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If the kid can't make the determination of what is ok in a video game and what is ok in real life, there are other issues involved, the game not being one of them.
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Care to provide some form of evidence of this?

UNICEF really has nothing to gain by saying that one country has better schooling than another, especially when they put the US rankings so low and we provide the most volunteers and money to the program.
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I meant the world as a whole, not America. I misworded my previous post. The world is more educated than it ever has been at this moment.
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I definitely agree with that statement. :-)
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I work at a "Harvard Teaching Hospital" research facility and we have researchers from all over the world, and I've met some STOOPID people with advanced degrees. You would not believe the things that people think are true. Do you think that Americans have cornered the market on conspiracy theories and other nonsense, not by a long shot! Many of these people, while very good at their jobs, can't find their buts with both hands and a GPS unit. Of course, YMMV. :-)
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People who have advanced degrees are typically knowledgable in one specialized subject. I hope to one day hold a doctorate in English. If I do get my PhD in English, it will never make me a math whiz. I also know many, many teachers and educators who know nothing of the world, but they know an awful lot about how to educate children. Holding an advanced degree does not make you knowledgable about all things in the world.
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I teach in a middle/high school and believe me I have met some administrators, teachers, and parents that I am amazed at how stupid they are. But the one thing that I will say. 90% of the time the apple does not fall far from the tree!!! The other 10% is determined by a higher( god, drugs, abuse outside family, or peer pressure).
And about the US being so low in education, you can make numbers say anything you want. I would put the best 10% in the US against the best 10% from the rest of the world!
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I believe, in all quantifiable and measurable ways, that we live with a higher standing of living, enjoyment of life, and enlightenment on a whole, then we have at any other point in human existence.

The idea of "the good old days" or "when I was growing up", are complete hogwash based our tendency to indulge nostalgia.

The only things that have changed are technology, which alter our perception of the realities of the world around us. Like another poster mentioned, back in the day if a kid murdered another kid (and it happened just as often as today) that story would have never made it out of the community.

With the advent of internet, cable television, etc...this is the the type of things that sell advertising and are jumped all over and seized upon, and as consumers we eat it up. As much as we complain about how it's so much worse....we latch on and read every single story about these type of things, and watch every news segment.

The only thing that has changed since "the good old days", is we can now feed our "stopping to look at a car crash" mentality and never leave our couch or computer.

Society still has the same bad parenting...and the same kids with ingrained sociopathic tendencies.
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Mark Twain said: There are three kinds of liars; liars, damned liars, and statisticians.

I liken them (my researchers) to thoroughbreds; you can't expect a racehorse to pull a plow.
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i blame cell phones + internet more than video games. there is a reason why a lot of schools in germany outlaw them. videos of executions, brutal beatings, hard ****...are shared on the school yard.
information on all kind of drugs are on the internet and a lot of the stuff is easy to produce/to get.
i dont know if the previous generations would look better if they had the same resources.
please dont make statements like the usa is the smartest/dumbest nation. it has nothing to do with the discussion, you cant proof it and those bolt statements are mos likely not true.
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:-)

That should be framed in EVERY classroom.
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:-):-)
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The good old days were good morally, but the good old days didn't exist educationally speaking.
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I have read the entire tread there are some really good and valid points. However I believe the issues may have become confused. The first issue I would agree with the person that said "crazy is crazy" and evil is evil I have personally experienced this though out the world. The second issue (games,movies,media, and bad parenting) I believe has a it's impact also, although perhaps not related to the murder that started this tread. This person in my opinion is quit disturbed and will always be, call it what it is crazy/evil. I do have to say that in my view bad parenting along with outside influences has had its mark on society. Two years ago I was with a good friend his wife (He is in his mid sixties) at a REDs game in cinci we were leaving the game and had parked in a garage upon leaving the garage he and I almost came to blows with a man that was probably in his early to mid 20s. This was all over him not being able to get out before us when we clearly had the right a way. I clearly believe that this type of behavior and violate tendencies are a direct result of poor parenting along with the other influences. The Reds incident is just one of many that I have witnessed in recent years. In closing I would say when you spare the rod and take God out of society you get what you get just ask a Roman. The crazies will always be there (they keep me employed).
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For the recored I don't have kids. I think that most kids need to play on the monkey bars and find out that if you mess up pain can and will occur.
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Sexting is when you text dirty things to each other..popular among teenagers...
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The only reason the statement in bold would be valid is because the rest of the world's best and brightest come to America for the opportunities that aren't afforded them elsewhere. If you took the top 10% American educated and put them up against the top 10% of Korean or Indian educated we would be at a severe disadvantage. This is a quantifiable fact.

This is very much an important part of this particular argument. An educated society tends to be more civilized and moral.

No offense but that could have and has happened in the past. This has nothing to do with poor parenting and probably had to do with an excess of alcohol and testosterone from the game.

Parents haven't gotten dumber, if anything they have become more educated and therefor become better parents. For example how many of you drove in the car when you were kids without seat belts? Child abuse, molestation, and alcohol abuse were much more prevalent in the past then they are now. There are more parenting classes and books on parenting then ever before. Parents are educating themselves and finding better ways of raising children everyday. Are there bad apples? Sure, but there have always been bad apples and everything points to there being less now then there were in the past.

