One of My Lessons Learned from Covington: Our First Job is to Teach

Blogging and writing are out of my element so excuse the poor grammar, but the events involving Covington Catholic High School at our national’s capital this past weekend have been a curious study in who we have become as a community. The original image that first emerged from the media was disturbing.  A white, privileged, Catholic, MAGA hat wearing, smirking teen staring down a respected Native American elder who had gathered in the area to promote the plight of indigenous peoples.  As it was originally reported, the teens came upon this group, surrounded Nathan Phillips and an in effort to intimidate him, one MAGA hat-wearing student stood directly in front him and smirked while Mr. Phillips drummed and chanted.  Other students jeered, “build that wall, build that wall!!”  When I first saw that image, I thought, “Wow, what an idiot.  I hope someone gets ahold of him and teaches him right from wrong.” I shook my head and I wondered what would motivate a child to act in such a disrespectful manner.  I was sad.  Other people responded differently than I did.

As we have since learned, the original image presented to the media was just that, an image.  Additional videos maybe present a different story.  You can use this new information to either stay with your original presumption or change it around entirely.  You can also use the additional information to start doing the “Yeah, buts.”  Yeah, but where were the chaperones?  Yeah, but why didn’t they leave?  Yeah, but he was wearing a MAGA hat.  Yeah, but….. Yeah, but….  Either way, resolution on this issue from political opposites probably isn’t going to happen.  However, we do know that social media presented a story, respected media accepted it as truth and most people ran with it based upon their own assumptions of what they saw. I think we can at least agree on those facts.

But here is what I struggle with the most from the events from the weekend. The voracity at which we condemned a group of teenagers – one in particular – was shocking.  I do not mean to sensationalize some of the worst of the worst, but calling for school bombings, bodily harm involving wood-chippers and retro-active abortions seem a bit over the top.  The level of hate in social media is appalling, but even more appalling is that most of the hate came from grown-ups.  Not from teenagers who still have a lot of growing up and learning to do, but the majority of vitriol is from adults; grown-ass people who bully, dox and thoughtlessly threaten children through faceless social media outlets.

I work with teens and lots of teens do dumb stuff.   Sometimes its deliberate and sometimes they just don’t know right from wrong.  Sometimes all they know is what they see in social media which, I think we can all agree is not the best place to get information.  It doesn’t mean that when they do dumb stuff that they do not deserve consequences, but can we agree that as adults, our first responsibility to our youth is to teach and not to condemn?

I was in DC this summer with my teenaged daughter.  She had never been there before.  There are events, images and people there unlike anything she might experience in our own community.   In her naivety, if she would have found herself caught up in a situation captured on social media and subsequently posterized by people all over the political spectrum, I don’t know how I would have reacted.  Had feckless cowards then posted our name and address across social media platforms I really would not have known how to react.  Maybe afraid, which is maybe what people want which is maybe the community we’ve become.

However, as an adult and parent, if my child had done something wrong, I would have at least liked the opportunity to make the moment a teachable moment without the condemnation from people all over the world who I don’t know and who definitely don’t know me.  My experience with teens is that teens will do dumb stuff.  They will let you down.  When this happens, we can either teach them to make better decisions or we can punish them because they should have known better.  How you choose to parent is your choice, but I think our youth are better served when we teach first, reflect later and condemn never.