Kids these days. They disrupt education with bomb threats and they refuse to grow up. What's with this foolishness?

Does tobacco provide the devil-may-care, I'm ready to take on the world ego trip that so many youth possess these days. Cracking down on criminal convenience store owners who sell tobacco to minors, displaying posters of nicotine infected body parts, and covering our cigarette packs with grisly photographs might provide the medicine needed to end this childish pose. What else can be done to stop this delinquency?

We could start by realizing that although we might like carbon copy kids, the fact is that kids come in a multiple array of styles and personalities and getting them to recognize there potential and uniqueness at an early age would be a good start towards eliminating this namby pamby, infantile behavior.

By the age of 14 many kids are ready to tackle the responsibilities of the world but, instead, are couped up in educational warehouses they don't want to be in, learning things that bore them to death and, as a result, end up languishing in idleness and mediocrity, and floundering into jobs they have no desire to perform.

Maybe it's up to families to respond to the problem, but extended family support is an ancient relic and all the griping and whining in the world won't bring it back.

Single mothers, distant parents and lack of interest in organized religion are a permanent fixture on our landscape.

All the bellyaching and lollygaging in the world won't bring the family back to its former glory. It's time to move on.

Constructive pursuits such as apprenticeship programs would go a long way towards fixing the anguish and apathy of the youth of today. Kids would develop confidence, learn how to make difficult decisions, get the gratification that comes with accomplishing a task and, most important, learn about themselves.

Instead we have fourteen year old T.V. babies, raised by T.V. babies, who's sense of pride and dignity is based solely on how babyish they can be. Thanks to good nutrition, kids grow up faster physically than they ever have. However, socially and mentally they remain in pampers because that's what many parents and teachers want.

They want their kids to have the cushy job and the cushy car and live the life of a cushy creature of comfort. What we fail to teach them is how to get off there cushy butts and grow up. It's hard to believe but they might actually want to grow up, but they're to confused and anxious to do so because they've never been offered real discipline or guidance.

People would be better off learning how to be competent at constructing things in the real world; whether that be a blue- print, a painting, a house, a meal, or a story. Practical education has taught people how to think for themselves for thousands of years but in North American culture, in the year 2000, it's a devalued activity.

Curiosity, open-mindedness and the desire to learn creates a multi dimensional, well integrated personality. That's what we should desire. Instead we get anxious, arrogant thumb suckers staggering aimlessly into a nowhere land of cubicle and corporate downsizing, where their bags of infantile tricks and humours provides an ego without any substance or character.

It's true that many corporate workers reap the benefits of the corporate culture while seeing through and beyond it. But many workers, because of there minimal education, invest all their hopes and desires into their careers only to be smacked into disillusion.

Aging baby boomers carry the most weight come election day and because all they do is whine about health care, we end up with health minister Allan Rock walking around on parliament hill like some sort of high priest trying to save our youth by preaching the evils of nicotine. The simple cigarette that provides mild relief for anxious teens is, in Mr. Rock's mind, the evil root of our problems.

If Rock really wanted to save the youth of today he'd find the Minister of Education for P.E.I., Chester Gillan, throw some cold water on his face, give him a good shake and do what he has to do to snap him out of the drunken stupor he dallies in.

Let's re-organize our priorities and begin demanding more from education.

Kids come into the world feeling lost and forlorn knowing nothing about where they stand in the scheme of things. Many of their fears can be eliminated by giving kids a stronger sense of time, place and self.

Primary schoolers are fascinated by dinosaurs and Egypt, not just because of there attraction to monsters and mummies, but because it allows them to develop a compass, get their bearings and become aware of there place in history. Primary studies of astronomy would give a kid at least a rudimentary idea about his place in the universe. These studies, along with developing strong skills in the basics, would give a kid the confidence to break free from his mothers apron strings, journey into the world and mature a little bit.

But, alas, the culture of the angst-ridden youth is upon us, and all the wrist slapping and resentment in the world won't make it go away.

Unless education is changed, and we quits foisting narrow minded scholastic expectations upon the diversity of our youth, we'll be stuck with the overprotective pampering of the walking wounded that produces one dimensional, dreary-faced delinquents, who's only glimmer of hope is that some night their school is blown to smithereens so that they can get a minor break from the monotony of their daily studies.

DM