Youth, 16, knifed to death as gang chants 'kill him, kill him'

The article with the above title caught my eye today in the Daily Telegraph. The gang included boys and girls but the police have arrested 7 males - four 13-year-olds, two 15-year-olds and a 21-year-old. Murders of youths are fairly common these days but this story stands out because so many people were indirectly (or you may really say directly) involved. Did they really want him killed or the chant was just to scare him? It appears that they had hammers, bats and knives to go through with the killing pretty easily. Perhaps they were used to scare him?

If they all valued life, the death would have been avoided. I feel that children these days do not value life as much. They seem to treat it as one of those things. Killing someone is no big deal. I can only imagine that, to develop such an attitude, they are surrounded by events that trivialise killing. The TV, music, films and computer games have all trivialised killing and are still doing so. Surely it is time to reverse this trend and put more emphasis on how valuable life is. We cannot just rely on education to instill such a view. We need the cooperation of the media as well.

This is all linked to our moral values declining. Although killing is one of the worst outcomes, there are other less extreme cases of the moral decline. For instance, my front tooth is dead because someone at my secondary school punched me in the face. He distracted me by saying the teacher was looking at us in the class room. I turned to see but the teacher was looking at something else and as I turned back, I was hit (very naive of me I know). This is clearly a difference in moral values. I was aware that punching someone in the face can be dangerous. You can severely disfigure someone and you can even kill someone. I have never punched someone else in the face. This puncher obviously did not have the proper moral values. He did not show any regret or anything after the event. This happened just because I pushed him when he said some insulting words to me.

How did the puncher have such moral values? I have blamed the media above but on second thoughts, I have been acquainted with such material from a very young age (since maybe seven). It must be the way my parents brought me up. I think nurture has a lot to do with it but nature also. Some people are more violent than other people and if they want to have better moral values, they need to be taught more than others.

Although I have said that the media has not affected me, I still think that some people will be affected. Is it difficult to have scenes in movies where a fight is about to erupt but they come to their senses by thinking of the consequences? Why can't games promote how to prevent fighting (you can do this by awarding more points to the player for doing so)? Why does music need to glorify violence?

I suppose it is to do with the children being rebellious and so naturally gravitate towards material that show the most rebelliousness. I don't know if we can control this rebellious streak but instilling the proper moral values will nevertheless be invaluable.