Parental Responsibility

A couple weeks ago there was another school shooting. A fifteen-year-old took a handgun to school in Oxford, Michigan and shot several students and one teacher. Running parallel to the dramatic reporting of the incident was the ongoing search for the boy’s parents who were being sought by police. The parents tried to hide, but they were quickly discovered and arrested. The original charge was involuntary manslaughter. Defending her decision, Karen McDonald, the prosecutor, said, “I wasn't elected to do the safe thing, and this is just far beyond politics. To me, this was the right thing to do. I don't think anyone looking at it … could have decided to just allow those two individuals to move forward in their life and never have any consequences.”

McDonald later told a reporter that she was angry that it’s 2021 and we still have school shootings. I assume she is disturbed by the fact that since the 1999 Columbine shooting, school tragedies continue to take place far to frequently. I’m not sure anger, no matter how well justified, is the best motivation for a public servant of any kind, especially a county prosecutor. The judicial system in this country is supposed to apply the appropriate law to every circumstance in a rational manner apart from emotional considerations.

This is not the first time someone has suggested charging the parents of a school shooter; however, according to McDonald, she is the first to attempt to do it. Involuntary manslaughter is defined as the crime of killing another human being unlawfully but unintentionally. If a parent handed a child a gun and told him to go shoot people, there may be some complicity. In this case, the parents didn’t know their son had taken the gun from the house. The boy acted independently. Unless emotion trumps rational thinking, I cannot imagine a jury applying the legal definition of manslaughter to the parents in this case.

The situation does lead me to ask myself how far parents’ responsibility extends in the life of their children. At what age do children become morally responsible for their actions? Child psychologists have tried to identify a stage of development at which moral responsibility applies; opinions vary, but it is usually put in the early teens. The Bible refers to an age when children can tell the difference between right and wrong, but it does not pin a number on it. Ancient Jewish tradition assigns thirteen as the age when a boy becomes a man, or more precisely, a “son of the covenant,” the definition of bar mitzvah.

In Western society today, there seem to be few thirteen-year-olds who have mastered what psychologists call higher level thinking or formal reasoning. We seem to be pushing adulthood and its responsibilities into the twenties for many young people. That is not to say that apart from a clinical mental deficiency a fifteen-year-old doesn’t know it’s wrong to shoot his schoolmates. Very young children can tell that some things should not be done, even if it is only because they know it will displease their parents and possibly result in punishment for them. This does not necessarily mean they know right from wrong in the abstract, however.

Parents can either help their children mature morally, or they can impede them. The Oxford shooter’s mother seems to be in the latter category. When her son was caught using his cell phone against school policy, she texted, “LOL I'm not mad at you. You have to learn not to get caught.” Supporting rule-breaking does not qualify as good parenting, but I don’t think it rises to the level of involuntary manslaughter. The father of the shooter seems to have been a bit more rational. When he heard of the shooting on the radio, he rushed home to see if the gun they had purchased for their son was there. When he discovered it was missing, he phoned the police to tell them his son might be the shooter. That must have been painful, but it shows a sense of responsibility not apparent in his wife.

The young man had scribbled violent images and disturbing phrases in class that day, and the parents were called in to discuss disciplinary measures. They decided not to take their son out of school, and the school administration allowed him to stay. At that point, I believe (as a former school principal) that both the parents and the school were making a mistake. The suggestion to take him home and seek counselling should have been insisted upon. The school officials made the right suggestion even though they didn’t know about the recent gun purchase, but the parents did, and the father apparently had his suspicions. If there is blame to be shared for the ensuing tragedy, there is plenty to go around.

The Bible gives little precise information about when a child stands independently before God. At age twelve, Jesus seemed to know where He belonged to the surprise of His parents.  During His ministry, Jesus praised the faith of children and encouraged adults to copy their simple faith. When the Sanhedrin questioned the parents of the blind man Jesus healed, they deferred to him saying he was on his own. While there is no exact “age of accountability,” as it has sometimes been called, Scripture clearly teaches that at some point in time, people become responsible for their own actions.

I don’t think the Oxford parents should be charged with a crime, but I do think they may have failed to teach their son to properly discern right from wrong. The often-quoted proverb says, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” If parents raise their children “in the nurture and admonition of the Lord” as the New Testament prescribes, they can hope their children will mature into morally responsible adults. If parents choose the path the Oxford mother seems to have chosen, the outcome may be disastrous. Whatever the parents do, the child becomes an adult at some point, and at that point, the parents should not be charged with any crime except poor parenting. As far as I know, that crime is not in the books in Oxford or anywhere else.

There is a larger issue beneath this tragedy that none of the media coverage has broached. Ever since the 1960’s, children have been taught by government schools that morality is relative. “Values clarification” leads them to believe they are the arbiters of what’s right and what’s wrong. Common decency would seem to dictate that killing another human being is wrong in any value system, but like common sense, decency has become less and less common in our society. It is no simple coincidence that at the same time the Bible and prayer were removed from government schools, students attending those schools eventually became morally deficient.

The New Testament is peppered with prophecies that in the last days, people would turn away from God and moral degeneration would be the result. In Romans, Ephesians, Timothy and elsewhere, Paul specifically warned that those who reject God would be left to wallow in their own decadent ways. What began as seemingly benign political correctness in the late 2000’s has morphed into the militant WOKE culture that is attacking traditional Judeo-Christian morality on every front.

I pray that the backlash against critical race theory and other elements of the WOKE agenda will prevail. Parents across the country are telling their local school boards that they are not happy with the current school policies and curricula. America’s founding fathers wisely noted that without a moral populace, government of, by and for the people would fail. It is every parent’s responsibility to see that sound moral teaching is provided for their children in their home and in their schools. The multiple tragedies from Columbine to Oxford should be enough to motivate anyone.

Related posts: I Pray for America; Truth Dysphoria; Critical Race Theory; Woke TV; True Lies