Young people deserve a better rap

Hants County’s young people are a happening group and deserve recognition reflecting that reality.

The Hants Journal has been dedicated to chronicling these positive activities – though, admittedly, drug-related and arson offenses can tend to grab the more immediate public attention.

These offenses and complaints such as young people loitering at the gazebo on the Windsor waterfront and other nuisance behaviour pale before the accomplishments of the area’s youth. These range from high profile sports with the Atlantic champion Royals and Penguins and the various high school sports teams, to academic achievements, to everyday projects that have special meaning in all our lives.

For example, the 130 students at the Summerville elementary school – Dr. Arthur Hines School -- are preparing their annual edible schoolyard. It’s an exercise in one of the most important endeavours in which people can engage, producing healthy food.

The students are growing a wide variety of produce – lettuce, potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, parsnips, squash, and pumpkins, even watermelons and flowers.

The school community and the Hants Shore Community Health centre created the program as a health-promotion project and a hands-on leaning opportunity for the young people.

The students prepare the ground, plant the vegetables and other produce, and even compost the fertilizer.

Cared for during the summer, the produce is harvested in the fall, becoming part of the school’s lunch program.

The students take part in every aspect of the food-production project.

And let’s remember that, as in sports, the community’s help and participation is paramount.

And, over the longer-term, on the international scene, there is the fact that a good number of West Novas who’ve served in Afghanistan and other NATO and UN missions are from the Windsor-based platoon.

Good citizenship and personal responsibility for the larger community are part of a productive life.

And it appears that the perception of increased youth crime is just that.

Retired RCMP staff sergeant Tom Grant notes that young people aren’t worse now than they had been 30 years ago.

There is an increase in the availability of stronger drugs, and there has been a rash of youths involved in motor vehicle crashes. Young people still think themselves invincible and can resist using life-saving measures such as wearing seatbelts, he noted.

In fact, however, Grant has found in his service across Canada that current youth are better educated and that the problem young people constitute a small percentage. Most of the time, young people are polite and respectful, he said.

Concerning the Youth Justice Act, many people have a problem with it because of the differences they see in treatment of adults and young people in the legal system. But, Grant says, at least officials are trying for a balance.

As for minor stuff like loitering and being a nuisance, however, we have to remember that everybody has to be somewhere. It’s often a question of options open to young people, or even of interpretation of desirable behaviour.

It’s all part of growing up.

And hopefully, the economy will grow at a pace at which they can stay home and work and raise families amidst their support bases -- ensuring that crime and other collective social ills have less opportunity to afflict them and their communities.