Virtue vs. violence
SINCE MAY, when Boston's homicide count was 19, countless news sources have chronicled the killing of city youth. Anguished parents, clergy, and community leaders have come forward to express their outrage. An exasperated Uphams Corner undertaker, Floyd Williams, had this to say to the Globe in July: ''I'm the one that has to sew up the bullet holes and wipe the blood from their faces and listen to their mothers wail, and, after a while, it's enough. It's just enough."
Police, clergy, and community leaders have reached out to hundreds of at-risk youth, held marches, parades, National Night out, established violence-free basketball leagues and even held peace dances. The result? The killings rose to 58, two players got shot at the violence-free basketball league, and three teens were shot leaving the peace dance at the YMCA.
This is not a knock on the police and clergy -- they have worked tirelessly and courageously. Rather, it is a sobering wake-up call that we need to get serious about finding new ways to reach our young people before the streets do. It has become painfully clear that police, clergy, and community leaders cannot rescue our kids by themselves. If Massachusetts does not begin to look for new ways to save young people from the streets, then they are going to continue to die senselessly. There is no way around it -- the dialogue must begin now.
One explanation is that street values, rather than traditional values, have taken over the younger generation. This is demonstrated vividly when a 12-year-old is held on $250,000 bail for carrying a gun, a cab driver is killed over a $7 fare, and teenagers are shot leaving a peace dance at the YMCA. One solution may be a sustained effort to restore traditional values in our youth. Consider the following:
John Adams mandated in the Massachusetts Constitution that public education teach virtue. In Commonwealth v. McDuffy, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court all but agreed, stating: ''First, the protection of rights and liberties requires the diffusion of wisdom, knowledge, and virtue throughout the people. Second, the means of diffusing these qualities and attributes among the people is to spread the opportunities and advantages of education throughout the Commonwealth." Adams directed public education to teach virtue and the SJC agreed -- yet education is falling short.
The current education guidelines mention good behavior, the dangers of violence, weapons, and drug use, interpersonal relationships, and using civics to fit pupils morally for citizenship. A close analysis of these frameworks shows that they do not specify exactly how to teach these ideas. Nor do they come close to Adams's conception of ''virtue." Adams discussed a perfect principle of treating others as we would have them treat us, applicable at all times and in all circumstances. The current guidelines fall far short of instilling this robust understanding of virtue. Imagine if they didn't. Imagine how far it would go to counteract the influence of the streets if kids were taught day in and day out the practical implications of treating others as they want to be treated.
Adams's works contain other ideas integral to understanding virtue, such as conscience and justice, and the guidelines fail in this respect as well. The bottom line is that in order to satisfy Adams's directive, public education must instill an understanding of virtue in our young so that they can apply it in various situations throughout life -- in situations when troubled teens encounter decisions that could result in life or death.
Recently, a gunshot crashed through a window in a crowded public library and a bullet crashed through the car window of Boston's city council president. In response to the heinous slaying of a 68-year-old woman in South Boston, an exasperated city councilor, James Kelly, has proposed a curfew for city teens. He reasoned, ''For some reason, simply educating the kids is not working."
Although a curfew is not the answer, in a way he is right -- education as currently constituted is not successfully rescuing our young people from the streets. John Adams gave Massachusetts a powerful tool, and it is time to get serious about using it. The cost of our failure to do so is being paid with the lives of our youth -- a price we can no longer afford to pay.
Robert Constantino is a former Suffolk County prosecutor at Roxbury District Court and founder of a weekly discussion seminar at the New England Shelter for Homeless Veterans.
