ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, December 1, 1995 TAG: 9512010079
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KIRK A. BALLIN
HELLO, OUT there! Is there anybody there? Does anybody see what's happening? Are you reading the headlines, watching the news, going to the movies? Do you see what is happening to our children? Bang! Bang! It's time to wake up.
Child abductions, child pornography, child murders, child torture, child killing child, these are not to even mention the day-to-day child abuse and neglect that goes on in this nation's family homes.
What is going on? Are we so numbed to the violence in our culture that we treat the brutal and heinous slayings in Illinois the other week as just another episode of shock TV?
Are we totally unwilling to acknowledge and accept the responsibility for the fact that violence in the media is encouraging our children to use violence to resolve conflict, as the 9-year-old boy in Washington state did when he shot his 5-year-old sister because she wouldn't go to bed?
Do we not see that the plight of our children is the plight of our nation's soul?
Our children have increasingly become the victims of our inability to come to terms with our pathological relationship with violence, our infatuation with violence. Our tolerance of violence and much of the media's use of violence for commercial gain have given permission to the less stable among us to use violence more frequently, with children being easy victims.
What can we do about it? We can let ourselves not be numbed by the headlines. Think of the child who has been violated as our child, or grandchild, or cousin, or neighbor. We need to personally feel the agony of the violence against a child.
Then, we need to be acutely aware of what happens around us, in our homes, on the street, at school, at work in the media. We need to intervene in constructive ways to stop child abuse when we see or know it is happening, and we need to confront media that promote violence wherever we encounter it.
We also need to support our agencies that are committed to the protection of our children. Agencies such as the Child Abuse Intervention Council and Protective Social Services in our cities and counties are working overtime to improve the plight of our children, but with inadequate funding and staffing. Groups such as Parents' Place and others are also focusing on improving parenting skills as a way of preventing child abuse.
We also need, within our places of worship, our schools, our civic groups, etc., to begin to seriously discuss and explore the presence of violence in our society and what our responsibilities are in addressing it.
Violence against our children does not need to be the norm of our society, something we learn to tolerate like the noise of jet planes flying overhead. The violence against our children is noise we need to pay close attention to, to be deeply troubled by it, and to do something to change it.
Kirk A. Ballin is pastor of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Roanoke.
LENGTH: Medium: 58 linesby CNB