School frustration and the MTV generation

The minds of students are so bombarded and preoccupied with sex and violence that they find classroom work a kind of nuisance and big frustration. School becomes an oppressive agent which seeks to rob them of the real pleasures and purpose of life — the MTV-type madness. US researchers have concluded that watching violence on television is the single factor most closely associated with aggressive behaviour — more than poverty, race or parental behaviour (University of Michigan — psychologists Leonard Eron and Rowell Huesmann). It’s very interesting to note that as television sex and violence have increased in more recent years, a direct parallel is witnessed in the violent behaviour of our school children. Do you call this coincidence? I beg to disagree!

At an increasing rate, our children are adopting, the MTV/American culture. It’s a culture radically dominated by the preoccupation with the pervasion of sex, sensual behaviour and violence. The US public schools reflect the backlash of this in a horrifying way. The grim statistics reveal that most of their teenagers are sexually active. Only a few years ago, one million (believe it or not!) of their students took guns to school, in a one-year period. And we know about the Columbine school killings and many similar horror stories that keep coming out of the US schools. This is the culture being imported by us down here — courtesy MTV and the rest of the rot of cable television, cybersex and all. The real teachers, parents, guidance counsellors and role models of our children today are filthy, disgusting MTV rappers and other character-destroying hip hop and pop “stars” like Eminem, Snoop Dogg, Brittany Spears, 50 Cents, Ludacris, Lil Kim, Christina Aguilera, DMX and the whole putrid posse.

Lack of proper moral and spiritual guidance, as well as the condom pusher outside their school gates, heavily compound all this pressure upon our young minds. This is what results in a massive degree of frustration in the classroom, with subsequent violent behaviour. The frustration is very much rooted in the distraction. When focus shifts, the direction and levels of interest are also confused and frustration escalates. The tender, vulnerable minds of our students are so bombarded, saturated and preoccupied with sex, obscenity, dating, “having a man” (or a woman), experimenting with condoms and violence, that they find the regular classroom work a kind of nuisance and frustration. School becomes an oppressive agent which seeks to rob them of the real pleasures and purpose of life — the MTV-type madness. The teens literally become young and restless which could, in some cases, also mean young and useless!

“Curriculum frustration” appears to be the prime target of the accusing finger of our local experts. This is blamed for being perhaps the main causes of school indiscipline and violence. The experts continue to claim that the failure of curricula to cater for students who are less inclined to academic proficiency, results in a huge build-up of student frustration, which erupts into much of the violence seen among the school population. While there can be no doubt that there is a degree of truth in the “curriculum frustration” theory, I readily challenge the view that this is the major source of frustration, or that it is as bad as it is being made out to be. To begin with, frustration has always been an inherent part of education, and will continue to keep its place. In fact, in several ways, a measure of frustration is a necessary element for “squeezing” the best out of students. Some of the most brilliant scholars around will tell you that frustration — curriculum-related and otherwise — was very much a part of their process to success.

We should also note that, whatever its inadequacies, our education system of today (both public and private) does provide a much wider range of options for students, than those of yesteryears (Technical/vocational options are among those that have been more widely available). In those years of much fewer options, alternatives and opportunities and greater poverty, when frustration should have been much higher, we quite noticeably find a virtual non-existence of school violence. The point is, frustration, per se, in the educational sphere, was always here and will always be here. But what we notice is a striking difference in the manner in which the frustration is handled. Why are students of today almost uncontrollably exploding into aggressive behaviour in order to vent frustration? And why, even though so many factors in education indicate that today’s children should be far less frustrated, the tensions are evidently much higher?

Why the teens of today so miserably fail to manage their negative emotions? I can assure you the reasons are not in “curriculum frustration.” To a large extent, it has to do with the so-called MTV generation — teens driven by sex-and-violence TV and music. It is common knowledge that television has an incredibly high influence on human behaviour — the choices we make, our role models and icons and our very lifestyles. It’s the reason the corporate world spend billions in advertising and other forms of television promotions to “compel” somebody to choose their product or idea. And it has been yielding phenomenal results, as it forcefully impacts the human mind, dictating behaviour. Some experts are obviously trying to avoid it again and again, but unless we face the frightening realities of what’s highlighted here, and return to the emphasis once placed on traditional family values, as they pertain to firm discipline and God’s moral laws, we are headed for inevitable disaster — big time!