Mirrors.

The most frequent response I receive when I tell people that I taught high school is, “Wow. I could never do that. Teenagers these days…” This judgment comes complete with a slow headshake to emphasize the hopeless state of youngsters. I concede that teenagers can be difficult. In fact, they are in turn hilarious, pitiful, intelligent, angry, creative, challenging, and very, very needy. But I tend to come to their defense when people carelessly pass judgment on the lot of them. And actually – although this seems to go too far for most people – I rarely think it’s the student’s fault that he/she acts inappropriately.

While we were visiting Jeff’s parents in Colorado in December of 2008, we all went to see the Avalanche play the Nashville Predators. (If you think I had torn loyalties, trust me, I did.) Everyone played nice until the second period. An Avalanche player knocked a Predator off the ice into the box where his teammates sat. The Av player was sent to the penalty box for un-sportsmanlike conduct. The rest of his teammates found this call unfair, and tensions mounted on both sides. While the Av player was in the box, the Predators took advantage of the situation and made a goal. The scoreboard flashed with menacing red words silently screaming at the Avalanche: “Get mad! Get even!” Before long, a fight broke out near the Predator’s goalie, causing all of the players to flock over and get in on the action. To be honest, none of that really surprised me; it’s testosterone in action, and you can see similar scenes in bars, schools, and parking lots around the country. But what really made my blood boil was the crowd’s reaction. Predictably, they stood and began cheering on the fight. With thousands of people yelling, of course, it’s impossible to hear what all is being said; however, I heard the man behind me start screaming, “Yeah! Ground ‘em into the ice! Give ‘em hell!”

Don’t talk to me about disrespectful, violent young people when that’s what you give them to look up to. And it’s not just at hockey games – the Chattanooga Lookouts (a minor league team no less!) has bloodthirsty fans, too. In the interest of space, I won’t even begin to cover football players: consider Ray Lewis, Philip Rivers, Randy Moss, and the list goes on. Don’t talk to me about violence in high schools without considering the ramifications of violence in sports. Teenagers think, and are absolutely correct, that it’s hypocrisy to tell them, “You can’t settle disagreements with fights,” when they’re seeing these same adults acting in completely the opposite way on the sporting field! I love sports as much, and probably more, than the next girl, but if we want high schoolers who are able to control their emotions, able to handle things like “adults” (What does that even mean anymore?), then we’d better hold a mirror up while we’re at sporting events cheering on the fights, disrespect, and violence we’re preaching against.

I’m not saying we should enter the arena wearing peace signs and smiling at everyone and selling roses instead of beer, but I am saying to think about those complained-about young people. How can we expect them to act differently when this is what they see from us?