Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 23, 1993 TAG: 9306230017
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ED SHAMY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
There will be horseback riding and pool parties and basketball games and canoeing and even a few jobs, underwritten by taxpayers, to ensure that some bored kids whining about having nothing to do don't snort some coke, bust us upside our heads and steal our wallets.
The Keep-'em-Busy initiative is noble-intentioned, but it's been a long time since local government unveiled a sadder or more telling new effort.
Taxpayers have to become surrogate parents for schoolchildren during summer vacation? Youngsters need structured, prepackaged activities to keep them busy and out of trouble?
Where have we failed? And who has failed whom?
What happened to endless summer days which started with wet sneakers in the dew-soaked outfield grass and ended with chasing lightning bugs down the hot sidewalks at dusk? Whatever happened to pickup games at the ballpark? Have you driven past a playground during the daytime recently and seen the swings hanging idly?
Why have our kids lost the skill that we had, the ability to amuse ourselves and to fill our free hours with fun and competition and imagination? Is our insistence on providing them with near cradle-to-grave activities a remedy for or a cause of their boredom?
Their toy chests full of toys; their backyards full of swingsets; their rooms rigged with stereos, computers, Nintendos and television sets - don't kid yourself that boredom and trouble are problems only of the slums - their parks full of modular play units; our kids have managed to defy all the odds and all our efforts by staying bored.
Where boredom used to spawn creativity, it now is a font of problems.
And so to replace the boredom we can't seem to erase, we're all proud mamas and papas of 3,000 or 4,000 kids who need something to do this summer. Countless more will leave the prefab summer camps and crafts lessons and soccer matches and tee ball games and violin lessons and karate sessions, return from the beach or from King's Dominion and announce that they are bored.
We're driven by guilt to help them to escape the idle hours with more activities. These are, after all, children who've spent their lives in day care and nursery school, preschool and after-school. We've offered them Headstart and 9-o'clock-to-3-o'clock kindergarten by day and rented them videocassettes by night.
Is it any wonder they find themselves bored during the summer?
And so we inherit a mess. Mom and Dad are both at work, or one doesn't live at home anymore. Perverts are lurking around the corner. A vial of crack sells for less than a week's allowance.
Government once felt obliged to make sure all children were fed and sheltered and educated. Now it falls to government, too, to entertain.
We talk a lot around here about jobs and factories. But all the while we're turning out deeply flawed little human products. We're paying dearly for that.
by CNB