Frightening lessons from Jonesboro

The Kitchen Sink
    By Karen Abravanel

Maurice put down the newspaper article and leaned back in his chair. He stared at the yearbook photos of students, his own age, from Jonesboro, Ark., who had opened fire on their classmates and teachers during a false fire alarm just two days earlier. "Is this for real?" he asked, breaking the moment of rare silence among his sixth-grade peers.

I told him that it was, and awaited his response. The incorporation of the Arkansas tragedy into that day's Peace Games lesson in a local New Haven middle school had been a last-minute decision, intended to give the class an opportunity to respond to the tragedy. My co-teacher and I had anticipated such statements of disbelief, and we expected expressions of sorrow, anger, and even fear.

But instead of sharing feelings and experiences, the students focused on consequences. "What's gonna happen to these guys?" Maurice asked. Once he learned that they had really committed the crime, Maurice's next consideration was not why they did it, but how they would be punished.

Someone has successfully taught these children about the consequences of criminal actions, and their level of interest was matched only by their level of familiarity. Joseph, whose mother is a police officer, even asked at what age the boys, who are 11 and 13, could be tried as adults. I told him that Arkansas' cutoff age was 14.

"Man, then they're lucky," Maurice said. "One more year, and they'd have been in real trouble." The other students agreed.

I tried to prompt further reflection. "This is not something that any of you would do. Why not?" I asked.

"Because it's stupid," Lisa answered.

I pressed. "Why?"

"Because I don't want to spend time in jail," she said.

No one in the class said that the Jonesboro shooting was inherently wrong, or bad--it was just "stupid" because of the potential penalty. No one spoke about the act in itself, but always connected it to its consequences.

For these children, punishment symbolizes morality; they have learned to evaluate an action based on its consequences. Talking in class is wrong--not because it is disruptive, but because it means a detention. And the Jonesboro shooting was wrong--not because it was reprehensible, but because the boys will be sentenced to many years in prison.

They have been taught the distinction between appropriate and inappropriate behavior by a system that relies on the fear of punishment. This system skirts, or at least delays, more complex ethical discussions, positing the fear of negative consequences as a sufficient means of deterrence. But what happens when such a fear is not present? And if actions are judged to be right or wrong based only on their consequences, what happens when a wrongful act escapes punishment?

Perhaps the two boys in Jonesboro carried out their crime because they thought they could get away with it. Does this system suggest that an action is only wrong if one gets caught?

Such a fundamental lack of clarity gives children a confusing and even misleading concept of morality. It is too risky to assume that they will be able to extract the correct moral lessons. During the lesson about the Jonesboro tragedy, one student, Latrese, made a passing comment which did not indicate her lack of morality, but rather her lack of moral clarity.

"If my kid ever did something like that, I would throw him down the stairs," she said. "I would beat him until he was red. Red." How can one explain that her response is equally inappropriate?

For Latrese and her classmates, all of whom know someone who has been shot, violence is the norm. If they are to develop a strong sense of right and wrong, these children need to receive clearer moral signals. Instead of asking them how they feel about an incident such as the Jonesboro shooting, we should ask them why they feel it was wrong. Last week's events make it tragically clear that we can no longer afford to be so vague.

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