Kids will be kids, but at the end of the day, adults must be adults. How many times were we exasperated at our kids, as we poured our heart and soul into rearing them? Answer: daily, and throughout the day. We bear with them, patiently channeling them while we pray that the light will come on within them…and it does, slowly.
Any parent will tell you, however, that the important thing is never to forget that the child is the child, and you are the adult. While we listen, we know that we cannot give in to demands which take our child in a direction that doesn’t serve his or her best interest. Any parent can also tell you that it is a gradual, meticulous process, which eventually does bear fruit.
When we have gone through the first 18 years, we send them off to a college, which, if it is worth its salt, continues the process of not only training them, but developing them as human beings. But just as the home is not always a peaceful place, neither is the college, as our kids flap their wings and try to learn how to fly on their own.
As I alluded to above, just as parents sometimes forget who is in charge of their process, sometimes the universities likewise forget, turning over the reins to the student, who is not ready to take them. The president of Princeton University committed this error just the other day when he gave in to students’ bullying tactics. Forget their issue; it is really secondary to the process of how to achieve dispute resolution.
Rather than bring their grievances to the fore and discuss them in an organized and democratic adult fashion, they bullied their way to achieve their ends. Unfortunately, this has been going on unchecked on American campuses for too long, to the detriment of the mission of the university, which is to develop the student. As a parent will tell you in the home, if the child pushed inappropriately to get his or her way, the child is the loser.
Children are already prone to believe that their ideas are better than their parents; they lack the maturity to see the matter from a perspective of years. When they win, learning stops, for after all, they won the argument, didn’t they? They are now in charge. A society is built upon the advancement of reason, and young people lack maturity, and thus the ability to reason as well as those with more experience.
For reason to flourish there must be patient dialog, which allows the best thinking to rise to the top. Bullying, and other tactics which suppress a free interchange of ideas, pushes society backward. We see it here at the Herald on a frequent basis, in the form of disparaging adjectives and labels, designed to shut up the person with an opposing view.
I asked the editor of the letters to the editor and Spout Off for a list of the words she routinely deletes. She gave me this short list: dumb, uneducated, incompetent, stupid, or terms such as lunatic, light-weight, fool, idiot. I know from discussions with letter writers the impact such attacks have on people who want to express their thoughts; when they are the subject of such aggression, they put their pens down, or turn to Spout Off. This is, in part, why we receive 25 times more Spout Offs than letters to the editor.
For the sake of our children and the good of our nation, we must stand up for free, respectful speech. In no other way will we preserve and advance liberty within our great country. Whether these words were penned by Patrick Henry or Voltaire, they are as true today as over two centuries ago: “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.”
Art Hall
