Long Weekend Rant

Wow, what a week. Time for a rant. I am not a parent yet, but wow, I can't understand parenting today. The things I see and hear as a classroom teacher make me wonder what kind of path our society is going. Kids in lower elementary are being exposed to so much material intended for adults. Kids with cell phones, ipods and many more technology based devices. They are quickly becoming a very media centered culture. Kids are watching many movies intended for adult audiences. I had a student today recite the violent scene in the Matrix movie where Neo and Trinity go to rescue Morpheus. In that scene they kill a lot of people and there is a lot of glorified violence with a LOT of gunplay. Now imagine the developing brain of a child feeding on images like this.

The highest-profile case was Columbine high school massacre in 1999, in which Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold armed themselves to the teeth, donned black trench coats and gunned down a couple dozen classmates, killing 15 of them. They claimed to have been influenced by the Matrix, as did quite a few other crazy killers. Some even tried to use the movie in their legal defense, explaining that they killed people because they realized after watching the movie that nothing was real. - taken from this website

One of the most popular games of 2003, features hookers and police officers who players are encouraged to beat up for points. Players also earn points via the selling of drugs. That game is "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City", (GTA3) by Rockstar Games."GTA3" also drew a great deal of controversy when it was discovered that players were encouraged to specifically target Haitians for murder for extra points. The Associated Press reported that Rockstar Games removed that "instruction" from the current and future productions of the game but it still shows up in the previous eleven-million copies that were sold.NIMF reports that 70% of teenage boys played "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City" during 2003. The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), the gaming industry's self-imposed ratings system, rates GTA3 suitable for mature ("M") players. -taken from this website

Most of my students play the new Grand Theft Auto 4 game and they are not even in their teens. Parents are fooled in to buying these games and not taking time to see what the game is even about. I do not want to place blame at all on the developers of the game. I know as a parent I would blame myself if I had kids playing that game and they did something horrid by being inspired by the game.

Today, the military uses video games to train and condition their soldiers for combat in the real world. They recognize the inherent power of the realistic displays and repetition that video games give soldiers in preparing them for battle when a conditioned reaction means the difference between life and death.Grossman notes however, that one of the main differences between what the military does and what is being done with the youth of America is authority.Grossman writes (pg. 302-303):Operant conditioning firing ranges with pop-up targets and immediate feedback, just like those used to train soldiers in modern armies, are found in the interactive video games that our children play today. But whereas the adolescent Vietnam vet had stimulus discriminators built in to ensure that he only fired under authority, the adolescents who play these video games have no such safeguard built into their conditioning. Soldiers are taught to obey the orders of their superiors. They are taught that life is not to be wasted and that they are not to kill until told to kill. For soldiers there is a check and balance to what they must do to defend the life of their comrades and their country.The violent video games that are sold and purchased in ever increasing amounts from the retail stores in America don't offer the accountability and reliance upon authority that is inherent in the military. Perhaps worse, video games today, while desensitizing and conditioning, glamorize violence and murder.Not to be out done by themselves in the production of violent video games, Rockstar Games, produced arguably the most troubling and violent game to date of any mainstream video game company. The game is called "Manhunt," and the idea is a twisted take on "Reality TV." In the game the player plays a character dropped in the middle of a town filled with criminals. The main job of players is to survive and this is done by obeying the voice in the headset they wear. That voice tells the player when and whom to kill.Play is scored, based on how gruesome a kill the player commits. Weapons of choice include, but are not limited to, plastic bags for suffocation, wire for garroting, and machetes for hacking to death. It is an interactive snuff film where players are even given the ability to replay their kills. "Manhunt" is societal conditioning at its worst and is currently banned from New Zealand.If you believe that video games don't influence the thinking of those that play them, then it might help you to know that the industry itself believes otherwise.While watching television with my family this past Sunday, an EA Sports commercial ran featuring a scene on a subway train. A young woman is seen being accosted by a bully while others watch, afraid to intervene. One subway rider, a young male in his prime, watches the man bully the woman and viewers are led to believe, through cut scenes, that he is fantasizing about beating up the man in the boxing ring of the video game Fight Night 2004. The commercial ends with the announcer saying, and I paraphrase You know you think about it.The milepost says five years since the horrible act of April 20th, 1999, but the question remains: How far off is the next earth shattering event and will it be enough to change the hearts and minds of a nation designing and empowering its own horrors?

Most students and kids today will end up growing up with a whole new set of morals and ideas. How can they sit in a classroom and study and learn with their minds filled with this type of media? How can learning math skills be interesting when the night before they were overstimulated with a violent video game, or watched multiple murders and acts of violence in a video game? Or were driving and picking up prostitutes and killing police officers in GTA games? It saddens me that most parents are being selfish and not wanting to take moral stands on the things their kids put in their heads. All these parents driving their fancy and expensive SUV's wouldn't for a second stop and fill the tanks of their vehicles with chocolate syrup. But they don't blink twice with allowing their child's brain to be filled with trash. It is beyond me. If I get to be a Dad my child will be the most precious thing in my life. I will not ignore the responsibility to protect that child from being exposed to sin. There that is my mega rant for the day....hehehe, it's been a long week and it just seems like this is a BIG problem, at least in what I see as a teacher it is.

We are going to have a good weekend. Jenn and I have tickets to Kids in the Hall. They are doing a show called "Live as We'll Ever Be" at the Jube. It'll be fun, good laughs are always nice. Also going to a Fiddle Concert tonight too. I can't wait, the weather is awesome, I have my 70-200 and life is good. :) Hope everyone else has a nice long weekend.

-Randy