Pack behavior serves teens badly
Parents must challenge high school culture
By Gerry Bowler • Special to ChristianWeek
As I write this bodies are still being carried out of the Colorado high school where a pair of misfit teenagers chose Hitler’s birthday as the most suitable occasion on which to kill more than a dozen of their fellow students and a teacher. Members of a clique called "The Trenchcoat Mafia," they seem to have targeted minority students, committed Christians and athletes against whom they had conceived a longstanding grudge.
In other high school news this week, Winnipeg school board members decided that they would scrap a series of contentious hearings on the question of "homophobia" after a public uproar arose. The board had hoped as one of its goals to introduce material into the schools that would lessen the likelihood of homosexual teens being the victims of bullying and intimidation.
What these two events have in common is a reminder of how dark and terrible a place high school can be to some of our children if they are made to believe that they do not fit in. The high school years coincide with the tremendous physical and social changes of adolescence–changes to one’s voice and body and shape that induce powerful feelings of self-consciousness and self-doubt.
Little sub-cultures
In order to assuage these anxieties teens are quick to form sub-cultures that assure them they are not alone. These little groups then adopt behaviors, speech patterns and tastes in clothes and music that they use as criteria by which to judge who is in and who is out. These cliques are both cause and cure of teenage insecurity.
Any high school will contain numerous sub-cultures, such as jocks, goths, metal-heads, preppies, stoners or skaters. The names might vary but everyone in the school will know who belongs where. Each group will have an Alpha male, a boy who is the undisputed leader, and if they are co-ed perhaps an Alpha female as well.
In the overall ecology of the high school there will be those who are respected and those who are widely despised, and most kids will learn it is best not to stick out. Athletic skill provides considerable prestige to male students; the library club does not. Conventional physical beauty and a keen fashion sense are prized assets for females. Girls are allowed by their peers to get good marks but being an intelligent boy can be a drawback. A strong anti-intellectual current exists in most high schools.
Scary place
Those of us who have not repressed our memories of high school beyond the power of recall will know how scary a place it can be if you are low on the food chain: jostling in the halls, whispered hate campaigns, taunts, threats and, occasionally, real violence, from which females are not exempt. Depression, experimentation with sex and drugs, low achievement and suicide are frequent consequences of being repeatedly told you don’t belong, either as an individual or member of a group. Most of us survive those years but scars can linger and few would ever want to return to being a teenager.
As parents and citizens we owe it to civilization and our children to challenge the high school culture. We’ve got to encourage individualism and discourage a pack mentality (do a word count of your kid’s closet and see how much clothing has brand-name writing on it). Throw out the beauty magazines–they’re pure poison. Get involved in your high school parent association. Get involved in your child’s life–know who her friends are; get to know their parents. Support anti-bullying initiatives. Listen to your kid’s CDs and talk to him about what the media is injecting into his mind.
Catch your teenagers doing something good and let them know you love them and are proud of them. Together you can make it through high school.
Gerry Bowler is a Winnipeg writer and historian. You can read his previous columns at the ChristianWeek website, or contact him directly at: gbowler@videon.wave.ca
