mortality and injury. i don't know that i would find it all that unusual if they found out that the kids were TALKING about it, or that they'd even written about it.

i think what's wrong here is that they encouraged each other to bring the objects to school, to impose that level of reality on the concept. it seems doubtful that they would have followed through, but it's disturbing enough that they put such concrete reality to the concept.

i have to wonder if there isn't a group dynamic aspect to this. meaning, it's not 9 kids who are really messed up. but maybe one or two who are really messed up, and for those kids the line was crossed from exploring fantasy and acting out reality. for the other kids i have to wonder if it ever left the fantasy realm.

[Sean]

All I know is that one of the kids had been assigned blood clean-up duty......that's messed up. It really demonstrates to me the depth of the realistic attitude that was taken regarding this whole plan. I'd like to think they wouldn't have gone through with it, but based on things I've heard about kids these days from teachers I know, I can't say with any certainty that they wouldn't have done it.

Wow....I actually just said "kids these days". I might as well just strap on some Depends undergarments and go get myself a Viagra prescription. :(

[cacophony]

see, i just don't find it shocking that they would have come up with ideas like "blood cleanup." if you really learn about the kind of imagery young children explore, particularly boys, you find a lot of shocking violent fantasy. and it's not one particular culture, it's true the world over. the problem is that we view this kind of imagery as anathema to a normal functioning society so we both squash the imaginations of kids who express this kind of exploration and pretend that only the abnormal ones explore in this direction.

like i said, i think there was at least one, maybe two truly disturbed children here. of the three that are actually being charged, i would bet money that they will turn up information about some disturbing experiences in their lives. as for the remaining kids, i honestly think this remained in the theoretical fantasy realm for them.

i really can't recommend "raising cain" more emphatically. some of what the young kids in the documentary express in terms of violent imagery is downright frightening because we tend to see kids as innocent and abhor violence in a functioning society. but by and large it has far more to do with the natural development of children than sociopathic tendencies.

i guess that's what i'm saying. i think you've got one or two kids that certainly were showing concerning signs of sociopathic tendencies. the rest were participating in a group dynamic/peer pressure and expressing violent imagery in a way that never would have left the fantasy realm.

which is not to say that the parent's don't need to intervene and help them understand where allowable fantasy ends and dangerous intention begins. but they don't all need to be locked up, and it's not a "sign of the times" that the apocalypse is upon us.