During recent months my community has been involved with trying to find ways to minimize or even eliminate youth violence. Leadership both elected and from the private sector have attended meetings where concerns have been voiced seeking solutions.

We are fortunate that our community has a number of very active neighborhood associations’ which have picked-up this challenge by sponsoring meetings inviting the leaders of the city, county, religious community, as well as many other groups of the private sector to join together in such discussions. Interestingly, solutions accepted by all have been slow to develop and clearly emerging is a difference in perspective that supports different and incompatible solutions.

Some make the point that the youth of today are very different in that such youth feel isolated from the mainstream of society and therefore new ways of reaching them must be developed.
It is suggested that such solutions, in general, are focused on using new electronic media to reach such youth directly. Usually, such approaches, down play the need for direct adult intervention and assert that older approaches will at best generate ridicule by today’s youth. Most suggestions reflecting such an approach begin with the writing of a Grant Request and the establishment of an oversight board.

Others, note that not all youth are involved in serious violence and that some organizations have demonstrated long term success working with youth and taking advantage of methods developed and tested over multiple generations, and as such, define the right path to follow. Such organizations include 4H, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, FFA, Boys and Girls Clubs, Big Brothers and Big Sisters. To a large extent these organizations rely on adult volunteers and local donations.

Of these two directions each organization has its own unique structure, goals, and procedural details.
Even so, a significant difference is in the dependency on local adults. The former approach is more a-lined with grants paying for management, with a significant element being the convincing of the youth to allow’ a form of adult oversight of activities in ways defined by the youth. Opposed to this, the latter approach is more dependent on volunteer adults with a hands-on role modal commitment to help youth learn to become teen leaders and responsible adults. Interestingly, in meetings to discuss youth violence supporters of these two approaches found compromise a challenge to the degree that no common ground was possible.

During the last couple of generations there seems to have been a cultural shift in how youth are raised to become adults. It isn’t that youth have only recently become antisocial, youth always have striven against the restraint imposed by adults. However, the approach of the adults has changed to lessen the input of parent, family, and community, and replace them with government lack of discipline.
For example, in the 1920 Handbook for Boy Scout Masters as a world program in 57 countries it describes, “Why Boys Need Scouting.” In part it states, Leadership in the years whence crime recruits its largest numbers; Direction of the gang tendencies into socially productive channels; Democratic and socializing influences which cut squarely across all levels of society.
And, among the reasons to become a Scoutmaster is, multiplies his influence in the lives of the troop. All based within the context of adult role models and direct involvement with the youth. Clearly modern political correctness has altered these earlier and successful approaches.

The same is true of the past 100 years of 4H. The activities of the 4H youth are basically training in adult skills with direct involvement of adults as role models. These training activities, primarily through 4H clubs, result in development of 4H teen leaders (similar to like activities in Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, FFA, and other similar programs.) In fact, these programs have developed rites of passage’ into becoming young, responsible adults. Rites of passage which are defined and taught by adults who recognize youth achievements with rewards. The point is that these processes are defined and taught by adults. Youth respond to such adult involvement and strive to achieve the various goals.

When not led and taught by adults, youth tend to define their own path and create a rite of passage’ even when not realizing that’s what they’re doing. What results will most likely be antisocial and quite resistant to the world of adult norms. There is nothing unknown about this as the Belgian anthropologist, Arnold Van Gennep during the early 20th Century published the observation that all cultures and societies have such rites of passage and clearly they are an important part of human culture.

In those instances where such rites have broken down various degrees of anarchy arise as can be evidenced with various urban youth gangs and the associated violence. That such youth are resistant to adult intervention is obvious, but that cannot be a hindrance to adults assuming their responsibility in the training f youth.

Although it has become politically incorrect for adults to lead and the youth to follow and learn, that is the path which we must travel.
We are fortunate that these long term, successful organizations (i.e., 4H, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, etc.) define that path. It is clearly time for old solutions to become the new solutions, once again.