I live in New Jersey, a predominantly White state, albeit a growing “minority” population. I’ve lived here my entire life. In fact, I’ve never lived outside of the current county I where I reside. When I was younger, I lived in a very, very poor area on the outskirts of Princeton. My mother, sister, brother, and I all lived in a 2 bedroom apartment. It had a single bathroom, and a kitchen that was more like a closet than anything else. The dining room and living room were combined with the kitchen. We had one couch and T.V. roughly resembling this. The majority of the families that lived in the apartment complexes spanning roughly 50 acres were either Black or White, with a few others mixed in here or there. I didn’t have any video games or a computer, and this was a few years before my first gameboy. I spent most of my time collecting and playing with Pokémon cards (Or Pokéman, as my parents called it). My dad was living in a halfway house in Trenton; I saw him on weekends.
The tough issue when it comes to comparing the quality of life is determining who it is fair to compare to. In my current area, an upper-middle class town, many might consider my childhood deprived. However, I’m sure for a considerable amount of others in the country, my past was full of luxary. Stability is what we are all after, right? Well what’s wrong with a semi-stable life, just without all perks of living in an environment were money is generally a nonissue?
What’s even more interesting is how exposure to a community of “superior” people, financially, can build an immense amount of jealousy. When I was under 10-years-old, the only time I had ever used a computer was in school, because I was able to partake in the Princeton public school system. They had the money to afford several original eMacs, including the all too popular Oregon Trail. However, because I didn’t have a computer at home, it didn’t phase me. My limited exposure to the technology was negligable in my preadolecent mind. When I look at myself now and realize how completely dependent I am on my computer it is incredible to see how the change happened over a timeline of just about 8 years. In my 16 years on Earth, I’ve evolved from poverty into a young adult with many luxories that I wouldn’t even have known existed 10 years ago.
However, my situation is not of the utmost important for this though. Instead, it’s more about the people around. If I had to estimate, I would say 95% of the people around me are composed of entirely, or mostly, bullshit.
When I lived in Princeton I was exposed to a wide array of different people, some who could possibly be declared clincally insane (had they been able to afford to) and some who were perfectly contempt with their lives. Many of those perfectly contempt people had known nothing else, so why shouldn’t they be happy with what they have?
Since I’ve moved into an upper-middle class environment I’ve become very disappointed with the actions of the people around me. People whose families make enough money to support them and a stable home. People who take every single thing around them completely for granted. One of the most interesting things I’ve noticed about high school is that if you were to line up every kid in the school, just about every other one of them were abusing drugs. I’ve always been morally against drugs and alcohol. I don’t smoke, nor do I drink. But that is besides the point, because for the sake of fairness, my motives are bias. However, that’s a story for another day. Now, back in the 7th grade when the D.A.R.E. program visited my school in regular intervals, I thought it was a waste of my time. I thought we had all heard this enough before and that me and my classmates were most definitely going to “stay above the influence.” I see now why they make such an issue of the problem. What used to be merely a ridiculous stereotype of my generation has mutated into fact. Everyone around me is on drugs.
However, that still isn’t the problem! People will do drugs, and the chances are won’t be able to stop them. What’s far, far more interesting are the reasons doings drugs:
- “Because it’s cool.” This doesn’t really hold up as much as parents would like it to. There are few stupid people out there who will respond with this crude statement, but it sure isn’t the most popular.
- “I do it for the high.” A slightly more intriguing answer. This is the one I hear the majority of the time. What I don’t quite understand is what is so wrong with your life that you are dependent on a drug to make you feel good. There is a lot to life. And if you take out all of the opinionated issues, such as religion and similar associations, life comes down to one thing: experience. The more you test life the more satisfying it is. Everything you do and everything that happens as a result is built into a manifest of human experience. That is the meaning to life. And it’s true that drugs are just another experience, and I accept that as a valid point. But in the end, what really matters is that you make it through life experiencing everything you can. And for a lot of people, drugs will only hold them back. You don’t need drugs to be happy. If that were so, we would be living quite the pointless, uneventful life, no?
- “What else are you going to do on a Saturday night?” This one is my absolute favorite. I don’t even want to go into the insanity of this quote (Yes, this is taken word for word from a classmate).
The biggest part of this is that the people in my school who do regularly do drugs don’t have defining reason, trama-wise. In many movies and books, the people that abuse substances, be it alcohol or whatnot, are usually portrayed as troubled, helpless individuals using drugs as a way of screaming out for help. What may seem like a noble cause is not what is in the real world, from what I’ve seen. Instead most people seem to do smoke or drink just because they can.
Where in Hell is the satisfaction in doing something just because you can.
Additionally, drugs aren’t the only abuse I’ve seen more so in schools in my area. Education seems to be failing, and it’s doing so quite fast. However, I think that the adults have missed the bar when it comes to the cause. Teachers and funding are not the issue!
The reason that education rates are declining is because kids generally don’t care. Obviously, the number of students who do have this attitude are limited, but from my experience in public schooling, the number is gaining power every year. Schools need to step up and find ways to motivate students. Without proper motivation and reasoning, many kids will find no reason to “waste” their time with mandatory education.
I don’t believe that the attitude could be attributed to laziness, either. Laziness is myth. At the ripe age of 12-18, people are in their prime for physical and mental activity. Motivation is the key to success, no matter how cliché that may sound.
I honestly wish I could say I like my high school, but the unfortunate truth is that when I go to school, I don’t feel like I am being educated. It’s more along the line of a dictatorship. If schools really want their kids to succeed, they will have to understand how kids really learn, and not how they want them to learn. Education needs to be versatile, changing for the needs of different generations. A happy worker is an efficient worker, so if they want people to do well, they aren’t going to have to kick the fascist attitude out the window, and start working with the kids, not against them.
Have a good one.
-Julius Parishy
P.S. Honestly, this was not intended to target anyone. I wouldn’t try to do that. I simply wouldn’t to convey my thoughts. These issues are important to me, and I hope you will see where I am coming from.