Reflections on the Juvenile Youth

I am still amazed at the values which have become more pervasive than ever in our schools.

Instead of holding kids accountable, kids only count because their presence brings in the money. What happens to them afterwards matters very little to administrators on school sites and in the district offices.

Public schools throughout the state of California are in a mad building frenzy, taking advantage of low bond interest rates due to the sluggish economy. Of course, no one realizes that the economy will remain sluggish if students leave school unprepared for the rigors and the expectations of the working life. They still emerge from failing schools prepared for nothing but blame and infamy, taught to have ought with anyone who holds them accountable for what they say and do, as they were passed along without real direction or discipline following the too easy, breezy K-12 shuffle.

The sad result of being too easy on kids -- the cruelty of having to learn so many things the hard way.

I witnessed the legacy of the accommodating and enabling discipline policies in local juvenile halls. Sixteen year-olds were having children, and they were proud of it, perpetuating the same cycle of dysfunction and illegitimacy.

Young men and women, looking for any semblance of security, resorted to gang-banging, hurting others in the process, taking what they could without getting caught, stepping out of school with nothing to show for all that they had been through.

The had children of their own out in the world, yet they were still children themselves. I could not believe the arrogance, or the informed ignorance of their limitations, which led some of the young men that I taught to believe that they could actually step out into the world, find a job, and raise these children which their youthful indiscretions had brought into the world.

Some of the students would write about what they wanted to do with their lives. "I want to get married, have kids, and have a good job."  Yet a man cannot prosper on the outside if he has not prospered on the inside, and no one can prosper on the inside unless they know the truth about themselves.

Man needs life, and that more abundantly (John 10: 10), yet the world passes off a bare Las-Vegas version of quick thrills and easy spills, as if life is all about "making it". Yet what are you, even after you have made it in the world? Man still faces the one resolute reality: he did not make himself, and he cannot make himself into what he needs to become.

The notion that we did not make ourselves, that we do not make our way in the world, the nation has lost sight of this, and nothing remains except to teach juveniles to get in line with the world around them. The world of corporate climbing and taking what you can in your own strength, these are the same dynamics which pushed them into  the gang life and have carried them through. The need for identity, for purpose, for the power to live the life that man wants yet cannot find, .this is a matter of faith, something that world does not understand, respect,or even cares for.

I now know the Truth, and He has set me free (John 8: 31-32). What can I do, next, or what do I need to see, that He can reveal to me to share with those who are down and out and about?