Cops And Robbers
Posted by: tony on 07/30/2007 09:04 PM
Updated by: tony on 07/31/2007 01:31 AM
|
Expires: 08/30/2007 12:00 AM
|
I have been enjoying my Sirius satellite radio, and am a regular listener of Gus Lloyd on the morning program, Sieze the Day. This program is generally commentary on news or other items of interest, much of it Catholic. It's sort of like a "live blog" with the commenters calling in.
On the Monday, July 30 show, Gus was talking about the "reality" show, Cops. He was wondering if he ought to allow his boys who I believe he said were 9 and 11 to watch the show with him.
As a parent, only you can decide if your individual child is ready for a certain experience or not. This one of the reasons that I'm totally against the concept of "age approproate sex education". Individual concepts are approproate for individual children at different physical ages. You can't say I should teach all 5 year olds this, or all 11 year olds that.
That having been said I believe that young boys ought to watch a show like Cops (or police shows that are not too violent or too graphic) when they are ready. Especially if they are in the public school system, the normal good-guys-vs-bad-guys play that boys engage in are discouraged, if not outright banned. Whem I was a little boy, we played games like Cops and Robbers. We took turns being the Cops and being the Robbers. We pointed our fingers at each other and went "bang" and the offending robber was required to drop as if killed. Nowadays, little boys can't even point their fingers and go "bang!" without getting detention, and heaven help them if they bring a plastic gun to school.
School is a fantasy world where everyone plays nice. Nobody ever takes what doesn't belong to them, and if they do, we can always "talk it out".
Reality is that certain people (more likely to be men than women) are predators. These people still are created in the image and likeness of God, and they have the same inherent dignity that all people have. That having been said, justice requires that they be stopped. They should be neutralized with as little violence as possible. However, violence may still be required, but it should be applied dispassionately, without hatred or malice as part of a job that though distasteful, is required.
Watching Cops, where the officers always treat the accused criminals in a professional manner, highlights this very necessary job, and helps young boys to understand that the world contains wolves and sheep1 (who the wolves prey on). But the world also containd sheepdogs who protect the sheep. They have fangs and growl like the wolves, but they would never harm the sheep. Should one of them harm the sheep, he stops being a sheepdog and becomes a wolf who the rest of the sheepdogs need to hunt down.
As long as the world contains wolves (and I'd imagine it will be until Jesus comes again), we will need sheepdogs to protect the sheep. Ad as long as we need the sheepdogs, young boys will have to be taught that evil exists, and be given the model of courage to fight that evil.
--
|
