When children break the law
Where I come from there's an old saying: "You'll never know your mother's pain until you have children." The Portuguese in my family tend to be the "glass-half-empty" types. We are, after all, the people who gave the world the fado—Portuguese folk music that drips with bitterness and longing.
So when it comes to child-rearing, pain tends to come before pleasure.
For Christians, the key to child rearing is balance. For example, the Book of Proverbs encourages on the one hand the use of the "rod" as a form of discipline: "Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you punish him with the rod, he will not die" (Proverbs 23:13). "Folly is bound up in the heart of a child but the rod of discipline will drive it far from him (Proverbs 22:15).
Yet the same book urges parents to, "train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it" (Proverbs 22:6). Proverbs also says, "Even a child is known by his actions, by whether his conduct is pure and right" (Proverbs 20:11).
It's up to parents, then, not to beat their children into submission, but to train them to do right. That's something that takes the kind of patience and perseverance even Job would have found difficult to find.
In secular Canada, child rearing—particularly the nanny state's role in raising children—continues to cause huge issues for people of faith. To what extent is spanking acceptable within a family? Should the state recognize the right of parents to withhold medical treatment for their kids based on religious views? What about parents who want to educate their children through home schooling because of their faith or seek public money for faith-based schools?
Whatever one's view on the state's role on our children's lives, one thing we as a society need to decide is how children should be treated when they break our laws. Two recent rulings from the Supreme Court of Canada show that our learned judges seem to be flying by the seat of their pants when it comes to such matters.
In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court struck down the section of the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA) that prescribes adult sentences for violent offenders between the ages of 14 and 17.
While the law allowed for a youth sentence in certain circumstances, the onus was on the young offender to convince the judge not to impose an adult sentence.
The majority of Supreme Court Justices ruled that the YCJA requirement violates the principle of fundamental justice outlined in Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and reversed the onus. In other words, young murderers and rapists don't really know what they're doing—they're children.
In another case, the Court held that the use of drug-sniffing dogs in a random search of an Ontario school was unconstitutional. The court said that the use of a drug-sniffing dog without "particularized suspicion" violated Section 8 of the Charter which governs what constitutes reasonable search and seizure.
The case began in 2002, when police visited St. Patrick's High School in Sarnia, in the southwestern part of the province. Police confined students to their classrooms, while taking their backpacks to an empty gym. A dog found marijuana and psychedelic mushrooms in one backpack and the dope dealer was charged.
Police admitted they had no search warrant or even a tip that drugs were present at the school. Instead, they said, they were responding to a long-standing open invitation from school officials.
In this case, a drug-using student claimed adult rights to privacy even on school property. Never mind that the student in question may have been the local drug pusher—protecting dopers apparently overrides the need to keep drugs out of our schools.
The ruling also means that police will not be able to conduct random searches with drug dogs in public places, such as churches, schools and shopping malls.
We can argue the merits of the rulings forever. But what are these judges saying to our young people?
Are young murders and rapists really only children? Are young drug pushers really going to be allowed to hide behind warrants when they are pushing addictions and death on their classmates?
What we say and what we do need to gel in the eyes of our young people today. When our courts (and our law-makers, media, academics and even churches) talk about responsibility but don't walk the talk, we fail to both protect and train our children. In the end, the children lose.
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