This is insanity.
11 years old is simply too young by any scientific standard to be charged as an adult.

What has happened to our culture and society that we could condone such institutional viciousness?

How could any parent imagine their 11 year old child capable of adult decisions?

Research shows us that it isn't until our early 20's that our brains are developed enough to be truly judged as adults.

This is very disturbing and I would imagine goes far beyond the usual political divides.

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Under Pennsylvania law, anyone over 10 accused of murder or homicide is charged as an adult. If convicted, the boy faces a maximum sentence of life in prison

Oh, well. The kid is accused of homicide. Apparently, the law is clear. I don't see a problem here. He can be eligible for parole to kill his first pregnant girlfriend by the time he is 31. What is it with some of you guys? Total support for the torturer and complete contempt for the victim. That is if the victim is even mentioned at all. Did anybody thus far mention the victim(s). Emphasis added.

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I wonder how he managed to buy the gun and ammo.

Walmart probably

Gun show. No background check.

Where does one begin? I am spending this semester in a local high school to get students ready for the math portion of the Graduation Tests. Our graduation rate is just over 60% here, which is beyond pathetic. The behavior in school is off-the wall.

There are probably no less than 20 students in ISS (in-school suspension) and another 5-10 every day with 3-5 days of out of school suspension. I had two males who had badly sprained hands from fighting last week. I tutor two pregnant girls, one just had her baby last week

I say move Daddy, son, gun and ammo next door to Buddha and his family. That'll straighten them out!

I usually stay out of Open Bar, but the article was inaccurate.

Pennsylvania *defaults* to a >10 year old being tried as an adult, but the first thing this kid's lawyer is going to do if he's halfway competent is to petition the Court to transfer him be tried in the juvie system. It's really a case-by-case thing as to whether the kid should be tried in juvenile court. Sometimes they even end up bouncing back and forth-- there was a notable case here in Philly about a year ago with a 17-year-old who accidentally killed someone in a mugging (victim died of an asthma attack) who got moved to juvie and then got moved back to adult when he got arrested again while out on bail. I can't say I've ever heard of anyone getting an adult life sentence here under the age of about 16 or 17.

The gun was probably bought with his parents' permission. I don't think you're allowed to have a handgun until you're 18 in PA, but a 12-year-old with a hunting rifle or shotgun is not that outrageous in certain rural parts of the state. (Pennsylvania has the 2nd highest NRA membership in the country, behind only Texas. James Carville's famous quote that "Between Paoli [one of Philadelphia's western suburbs] and Penn Hills [one of Pittsburgh's eastern suburbs], Pennsylvania is Alabama without the blacks. " is pretty accurate.)

I am a psychologist who works with children, and this sort of thing is very interesting to me. Here in Nashville, we had a 15 year old who killed his twin brother for a piece of gum.

Honest.

My question is whether or not the kid is a sociopath, or just a normal kid. If he is a sociopath, he has no functioning empathy or conscience. It has to do with the pre-orbital frontal cortex. If that part of the brain does not work at 9 months, it will never work and the child will grow up to be a sociopath.

So if the kid has no conscience, the best thing they could do is look him up forever. Or at least until he is old and tired, because if they do not, he will kill more people.

It is hugely sad, but realistic.

Trey

(re: Judge denying the motion): That's what happens when I scan things too quickly. Missed that part of the article. I also suspect that the decision to try him as an adult won't hold up in the long term-- the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is putting juvenile justice under really close scrutiny after the scandal up in Luzerne County. (Where two judges apparently took a few million in bribes to send unrepresented kids to a privately run juvenile prison. I just picked up today's legal newspaper-- the PA Supreme Court just expunged the convictions of several thousand kids.)

Jim, I have been "in education" for 35 years (classified employee). Everything you say is true. The kids that make it have parents who instill values and support the schools' efforts. My job takes me to all the schools in our district and I see how hard teachers work, see them come in early and stay late to prepare for the next day. They are warriors on the front lines. You are doing God's work.

Funny thing is when parents pay tuition to send their kids to parochial schools (on top of their tax contribution to public schools)- they become more invested in their children's success.

At the risk of being mean, there is no cure for the preponderance of stupid people reproducing so many more of their own kind. I watched the Maury Povich show one time. It was horrible. The only thing more pathetic than the parade of ignorance and victimhood was the audience cheering on the combatants and Mory and others like him who exploit the misery of others for entertainment. He is more worthless and damaging to our culture than all the rubes in hicksville.

When his contemporaries asked social critic H.L. Mencken why he lived in a country he found so ridiculous, he said "Because it's the greatest show on earth." Sadly true.

rvance wrote: "At the risk of being mean, there is no cure for the preponderance of stupid people reproducing so many more of their own kind."

You raise an interesting point. I know and have worked with parents who are not particularly bright, but who demand that their children do their best work at school. And then there are really bright parents who are just not interested in their children and it shows.

I do not think it is intelligence per se, but wisdom and involvement. And to some people, more children means more help from the government.

I had a mom who wanted to do some testing so she could get her kids back. She was addicted to meth, living in a shelter and had no job. She was pregnant with her 5th child and wanted to get the other four back from state custody.

