@mountaineer
Kids today aren't any different then kids from 20, 30, or 50 years ago. They are just as confused, awkward and prone to making stupid decisions as those way back when before the wheel was invented.
Whats different is families are weaker, morals are weaker, and kids (boys especially) aren't allowed to blow off steam. So they bottle it up until they break.
heck when I was in high school there was almost a school shooting. Only stopped by a girl who talked the guy out of it.
The same basic issues apply: status, girls/boys, social jockeying for the top of that heap, or at least being accepted by a group of peers. Hard to be moral when the popular "music" can be measured in f-bombs per minute, when the parents are home watching what would have been considered porn 40 years ago in prime time, and that 'ends justify the means' situational ethics has become the dominant theme.
Moral kids have an easier go if their parents are moral, but that is no guarantee.
As for consequences, every high school yearbook had at least one memorial page for some kid who had been killed doing something stupid or by someone who was. By graduation, between 5% and 10% of the class were volunteer firemen (myself included) so we saw first hand the effects of bad decisions.
Somewhere in the quest for little boys who would sit with their knees together, legs crossed at the ankles, hands folded in their laps (like little girls were supposed to), we've had to deal with the highly probable overmedication of a couple generations for ADD and ADHD, disciplinary constraints and 'talk about it' counselors instead of getting the matter settled, once and for all, as young men (and boys) have settled such matters for millennia. I'm not saying violence is always the answer, but there are times when limited violent acts instill the following: That actions (even words) have consequences. That pain can be the result. That standing up for what is right, even if painful, even if you lose the fight, is still the right thing and a source of satisfaction in itself. That going along to get along is not the best philosophy if the going along is with something wrong.
I have, in my school days, lost the fight but won the war. That happens. I have won my share, too, and the idea that the strong can stand up for the weak, can face down the bullies for those who can't so much fight their own fights is seen in every comic book, but not in our schools (unless the 'strong' is on staff.
We deprive our children from acting heroically, from fighting the good fight against aggressors and tormentors, we stop them from keeping their self-respect, and from defending the weak, things some guys instinctively do.
How can that possibly have a good outcome?
At some point, even without psychological problems, the pressure of constant derision, of rejection, of the inability to even try to establish status in the pack will make the kid go rogue and turn on the whole structure.
Just watch dogs, they are more human than humans sometimes.
