The Fall of the Youth: The Writer Within #2

When I was 15 years old, I found myself in a writing class for homeschoolers, and amidst all of my assigned writing, I found an author whose work I fell in love with. Mark Twain was and is my favorite writer, and so, as part of my class, I wrote an essay in my best imitative style of Twain. My teacher called it “Beltwainish”. So, here it is, unadulterated and still full of gumption.

The Fall of the Youth

Oh, how the youth have fallen! Speaking as one, I can volunteer my own point of view, an objective one at that. We are so corrupt that we cannot be saved anymore. Just ask any middle-aged person on the street; they will agree that the youth nowadays are corrupt and fallen.

You see it everyday in the news now. Juvenile shootings, juvenile crime waves, juvenile rapes, juvenile robberies, juvenile…well, you get the picture. But what most people, including myself, don’t understand is why juvenile crimes have risen so much in the past few years.

I mean, our parents are perfect model citizens. They always tell us not to smoke, drink, steal, cheat, lie, or anything along those lines. They then proceed to follow their own advice. Why, just the other day I was at a friend’s house when his dad walked through the door. We were playing one of our favorite video games, Fable. Our character in the game was drinking, and we were laughing about it. My friend’s father observed us silently. When our character was killed, my friend would swear under his breath. His father finally heard him, and he stepped up and lectured us.

“Kids, you should never, under any circumstances, curse, drink, or smoke! Why, I believe that those are the most appalling things imaginable that a human can do, besides murder or rape. But once you start down the road of evil, you will never be able to get off. Never. So what might be just ‘harmless’ cursing and virtual drinking today might end up being murder or rape tomorrow! Don’t go down that road!”

My friend and I were stunned. We didn’t know how to reply, but there was none needed. Ever since that fateful day, Jorak the magician abstained from drinking, smoking, and sex, as well as many other “evils”. I think that if not for my friend’s father saying that while I was still young, I would be a juvenile murderer right now.

My friend and I just stared at his father in awe at his commanding speech. His father got kind of nervous under our steady eyes, and so he started to pat over himself and feel in his pockets. He groaned and muttered under his breath, “Damn it, I left my cigarettes at the bar,” and then he hurried out the front door. I laughed to myself as I heard a car start in the driveway. Even though he said it quietly, I believe he let me hear that as a kind of inside joke. I had a good laugh about it, and returned to my game.

So why the youth today have become so corrupted with such role models for parents is a wonder to me. But there are many more anti-reasons for the corruption of youth.

Heh, anti-reasons. Nothing like making up a word that fits your sentences.

Anyways, youth today should not be as bad as they are right now for another reason: schools. Without schools, I believe that there would be total anarchy among the youth today. Er, that is, more total anarchy, anyways. The school system that we have now perfectly trains and equips the youth of today for the real world. It teaches them much-needed skills, like how to dissect a frog and how to perform CPR on a plastic dummy. School also teaches them many good habits that they will need in life, like note-passing and flirting.

But sadly, I am not an attendee of any school. I am, and always have been, a homeschooler. Go ahead, laugh at me and mock me. Have your fun. In the end, I’ll be the one laughing. I think.

Well, maybe not. I hear that public school kids are really smart. Well, at least the ones that play Halo are.

Just a few months ago, my cousin from Dallas visited my family. He laughed at me when I asked him if he thought that homeschoolers were dumber than public school kids. He told me, “Why, Robert, I don’t know how to reply to that. I’ll just put it in a comparison for you.

Say, two guys sit next to each other in a biology class. One is a homeschooler; one is a public-schooler. They both dissect a frog. The homeschooler states, ‘Well, it’s obvious that the brachial nerve cord connects to the craxium, which in turn stimulates the medulla, which resides inside of the jugular…’ et cetera, et cetera. The public-schooler just stares at the frog’s innards and says, ‘He he. Green guts.’ Now which do you think is smarter?”

I replied with another question. “Well, what about the teachers? How do you compare homeschooled kids’ teachers with public-schooled kids’ teachers?”

“Well, you homeschoolers are either taught by your parents or you teach yourself, correct?”

I nodded.

“Then either you are the teacher, in which case the teacher is smart, or your brilliant parents are the teachers, in which case they are doubly smart. So in our imaginary biology class, the homeschooled guy asks the teacher, his parent, ‘Hey Mom, where’s the medulla oblongata?’ ‘In the cranial skull.’ Whereas, with the public-schooler, he and a bunch of his friends gather around the frog, laughing and saying, ‘Green guts.’ So the teacher comes over to them. ‘Hey, what are you kids up to? Don’t you know you’re supposed to be… He he, look! Green guts!’”

I don’t think that I just supported my case for homeschoolers being dumber than public-schoolers. But it must obviously be true if I, a homeschooled kid, just supported my argument with a case for the opposite side.

Well, anyways, youth in general is much more corrupt today than it was. I mean, just ask anyone whose youth was from an earlier time and they will tell you how much better it was back then. I mean, if these people who have seen their youth and now our youth, they must know which is better. Seriously though, ask them and they will tell you about their youth.

However I have noticed a curious thing with older people. If you ask them about the hippie revolution and all the drugs, sex, and violence going on then, they will tell you that they cannot quite remember; that it’s all fuzzy. But if you ask them if the youth back then was better than it is now, they will inform you just how much better it was then. And it isn’t just a small case, but a wide and spread out epidemic. It seems that all older people exhibit this strange use of memory. Very curious indeed… I should look into that for my next essay.

Er, anyways, the juvenile community is very corrupt today, and without good reason. I have already given you many examples of why we should not be this way. Great role model parents, with humorous aside remarks; fun and educating schools, with teachers who will join their students’ fun; and wise older people, with their great memories.

Hmm… On second thought, maybe I wasn’t right about this subject. Maybe, perhaps, the youth are the way they are not because of our own faults, but because of outer influences. But then that would subtract from my final point, that we should accept responsibility as a generation and move forward together… No! I had a good ending paragraph for that! It contained a great line about us “getting off the couch of slothfulness and onto the treadmill of responsibility”.

Oh well. Maybe next time I’ll end my essay with a rousing battle cry for the youth of this generation. I just don’t have the energy today to rewrite this whole essay so that it lines up with my final point.