What’s Troubling Teens? Teachers Hit Road to Learn

The two men have traveled the country, going from state to state, town to town, asking children the same question:

“Why do kids kill kids?”

The answer--from rich kids luxuriating in million-dollar suburbs to poor ones surviving in crime-ridden tenements; from New England kids in aluminum-sided colonials to Mennonite kids working on Pennsylvania hog farms--was the same:

Kids are angry, kids are violent, and kids become killers because parents are doing a lousy job. Not just their own parents, but everyone else’s too.

Compelled by school shooting after school shooting to seek out the roots of youth violence, educators Howard Haas, 49, and Alex Aitcheson, 48, set out last month on a self-styled “Children’s Crusade.”

Now back from a 50-city trip in which they visited teen centers and public parks, inner-city projects and suburban malls, Haas, of Mission Viejo, and Aitcheson, of Riverside, say they heard the same message again and again, everywhere they stopped:

* Teens need more time with their parents and more guidance from them.

* They want their parents to listen to them, to ask their opinions, to set guidelines and require them to adhere to rules. Mothers, many said, are their heroes; fathers--often described as emotionally or physically absent--are not.

Haas, former principal of La Mirada High School, and Aitcheson, a former administrator at Valverde Unified School District in Riverside County, recently returned from their journey and are editing the 80 hours of filmed interviews.

“What we found was there’s a desert out there,” Haas said. “Kids are just dying to talk and don’t have anyone to talk to.

“When we didn’t have scheduled interviews, we’d ask what’s the toughest street in the city and we’d go there. You’d have 20 or 30 little children come running to us because they have nowhere to play and nothing else to do.”

The two men had been discussing teen violence since the school shootings in Pearl, Miss.; West Paducah, Ky.; Jonesboro, Ark.; and Edinboro, Penn. Then on April 20, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris stormed Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., shooting 13 students and themselves.

It was more than Aitcheson and Haas could stand. Both quit their jobs and launched the crusade. Both school districts reserved teaching jobs for them to return to.

In addition to questions about violence, the two asked children: Who are your heroes? Does poverty make someone inclined to be violent? Does media violence influence children? Does easy access to guns create violence? Can government help, and does belief in God diminish violence?

Answers varied. A Mennonite girl said, “The snake came and tempted Eve, Eve tempted Adam with an apple, and it’s gone downhill since.”

But often, although many teens mentioned jealousy, anger over harassment for being different, gangs and peer pressure as contributing causes of violence, a steadfast indictment of parents surfaced in almost every interview.

“Why are kids killing kids? I think in society parents are the ones supposed to be accused. I think parents are what the problem is,” said Francia Maestas, 18, of Glendale, Utah.

“Violence is not something you just pick up. . . . You don’t get an urge to kill someone for no reason. It all comes back to the family,” said Tara Grove, 17, of Cleveland.

And from a teen in Woodbury, Conn.: “Parents have to instill their values on their kids. How could these Columbine kids have a shotgun in their top drawers? It’s ridiculous. Where were the parents?”

Also, from the smallest hamlet of 1,000 to Central Park in New York City, teens said drugs are ever-present in their lives.

“There wasn’t a community we visited that didn’t have drugs, and the kids didn’t think the government could do much about it,” Haas said. “Many also felt that way about gun control too. It’s so widespread they think guns will be pretty difficult to curb.”

One of the pair’s greatest fears, however--that children had become inured to violence--was not realized.

“I had thought that maybe kids had become numb, that they just didn’t care anymore,” Haas said. “The kids aren’t numb, but we adults have grown numb.

“We see kids playing outside in a grass field filled with dog manure and glass, and we don’t do anything about it. Nobody’s taking care of them.”

The greatest jolt for both men was the poverty and crime endured by children in the nation’s slums and ghettos.

“I think it has radicalized me about the work that needs to be done in the inner cities,” Haas said.

“There was very little change from when I saw those cities 30 years ago,” Aitcheson said. “Neighborhoods filled with trash, drug dealing going on out in the open. . . . Kids in Newark explained that cars come by with weapons for sale as if they were ice cream trucks.”

Their hope is that the completed film will be used by educators and elected officials, community groups and agencies working with youths.

The Kiwanis club donated $10,000 and housed the two in Kiwanis homes along the route, General Motors donated use of a van, and Pacific Bell gave them $750 worth of gas. But the trip cost about $60,000, and now the two must defray the bills.

And the project is not over. Haas and Aitcheson saved California interviews for last. After those are completed, their goal is to bring together the teens they interviewed, along with their parents, for a summit on teen violence.

“I think we need to bring the consciousness back again,” Haas said. “My generation is the one that needs to remember. It’s time now for people to see we can make a difference. We have to make a difference.”