School days are here again. When school teachers ask for help today, many are really wanting to know how mentally and emotionally to survive the day. In some cases, knowing the subject matter is secondary to managing crowd control.
A friend of ours works across the street from a “last stop” high school for kids who have been booted out of their original school. It is not uncommon, she says, to see police pull up en masse and escort students outside and into their patrol cars. Area residents are so accustomed to the wailing sirens, they hardly pay any attention. It is still jarring, however, to those people who work in the inner city, then go home to a more serene environment.
This particular school leans toward the extreme, but many schools and teachers deal with kids who are out of control. We’re not sure that any school in the nation will ever require students to take a course in civility. Not civics, civility. But we think it would be a good idea.
We are not a civil society these days. We have replaced conversation with confrontation. In many cases, violence is the first resort. And it’s not a question of teaching morals; it goes more deeply than that. It’s a matter of values.
A value is an intangible ideal that we personify by the way we live and conduct ourselves in society. If we hold sacred the value that every human being deserves respect, then we wouldn’t think of hurting another person by our words or actions. Respect for all human life is a value, one that serves as a cornerstone for morality.