Posted on 08/31/2007 10:07:33 AM PDT by WayneLusvardi
The Loss of Shaming and the Rise of Youth Crime - with Implications for Schools (and ceremonial events)
The Pasadena Pundit - August 31, 2007
Excerpted from John Braithwaite, Crime, Shame and Reintegration, 1989.
1. Crime is committed disproportionately by males.
2. Crime is perpetrated disproportionately by 15-25 year old males.
3. Crime is committed disproportionately by unmarried people.
4. Crime is committed disproportionately by people living in large cities (or highly impersonal downtown settings).
5. Crime is committed disproportionately by people who have experienced high residential mobility and who live in areas characterized by high residential mobility (where there is no "neighborhood," e.g. downtown "urban villages").
6. Young people who are strongly attached to their school are less likely to engage in crime.
7. Young people who have high educational and occupational aspirations are less likely to engage in crime.
8. Young people who do poorly at school are more likely to engage in crime.
9. Young people who are strongly attached to their parents are less likely to engage in crime themselves. 10. Young people who have friendships with criminals are more likely to engage in crime themselves.
11. People who believe strongly in the importance of complying with the law are less likely to violate the law.
12. For both women and men, being at the bottom of the class structure (however defined or measured), increases rates of offending for all types of crime apart from those for which opportunities are systematically less available to the poor (white collar crime).
13. Crime rates have been increasing since World War II in most countries, developed and developing. The only case of a country which has been clearly show to have had a falling crime rate in this period is Japan (a capitalist society with a "shame culture"). (Note: Crime rates in the U.S. fell precipitousy during the 1990's in part due to what is called the "broken windows" policy which entailed not only removal of graffiti, blight and social nuisances but involvement of the neighborhood).
Implications for Schools:
14. A key problem with young people is a loss of social integration as they break away from total identification with the family into which they are born.
15. The school provides one possibility for a continuity of social integration, and indeed we have seen that the evidence is strong that students who are poorly integrated with the school (by failure, dropping out, not liking it) are much more prone to delinquency.
16. If they wish to minimize delinquency, schools should not create outcast enclaves within the institution by ability grouping. In general, all processes that marginalize weak students (and we might add strong students) are potentially criminogenic.
17. Redemptive or integrative schooling "would aim to integrate students into all aspects of school learning and not build fences around students through bureaucratic rituals or prior assumptions concerning student ability. A clear expectation from teachers must be that all students can be taught, and in turn, an expectation on the part of students that they can learn." In integrative schools, all students will have some means or earnng positive reputations: "everyone can be someone" (not synonymous with 'self esteem').
18. "...the school can help bridge the socialization discontinuity between family and adult institutions..by being integrative (not inclusionary or multicultural or therapeutic or economic integration)....by reversing the trend toward extended adolescence. After children begin the process of breaking away from dependency on the family orientation, an extension has occurrred of the period in a "cultural no man's land" a cultural vacuum that has been filled by an increasingly identifiable adolescent culture incorporating distinctive tastes in clothes and music and often drug use and other forms of symbolic rebellion against adult hypocrisy (e.g., gangs).
19. We have seen that shaming is a powerful weapon of social control that can be used for good or ill. I have argued that the most important characteristic of cultural patterns of shaming that determine whether it will be used more to guarantee freedom than to trample upon it is whether the shaming is reintegrative. Communities which maintain bonds of respect throughout the shaming process are those most likely to tolerate with affection the 'village idiot,' the 'wag,' (ADD child, etc.).
20. What is certain, however, is that societies that lack the capacity to exert community control over breaches of duty, and to exert community control to protect freedoms, will lose their freedom."
Comment: Tentative Hypothesis No. 1: community elites who celebrate "having no shame" as a paramount cultural value in an open and notorious parade ("Doo Dah Parade" held in its cosmopolitan 'old town' urban village sponsored by the business sector) are unlikely to enculturate reintegrative shaming as described above.
Tentative Hypothesis No. 2: public schools, public school support foundations (PEF), and nonprofits that are brazen scofflaws and are openly shameless about the abuse of public funds and resources and public meeting laws by board members, employees, consultants, and nonprofit contractors facilitate a potentially and highly symbolic criminogenic culture and are unlikely to enculturate reintegrative shaming as described above.
Republicans can sometimes be shamed by the label of "hypocrite" because they sometimes fail to live up to their own code of conduct.
Democrats can never be shamed. They can never be hypocrites. Because they don't have a code of conduct.
Exactly. Republicans who talk about family values and such look like hypocrites when something like the Larry Craig incident happens. But since Democrats don’t talk about values, they can never be called hypocritical.
I think one of the founders of The Menninger Clinic put the situation
well DECADES ago with the title of a book:
“What Ever Happened To Sin?”
Clearly, Wayne Lusvardi has never heard of Norman Minetta - he is profiling to the max in this article.
All of which adds up to a reminder of the importance of being active in your local church, which should be providing the right kind of community to instill in you and your offspring the kind of values that will assure the greatest success in life.
The modern public schools and the secular arena in general are a moral wasteland, producing nothing but selfish hedonistic criminals.
I know what you mean, but they have been talking about values for years.
The episodes when they do talk about values it is always with the goal of destroying conservative Judeo/Christian values and replacing them with infinite moral depravity.
Wayne has done a good job of identifying the problems, but he doesn’t do a good job of coming up with solutions because he doesn’t really understand the mindset of kids today.
In the first place, Wayne, we are reaping the “reward” of a government education system that has failed in every sense of the word. Despite all the standards tests that students are required to pass in order to get a diploma, most high school graduates today don’t read, cannot write a comprehensible sentence (much less grammatically correct one), know little to nothing about science, know absolutely nothing about civics, cannot perform a simple mathematical operation (such as adding, subtracting, dividing or multiplying) on two numbers without the aid of a 4-function calculator!!
In addition, because of our celebrity-enamored culture, most of these kids have convinced themselves that they don’t “need no stinkin’ education” because they are all going to make bazillions as pro athletes or rock (rap) stars.
The day that they actually wake up and face reality is going to be extremely sad. In many ways, I am sorry for them, but the system of government education that we have today has failed these kids and Wayne has failed to understand that the problem is much more fundamental. All we need to do is return to teaching the kids the basics, refuse “social promotions” for failing kids, get the feds out of the school system altogether, get the courts out of the schools and make the teachers accountable for today’s failures. Also, we need to set achievable goals for the kids, stop downplaying the achievements of gifted students and reintroduce the notion of obtaining a good education in order to get a good job. In addition to failing to educate these kids, teachers have failed to instill in them a solid work ethic.
Many of today’s kids are angry, justifiably so. They are angry at an education system that they recognize, at some level, isn’t teaching them the skills or information they need to succeed in life. Without any of these tools, what do we expect?
Thank you for your comments - The posting “Loss of Shaming snd Yourh Crime” is not my writing but an excerpt from a book written by John Braithwaite author of Crime, Shame, and Reintegration (1989). The only part I wrote are the two hypotheses related to the City of Pasadena, California at the end.
Sorry, Wayne, I didn’t read all the way through the attributions. Education is one of my “hot buttons” and I tend to “light off”. Most of the things I see posted about education these days are so much BS and cloud the issue.
I did neglect to add one other comment related to the title - there is validity about the loss of shaming. One of the things i notice a lot about kids today is that spending any time in a jail is considered a badge of honor versus something about which they should be ashamed.
Dusty - I don’t blame your reaction. The approach advocated in John Braithwaite’s book is to try, wherever possible, to avoid the criminal justice system because of the “badge of honor” issues you raise.
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