I asked her why she wanted to take her children from relatives who had jobs and houses and how she expected her children to do living in a shelter. She told me that if she had three more children living with her she could get government housing and enough food stamps to make it.

So here, it was not stupidity per se but the addiction and the horrid values that caused her problems. She was more than happy to get the government (meaning my tax dollars) to pay for her convienence, and had no hesitation about using her children to advance her selfish goals. Those are toxic values, and I wonder how her values led to having 5 children with 5 different men while addicted, homeless, and unemployed?

Trey

Of course you are correct- I oversimplified. Well put. I have absolutely nothing but respect for people at any level of intelligence and ability who strive to do right.

I agree with you Jim. However, it's not helped by folks who don't seem to understand that could care less is not the same as couldn't care less. I know there are those who will not agree with me on this. The ability to speak and use language properly seems to be missing from many teachers.

Please remember, saying "I could care less" implies that you do care.
How can we expect students to get it right when the teacher doesn't. FWIW, I taught at one time.

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I agree with you Jim. However, it's not helped by folks who don't seem to understand that could care less is not the same as couldn't care less. I know there are those who will not agree with me on this. The ability to speak and use language properly seems to be missing from many teachers.

Please remember, saying "I could care less" implies that you do care.
How can we expect students to get it right when the teacher doesn't. FWIW, I taught at one time.

I noticed you abused the term "criteria" on the "Headphones" thread when you should have used the singular "criterion." Gotta uphold standards you know.

I wish that I could tell you the root cause of the lack of discipline and attentiveness in school is how some teachers butcher the King's English. I see it when teachers write on Facebook, so I am not surprised, especially when they have Master's Degrees, but texting has done a disservice to us all.

This year will be my last in high school as it is clear that for many failing, it is too late to correct their severe math deficiencies. I know I have helped to some degree, but I will be back at middle school next year and try to have a bigger impact and work to get the younger ones on track before they get to the much harder math of high school. To have to spend time on adding integers, multiplication tables, or memorizing single digit perfect squares at this level is ridiculous. Even if you can perform solving polynomials, if you can't multiply or divide you can never get the right answer.

Ultimately it will be the lack of effort, seriousness, and caring that will be the hardest of overcome. It may be about as hard to convince someone that listening to MP3s is a foolish endeavor with high bit rate files everywhere. That takes more effort as well.

For the bottom 30% in schools today it is a lack of concern and effort that will leave them ill prepared for life. Their children will intimately suffer. I had 2 morons high five each other yesterday that will leave high school with "certificates of attendance" who think this is all a joke. They think they will be fine. Time will tell. They both could come back to HS for one more year at age 20 and try to pass the 4 graduation exams, but that is probably not going to happen.

It's so sad. I often speculate of where it all goes wrong. Are they dumber than normal? Are their parents? Have they been brought up to not learn respect? Are the values "running in the family" of a "unhealthy" kind?

In my country we see this pattern with the socially challenged, and the immigrants mostly. With the latter it's often seen that girls are being brought up learning good values and respect for other people and their property. With the boys it's different. They extend both sisters and their mom hierarchy-wise when reaching 10-12 years of age, and tend to behave accordingly. Daddy's big boy. No one cares or asks what they do outside in the evenings.

I wonder what our societies will look like when these people grow up and have children of their own. Actually I fear it.

Buddha, you might be able to with a brain scan. Really.

Now that is scarry! We would get a brain scan to get our driver's license, run for office, before we got married. YIKES!

Trey

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I agree with you Jim. However, it's not helped by folks who don't seem to understand that could care less is not the same as couldn't care less. I know there are those who will not agree with me on this. The ability to speak and use language properly seems to be missing from many teachers.

Please remember, saying "I could care less" implies that you do care.
How can we expect students to get it right when the teacher doesn't. FWIW, I taught at one time.

I noticed you abused the term "criteria" on the "Headphones" thread when you should have used the singular "criterion." Gotta uphold standards you know.

I would think that would be "misused". I didn't hurt anything except possibly someone's sensibilities.

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I would think that would be "misused".

Misuse we overlook. Abuse is something else entirely.

You're safe for now.

Next time we file a report with the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Nomenclature.

(Interesting comments in the computer listening thread by the way).

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Buddha, you might be able to with a brain scan. Really.

Now that is scarry! We would get a brain scan to get our driver's license, run for office, before we got married. YIKES!

Trey

Currently, we have to rely on things like party affiliation and hair style.

On a more scientifically serious note:

I believe mental health can also be predicted by the number, type, and content of tattoos someone has (counts extra if they exceed the neck line), or, especially, the number of rings a person wears (counts double if placed in the face).

A chick who wears rings on more than two fingers? Watch out, brother.

(Same goes for the number of cats someone owns, too.)

As you go through your day, keep track of the ring rule and see if I am not right! Rings on more than seven fingers guarantees a DSM IV (or V, VI... whichever they are up to) diagnosis.

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Male sociopaths also tend to wear pastel color shirts.

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As for the brain scans, don't we already use them at airports?