For a long time, I have been aware that Beach City students struggle immensely with drug use.
When I subbed long-term at Hawthorne High School, the computer tech teacher informed us that a higher degree of pregnancy, drug use, and criminality persisted among the Beach City students and their schools.
I have not as of yet learned what types of drugs individuals are using in Centinela Valley Schools, but I do know that the drug culture is far more pervasive and damaging in schools like Mira Costa High School and Redondo Union High School.
The pressure to succeed is a demanding god, one that bankrupts a person long before they have a chance to realize that "making it to the top", there is not much to take pride in.
Success, to some, is a moving target. For others, it is a target lacking any real value beyond pleasing others or pleasing oneself.
The pressure, though, must be immense for youth who are expected to go to Ivy League Schools. On a number of occasions, I have spoken with young people who have told me that currently options for the future seem very weak. College is supposed to be a certain, dead-set destination for them, but currently, immense cut-backs followed by dwindling course offerings and fewer spaces all make college enrollment more difficult to achieve. Those students who do graduate may or may not have a job to graduate into, or must settle for minimum wage work.
I have also learned that for many students, they are going through the motions in order to impress someone else, although there is very little to indicate that they are impressed with themselves.
The drug culture in the South Bay is far more widespread than most people wish to admit. Recent commercials have also dramatized that another drug, "enabling" is also very addictive, one on which many parents are hooked. Despite the intentions to shield young people from shame, it does little good to label someone a "good kid", when they are struggling with difficult issues in their lives, yet have resorted to stimulants and comfort measures to ease their pain. Addiction is a very shameful and frustrating bondage, one which jars against a person's sense of self so strongly, they cannot reconcile themselves to the fact that they have a problem, but they in themselves are not the problem.
"State of Our Teens" will meet on March 28 to discuss what the Beach Cities can do to help our youth.
According to the columnist, society does not have a lot of healthy ways to deal with stress.
First of all, though, we need to identify stress for what it really is: fear and anxiety.
What are the roots of these terrible troubles for teens? Condemnation. . .the sense that they must measure up to standards which in themselves contain very little meaning, and that unless they do, they are failures, even if they accomplish meaningful goals in the mean-time. Like many people, they will grow up to become adults still seeking satisfaction in something more compelling than just "making it."
At "State of Our Teens," attorneys, health practitioners, and school personnel is indeed understandable, young people need to learn about living under "no condemnation". This status is a spiritual goal, one that requires a spiritual understanding. It is unfortunate that youth are not finding what they need in spiritual training.
This problem cannot be resolved by treating the symptoms, or by getting individuals to stop using drugs and playing hard in their lives. Like every other person in the world, young people need to find an unconditional source of strength in their lives, one in which they are not forced to answer all the problems in their lives on their own, truth that remains forever unwavering in the face of so much that is changing. The rampant sex, drugs, and alcohol problems which plague youth today stem from problems far deeper, within a person, a matter of the human heart and human nature, which for all of us is broken and beaten, looking for restoration.