By Allen J Duffis
Published: March 17, 2006

I don’t know what fortune the future will bring to us as a society and as a nation, but the prognosis does not look good: specifically when viewed from the future outlook for our youth.  From where I stand the only light I see emanates from the path we came, but I see no light coming from the direction we appear to be heading.  The future for American youth appears to be a dismal one.

America is a nation rich in a unique social history, a bold experiment forged within the brilliant combined intellect of the forefathers who foresaw a sort of new Atlantis.  A nation to which all men and women could come, from anywhere, build a new life and provide for their families; a governing system upon the principles of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

Unfortunately, somewhere along the way to achieving this dream, something went terribly wrong.  And despite any denials, we all saw it unfolding right before our eyes.  But with other than a few feeble ‘band-aid’ approaches, we did nothing about it.  Now it may be too late.  Our youth, the lifeblood of our nation, is rapidly becoming, not an endangered species, but a very dangerous species.

Between 1953-54, resistive to adopting the social preferences of their parents as older generations had done, the American teenager took to a new musical style that was a dramatic departure from anything that had come before, and was unique to their breed, namely Rock & Roll.  Before too long, without even trying, they had demonstrated to the commercial world the ever increasing muscle of their consumer power.

The first clear cut warning came with the release of a major motion picture in the mid 50's. The film's turned out to be an incredibly accurate description of the ominous change in mood of American youth.  The film was 1955's Rebel Without A Cause"; which ironically starred a former troubled teenage turned young adult, named James Dean.  And his dynamic performance established him as the decades unchallenged icon of the troubled youth syndrome.

In that same year, a second motion picture heralded the evolution of a new element in American’s schools: the teenager gone bad, known as a “Juvenile Delinquent”.  That film was “Blackboard Jungle”.

The first warning flare went up in Lincoln Nebraska at 3 A.M. on the morning of December 1, 1957. High school dropout, Charles Starkweather, entered the Crest gas station carrying a 12-gauge shotgun, which he then preceded to aim at the terrified lone clerk on duty and fired. 

Starkweather had just committed his first murder.  He and his 14 year old girlfriend, Caril Ann Fugate would then go on a 44 hour rampage throughout the state, killing 10 more people (one of them a 2 year old girl) before they were apprehended. He was put to death by electrocution on June 25, 1959.

In a relaxed photograph of the two teens taken a few months before their killing spree began, if one had not known what they would go on to do, they would appear to most as friends of the wholesome ‘all American’ teenagers in the popular “Father Knows Best” television series.

It was, however, a double murder that took place in New York City on August 30, 1959, that sent waves of shock from the U.S. shores to the rest of the world.

A Puerto Rican teenager named Salvatore Argon, barely 16 years old (aka "The Cape Man because of the cape he wore in admiration of the Dracula image), had stabbed to death two people he didn’t even know.  And when captured and taken into custody, in front of the television cameras, he showed no remorse; telling one reporter that he’d like to kill him too.

The previously mentioned movie titles had simply been a predictor of the storm that was brewing within the ranks of American youth. In 1959 there were 390 murders in New York City - individuals committing 23 were under 16 years of age, and 82 were by persons between 16 and 20.  

As a reporter for the New York Daily News put it, prophetically, “…it’s the dark secret of the rosy 50’s we were all aware of but refused to acknowledge; America is becoming afraid of its children.”      

For the first time in our history, American youth between the ages of 13 to 19 were beginning to develop a social and moral identity separate from that of their parents and the adult world.  

This new social entity was fueled and driven by a number of factors: absentee working parents, a rapid increase of disposable income for teenagers, and the ever increasing Liberal push to afford young adults (and children in general), legal rights traditionally limited by society to full grown and developed adults.

In time children could not only disobey their parents and teachers without fear of punishment, but be able to take them to court for instances of corporal punishment or even verbal abuse if and when they were harshly scolded.

The cinematic image of the‘teenage entity’ so gloriously celebrated in films about the 50’s and 60’s,  (such as “Grease”, and “American Graffiti”) did not offer a clue as to the coming of what we now refer to as ‘young adults.’ 

The ominous growth of adolescent social impact was accelerated by the misapplication of the pseudo sciences of Psychology and Sociology, both making their disastrous debut with the Progressive Education in the early 1900’s.

For even though the failed experimental system was abandoned in the late 1920's, its determined Liberal proponents survived within the administrative ranks, allowing the continued destructive infection of an education system that worked well for over 150 years.

Both 'pseudo science' disciplines were under the dictatorial control of highly placed, single minded Liberal academics, who never respected or liked the idea of total parental control of children.  So under the guise of modernizing the education system to allow easier access for minority groups, they actually aided and abetted the dumbing down of American youth.

Eventually, though socially unintended, the term “Young Adult” would come to embrace the age range of 15 to 24: Teenager and Young Adult would merge to a single recognized consumer entity, replacing elder adults as the most valued consumers.

At this juncture, for all intents and purposes, the explosive charge that would tear apart the nation’s established social structure was laid.  All that was required to begin the carnage of the American nuclear family was for the charge to be set off. This final and fatal act was accomplished by America's massive entry into the Vietnam conflict.

The Liberal Left and the Conservative Right clashed over our involvement in the conflict, and in the ensuing cultural melee, without being aware of it; they brought about the tragic loss of ‘family values’ enshrined for so long within our culture. 

Throughout most of the youth rebellion of the sixties (lasting well into the seventies), nothing of the learned skills of parenting was passed from Mother to Daughter or Father to Son, had been the practice since the founding of the country. 

In essence, we as a nation experienced a Dark Ages of Parenting, and the inheritance from this ‘failure to communicate’ was the deadly legacy of ‘children raising children.’ 

That incalculable loss has led us to the present state of “Children Killing Children” that we now face on an ever increasing scale, as evidenced by the following events:

March 24, 1998 – Jonesboro high school massacre (Arkansas)      5 dead

April 20, 1999     - Columbine high school massacre (Colorado)    15 dead  

March 21, 2005   - Red Lake high school massacre   (Minnesota)  10 dead

There was a time, when school was the safest place a child could be.  Not any more.

We must also not lose track of the accelerating instances of patricide by children and young adults, such as the Melendez brothers of California, who were convicted of killing their parents to gain early access to the family fortune.

Most chilling, however, is the rampant increase of teenage and young adult suicide that in 1989 was referred to by a government study as an epidemic. National Suicide Statistics published in 2001, indicate that 3,971 ‘young adults’ between the ages of 15-24 committed suicide.  The study also indicated that an estimated 5 times as many may have made the attempt.

We as a nation have no one else to blame but ourselves.  All of the indications of what came to be were in plain sight; we simply had other priorities at the time and refused to see what was developing right before our eyes.

Now if we dare walk the streets of our cities and towns at night, we live in fear not of the dark, but what may be lurking there, our children.