In article <1993Apr15.173851.25846@convex.com>, tobias@convex.com (Allen Tobias) writes... #In article <1993Apr15.024246.8076@Virginia.EDU> ejv2j@Virginia.EDU ("Erik Velapoldi") writes: #>This happened about a year ago on the Washington DC Beltway. #>Snot nosed drunken kids decided it would be really cool to #>throw huge rocks down on cars from an overpass.  Four or five #>cars were hit.  There were several serious injuries, and sadly #>a small girl sitting in the front seat of one of them was struck  #>in the head by one of the larger rocks.  I don't recall if she  #>made it, but I think she was comatose for a month or so and  #>doctors weren't holding out hope that she'd live. #> #>What the hell is happening to this great country of ours?  I #>can see boyhood pranks of peeing off of bridges and such, but #>20 pound rocks??!  Has our society really stooped this low??     Yes. Nobody is watching them.  If they get caught, there is no punishment  at all.  In the old days such behaviour would be rewarded with a whipping  with a good-sized belt, and then taken into some hospital to see first hand  what kind of damage such accidents cause.   Of course this doesn't happen  any more.  That whipping would probably save the kid's life by teaching  him some respect for others.  A person with that little respect would  inevitably wind up dead early anyway.     The problem is creeping gradualism.  If you put a frog into hot water,  he just jumps out.  But if you put him into cold water and then ever-so-  gradually heat it, the frog will cook.  This is what the entertainment  industry and lack of religious, moral, and educational standards in our  modern North American society have done to us over the years.  Now that  we are about to be 'cooked', we may have woken up too late.  #> #>Erik velapold #  #Society, as we have known it, it coming apart at the seams! The basic reason #is that human life has been devalued to the point were killing someone is #"No Big Deal". Kid's see hundreds on murderous acts on TV, we can abort  #children on demand, and kill the sick and old at will. So why be surprised #when some kids drop 20 lbs rocks and kill people. They don't care because the #message they hear is "Life is Cheap"!    And the education system and the Religious Leaders aren't doing much   about it, either.  With both parents working in this society, where is  the stabilizing influence at home?   Latchkey children are everywhere!  And these latchkey kids can watch whatever rotten videos and listen to  whatever violent hate-promoting "music" and videos they like because no  one is home to stop it.    This day and age, when there is about 100 times more things to learn  than when I went to school, our answer to this increased knowledge is  shorter school hours and more leisure time!  I say keep the kids in  school longer, feed them good food and teach them something, and when  they get home, have a parent there to interact and monitor them.  There  is a very old and now forgotten proverb: a child left on his own will  bring a parent to grief.  Daycare systems are not the answer.  This is  just shifting the parents' own responsibilities off on someone else to  whom it's not a life-long committment, but rather just a job.   #  #AT    Followups should go to alt.parents-teens    Fred W. Bach ,    Operations Group        |  Internet: music@erich.triumf.ca  TRIUMF (TRI-University Meson Facility)    |  Voice:  604-222-1047 loc 327/278  4004 WESBROOK MALL, UBC CAMPUS            |  FAX:    604-222-1074  University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., CANADA   V6T 2A3