The Innocence of Youth?

Augustine, the 4th century bishop of Hippo in North Africa, wrote that 'the innocence of children is in the helplessness of their bodies, rather than any quality of soul.' Basically, he gives the lie to what we normally call the 'innocence' of children; that is, the idea that children are born pure and that it is only interaction with us corrupted, 'sinful' grown-ups which pollutes their innocence. What a load of rubbish!  The barest cursory incursion into a school playground - even among the youngest of children - will evidence their misguided idea that they are the centre of the universe. Please understand, I am not saying that this makes children evil or corrupt.  It is simply the way we are made, we are geared to self-preservation, usually manifested in selfishness. Socialisation, far from being a kind of destruction of some innate moral innocence, is rather the very means through which we encourage in children those aspects of the human person and human interaction which we most value and most appropriately call 'human'.  If we are fortunate this transition is undergone without too much pain and frustration, but it is unrealistic to think that the frustration which it necessarily entails can be avoided altogether.

The very human contest between self-centredness and growth into empathetic awareness of others and their needs, is today best exemplified in the debate over rights and responsibilities. Socially, we have created and encouraged an entire generation (or two) of people nit-pickingly aware of their rights (me, me, me), but with almost no sense of their responsibilities (others' needs or rights).  In schools, the demand that young people take real responsibility for their lives and actions is lost in the in the double-speak of modern education: 'behavioural targets', 'time-outs', 'learning contract'.  The entire process seems geared to protecting students from the real consequences of their myopic self-centredness, their inordinate obsession with their 'rights', in attempts to 'honour their innocence as children'.  This is only exacerbated by the fact that their parents have grown up under the same system, both educationally and socially, and developed an equally distorted sense of their 'rights', but with little sense of responsibility to others or the wider society, with little awareness of the rights of others.

All of this begs some questions.  How do we socialise children (and now many adults) into the awareness of a life and a world beyond their short-sighted perspective?  How do we best encourage people into a genuine and realistic balanced view of rights and responsibilities; into a healthy complement of self-centredness and other-centredness.  I am not completely sure, but I cannot imagine that either promoting romantic ideas of innocence or continually rescuing people from the consequences of their inordinate self-absorption will do it.