A student in our school was in a car accident with an elderly driver. According to the police, drugs, alcohol, speed and careless driving were not factors. It was simply a bad accident on a country road in which the two drivers just could not act quickly enough to prevent the accident. The student survived; the elderly driver did not. The student was beside himself with shock and guilt.

Were the students in the school compassionate toward him? At best they ignored him and said nothing. At worst they derided him for being a killer.

Are today’s youth lacking compassion? On many levels they are.

There is a thoughtless disregard for the pain of others. They really do not know how to walk in the shoes of someone else. More often than not there is the attitude of what is in it for me to be compassionate? Nothing. Well, then I guess I do not need to show it.

In a recent essay contest held locally students were to write about how they would honor America’s veterans. Most students said over and over, “I’ve got nothin’.” My response was “Don’t you think it’s sad that you have nothing to say about how to honor America’s veterans?”

One student said he could not honor killers because he was a pacifist. Another referred to veterans as old men living off the government. These comments not only shocked and angered me, but it really left me stunned by their insensitivity to a group of people that have given so much to our country.

Now understand, these were two students out of 40. The other 38 even though they had “nothin'”, did eventually write respectful essays. Many of the students had relatives that were veterans. Some had signed up for the National Guard themselves. So our attention is drawn to the two that had no compassion and the 38 that did tend to be overlooked due to the brazen shock of the other two students.

The point is that I believe there is compassion among the majority of students, but those who do not have compassion tend to be the ones that receive the attention for their shocking behavior. I’m sure there were students that demonstrated compassion to the one who was in the car accident, but I never saw it, because those teens are not out front making a spectacle of their kindness the way other teens make a spectacle of their poor behavior.

It is just like the media coverage of the bad behavior of celebrity teens. If the media would be required to show one story of a teen with good behavior for every Britney Spears or Lindsey Lohan story, perhaps the perception in society about compassion would change. Does the student showing compassion receive coverage on the news? No, the newsmaker is the one with the bad behavior.

I am drawn to the quotation from “The Diary of Anne Frank”. Anne states in her diary, “Despite everything, I still believe that people are good at heart.” This quote inspires me to believe that there is always hope. If Anne Frank could keep hope in her heart, so can we.

Even when I repeatedly see the worst side of man’s inhumanity to man, I still believe that people are good at heart. There certainly is a segment of society that is not compassionate, but if you look back through history, today’s youth are not first to show a lack of compassion. The hope is that someday their hearts will prevail and they will mature, have more life experience, and will learn to feel the pain of others as acutely as if it were their own.