As has been pointed out more than once in this thread, the only reason things "seem" worse then they have ever been is because of the amount of information we have at our finger tips. You hear about every bad thing that happens around the world now, that wasn't the case 100, 50 or even 30 years ago.
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Bianca, I absolutely love that this was your first contribution to CA. That's just awesome. :-)

I would also say that this thread has clearly run it's course. Three distinct party lines have been drawn...the "Media plays a part" people, the "Things are the same as before...just more tech" people, and the "I'm sitting on the fence waiting for a winner" people.

Regardless of where you sit on that spectrum, it's a damn shame these things have to keep happening. I feel absolutely terrible for that family. If anyone happened to follow up on this story, the parents didn't go to this kid's court appearance...they were at the dead son's funeral. What a tragedy.
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I've got some fairly strong opinions about these things, from ancedotal evidence from a few different sources.

First, our educations system is whacked out, IMO. We got a sheet from school for our oldest on Friday. It was one that states that 6th grade will have an AIDS education coming up soon, and by signing the form, parents could keep their kids out of it. Honestly, I don't know why a parent would want to keep their child from getting facts about something like that. It's a horrible disease, for which we have no cure yet. Anyways, as my wife was dropping the kids off at school today, she heard our daughter and her friends talking about it, and our daughter asked if she would be allowed to not take it. During the conversation, one of the other kids said that her parents signed it because "gross men get it from doing things with animals and other men." WTF? I thought we were past that and understood that this disease affects ALL walks of life!!! So, needless to say, our daighter will be attending the educational portion of this class.

I have a couple friends who have also worked with childen in various aspects. One of them was a teacher (in Harlem and at a private school, as well). She saw thigns from both sides. She saw kids in the Harlem school that couldn't afford more than one meal a day, and their clothes were falling off them, they were in such poor condition. She had kids that would fall asleep in class because they had to watch their brothers and sisters while mom was at work at night. At the private school, when parents would contact her, they would blame her for little Johnny or Jenny failing. They wouldn't look at the fact that their children were not completing assignments and paying attention in class. It was her fault for not making them learn. Forget the fact that there was little to no parental involvement, other than writing the check or looking at grades occasionally. they were not taking the responsibility for assisting in the educaton of their children.

I have another friend who was a juvenile probation officer. She had told me stories of parents calling her to ask HER why their child was not in school on a particular day. Um...isn't it the parent's responsibility to make sure their kid goes to school, and not the probation officer who has MANY kids on her caseload?

Parents seem to be more interested in being their kids friends than their parents. They care more if their child likes them or not and that they don't restrict things too much. F that!!! I'm the parent, and I honestly don't care if they "like" me. As a parent, it is my job to provide all the tools necessary for them to grow up and be a prductive member of society. That means not allowing them to watch every movie they want (they can't watch a PG-13 movie until AFTER we have seen it and determine if it's appropriate or not). They can't play mature rated or overly violent video games. We are the boss and will direct them what to do and when to do it. We will not accept backtalk...PERIOD. We've heard the threats of them saying "I'm going to tell the school" or "I'm going to call the cops." Our response is..."go ahead, I'll dial for you." I'm old school when it comes to discipline. The parents are in charge, and not the kids. You can and will have priviledges (and toys) taken away from you if you misbehave. And they will get cell phones when they have a job and can afford to pay for them on their own.

As for the violence and the tendencies that have come out unlike before, I think that there are MANY factors. The ease at which information travels now, whether it be on the internet or the news, or via cellphones. Less involvement from parents in their kids lives. They seem to care more about themselves and ignore what's going on with their kids. And then you have the "fairness movement"...What I mean by that is this: Some schools don't give out letter grades until 4th grade (WTF?!?!), because they don't want to hurt their self esteem if they get a D or an F...um sorry, no...; In little league everyone gets to bat every inning and there are no outs, and they don't keep score...again BS to me. Keep the damn score, and teach them that there ARE actually winners and losers in life. The job market and business is competitive. you will not be handed something and told "That's OK that you lost us millions of dollars, maybe you'll do better next time." I believe the best way to learn to succeed is to actually have failures in your life. Let them learn that they have to work hard to get ahead and "win" in life. And then kids are taught that they have more "rights" than they should have. Discipline has been taken away from parents. If I screwed up as a kid, I got spanked, and look at how I turned out...wait...bad example. :-) Seriously, though, timeouts do NOT always work. Sending them to their room where they have all kids of toys and all the electronic games we never had is NOT a punishment. As a comparison, I had Coleco football and baseball, and a Speak n Spell and a Speak n Math.

And we come to the end of my rant. The main points I want to get out is that there is less parental involvement in kids lives nowadays (whether from work or other issues), and society as a whole has become more about the happiness of the child than teaching them about life and hard work and what it takes to be successful.

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Jeez, Mike, I'm not gonna call you "Daddy" anymore if you tell everyone what a hardass you are. :-)
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