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Letter: Respect

December 1, 2009 By Ben Sclair

When, where and why did we lose respect of people in authority, including police, teachers, ministers? In my youth if there was a problem at school then there was a greater problem at home. Authority seemed to mean something in those days. Does this line of authority exist any more or could this be the reason we have 18,000 children in foster care. Where are the parents of today? Is this lack of respect the fruits of the sixties, ACLU, or some other entity ? Please, some one enlighten me as to why one person can take the lives of others and run away and hide?

Ed Anderson
University Place

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Comments

  1. Travis Lauricella says

    December 2, 2009 at 11:26 am

    I don’t believe that the way youth treats authority has really changed that much in the last 40 years, or in the last century, or even in the last three millennia. Plato is said to have attributed the following quote to Socrates:

    “The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”

    And earlier than that, the Greek poet Hesiod is said to have written, “I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words… When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wise [disrespectful] and impatient of restraint.”

    Or, if you’re looking for something more recent, the following quote is attributed to Peter the Hermit, some time around 1100 A.D.:

    “The world is passing through troublous times. The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint. They talk as if they knew everything, and what passes for wisdom with us is foolishness with them. As for the girls, they are forward, immodest and unladylike in speech, behavior, and dress.”

    I believe that the proportion of disrespectful children, teenagers, and adults has remained low and fairly constant throughout the years. It is, however, certainly true that we’re able to learn more often and more quickly than ever about extreme examples of such behavior.

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