Calgary is still reeling from the shock of the stabbing deaths of five youths during a party, which was thrown to celebrate the end of the school year.
With the funerals just behind us, there are a lot of questions that needs answers in the wake of this tragedy and those questions are not limited to the suspect and his possible motives or state of mental health.
The first question that comes to mind is the timing of the incident: The Calgary tragedy came within just days another widely reported stabbing incident in the US, in Murrysville, Pennsylvania, where 21 high school students and a security guard were injured by a 16-year-old student who was apparently deranged. The incident in Calgary also preceded another stabbing in Regina, where four people were injured in a shopping mall by a youth wielding a knife. Were the suspects in the cases in Canada in any way inspired or encouraged by the widely reported US incident? Or was that the case for the Regina youth after hearing the extensive coverage of the Calgary incident on Canadian TV channels?
More importantly, was there enough discussion in the media about the saddening events, which came one after another? If these random attacks had involved firearms instead of knives, would there have been a lot more discussion because gun violence has always been a politically laden issue?
The next question is how much we really know about the young generation that we are raising.
The father of the suspect in the Calgary incident, a senior police officer himself, who is supposed to be informed on how to detect suspicious behaviour, wept in front of the TV cameras saying he and his family were trying to understand what had happened just like everybody else. He said his son, like many other young people, volunteered in the community and took part in fundraising for community causes. So why did he go on a killing spree?
Should these stabbings be a wake up call to remind everybody of the increasing isolation of each and every young person due to the widening use digital devices? Which family doesn’t have a teenage member dedicating long hours of their time to their computers, laptops, iPads or smart phones and how much do their parents know about what they are surfing for on the internet?
In other words, how much do we know about the extent to which these young people stretch their limits to know more, to see what is new and different, and how much of the new and different is the kind that can be harmful or destructive?
One has to admit that the confusion we are facing in our everyday lives is not getting less and it is only likely to get more as the information technology revolution exposes all kinds of people from all age groups to new knowledge and information they have not been aware of before.
That means young people continue to need guidance in selecting what kind of information to pursue in the vast oceans of data available in the digital world. But that is where the problem, or rather problems lie ahead.
First, most of the middle-aged parents are far behind their children in their ability to use the digital equipment, which is so easily and widely available; therefore who is to guide who?
Secondly, in this new age of learning when the young have a much more sophisticated mindset than the generation before, how can a parent be expected to learn as much and even more than his or her children to be able to guide them in the right direction? Is it realistic to expect parents to live up to the challenge? Will old ways of parenting be still useful, functional or convenient?
The picture in front of us is quite complicated, it eludes one-size-fits-all solutions and the challenge is not easily surmountable.