Don't Fall into The Gap

Every high school class wants to take a senior trip, and many seniors have done some kind of fund raising campaign to finance the trip. It’s no different for the senior class of Eddyville, Oregon – all 12 of them. Eddyville is a rural community of less than 500 people on Oregon Route 20, and the 12 seniors finally came up with an idea to raise money; they’d raise pigs.

The seniors are raising 3 pigs, to be exact. Named Wilbur (after a Charlotte’s Web pig), Porkchop (named for its future), and Schwartz (named after one of their teachers), the pigs will be auctioned off and are destined for market.

What are these rural students getting for their creative fund raising effort? They’re getting international flak. Somehow the story got out and letters in defense of the pigs have come in from every state in the union, not to mention places like Taiwan, Japan, India, and even Iran.

Most relevant to the point I want to make today are the people who suggest that the seniors be forced to go with the pigs to the slaughterhouse so they can see the end result of what they’re doing. This, of course, is based on a belief that these misguided children are ignorant of these facts. But they are not unaware of the realities of raising animals for food. These are farm kids. As one of their teachers pointed out; “they know their meat doesn’t come in Styrofoam boxes”. One of the senior’s reactions was even more to the point: “What? I gut my own deer!”

This is an urban/rural version of The Gap, but it is similar to what we often see in the adult/youth version. One group views a behavior from a different perspective and context and doesn’t understand, yet their lack of understanding doesn’t stop them from prescribing solutions. In this case, the urban folk assume that if the kids only knew what happens to pigs in a slaughterhouse they wouldn’t do what they’re doing, because the urban folk can’t get their minds around the fact that the seniors might be well aware of the pig’s future, and be OK with that. Instead of seeking to understand, they prescribe a solution (send the kids in to watch the slaughter) to their perceived problem (the fact that the pigs are being raised for slaughter) that makes no sense from the senior’s viewpoint.

The adult/youth Gap follows this same pattern. Adults view behavior in young people that they don’t understand, perceive problems that may not exist, and prescribe solutions that are meaningless to young people. How can we avoid falling into The Gap? It’s simple, really. Don’t try to ‘solve’ things you don’t understand. The proper response to behavior in young people that we don’t understand is to seek first to understand it.

An example is the current ‘freak dancing’ controversy – at least, it’s a big deal in schools here in Oregon. While the debate rages over what to ‘do’ about it, I have heard virtually no adult effort to understand it. No surprise, then, that the ‘problem’ seems unresolved. That’s what happens when we fall into The Gap.