By CHARLES N. WHEELER III

When the story of Robert Sandifer first broke last month, it sent shock waves through the public. News that an 11 -year-old boy was wanted for the fatal shooting of a 14-year-old neighbor girl was met with stunned disbelief. How could a child so young commit such a crime? people asked each other. The horror intensified a few days later when the child gunman himself was found slain, executed, police said, by his gang. What's happening in this country, folks wondered, that such terrible acts can occur?

Police were not as surprised. "In the past three years, there have been 26 homicide offenders 13 years of age or younger," said Chicago Police Supt. Matt Rodriguez. Indeed, the day of Robert's wake, another 11-year-old boy was charged with murdering an 84-year-old woman who lived in his neighborhood. After the initial shock, much of the public reaction to the problems symbolized by Robert's sad, short life seemed to fall into two categories.

Get tougher on young offenders, urged some. Gov. Jim Edgar, for example, endorsed legislation that would allow violent preteens to be kept under lock and key, a measure sought unsuccessfully by the state Department of Children and Family Services during the spring session. Current state law does not permit a child under 13 to be kept in a locked facility, or even in custody for more than 30 days. Illinois now has almost 300 such kids placed in secure facilities out of state and has a long waiting list of others needing such care. In fact, the child welfare agency was trying to place Robert, whose lengthy arrest record began with a charge of attempted armed robbery at age 9.

Others called for intensified efforts to break the grip street gangs have on city streets and the lure they hold for underclass youth. Robert's story also underscored yet again the need to find some way to restrict the easy availability of firearms to those bent on mayhem.

Other voices pointed a finger at "the system" for failing to prevent the tragedy.

Indeed, Robert's case is a social worker's worst nightmare come true: He first came to the attention of the state's child welfare agency as a scarred and bruised 22-month-old toddler. By the time his mother was 21, custody of her first four children — Robert, two older brothers and a younger sister, all abuse victims - had been given to their maternal grandmother, who child welfare workers said was unable to control them. Their father abandoned the family. He is now, police say, in prison in Wisconsin.

Those laying the blame at government's doorstep called for beefing up social programs designed to step in and salvage the wreckage left by dysfunctional families trying to subsist in urban war zones. Most of the ideas are sound. No one will argue that child protective services don't need additional resources, or that troubled youths don't require intensive counseling, or that our schools are all they should be, or that job training and employment opportunity aren't desperately needed, particularly for underclass youth. And no one would dispute the urgency of reducing the incidence of teenage pregnancy. Yet those who look to government, who suggest that somehow the state is at fault for all the Roberts out on its streets, are neglecting a critical element sadly lacking in such cases: a value system that embraces personal responsibility and community commitment, the kind of social contract taken almost for granted throughout most of this nation's history.

For years, the common culture expected people to accept responsibility for their behavior and to live within well-defined bounds. Parents were to supervise their children, rear them adequately and see to their schooling. Individuals were expected to conform to the rules: acquire an education, for example, or respect other people and their property, or avoid inappro-

6/October 1994/Illinois Issues

Today, however, such attitudes seem old-fashioned and out of place. It's chic to poke fun at people who have strong moral beliefs or religious principles, or to ridicule those who express genuine concern about the nation's future. Instead, the greed, selfishness and self-indulgence that epitomized the 1980s remain too much in fashion.

Ideally, a child's first exposure to traditional values should come in the home. The school, the church and other community institutions then serve to reinforce the ethic as the child grows older and begins to move away from the family and into the community.

As Robert's case illustrates, however, not everyone who produces a baby is capable of being a responsible parent. Even those who try find scant help from a popular culture that tirelessly promotes behavior that is inimical to the task of instilling traditional values in one's children.

Consider, for example, the wide range of entertainment, from television to popular music, that glamorizes casual sexual encounters, or that depicts violence as an acceptable means of resolving conflicts. Even sit-coms that rely for their humor on smart-alecky kids putting down their dumb parents undermine the efforts of real mothers and real fathers to raise their children to be responsible adults.

To combat the social pathogens that are ravaging our society today, there's an urgent need to build up, not tear down, institutions like the family and the church. And old-fashioned virtues like ethical behavior, civic responsibility and social concern need to be restored to the national consciousness.

Sound Pollyannish? No more so than the notion that we can find an answer for our current ills and avoid future Roberts without such values. 

Charles N. Wheeler III is director of the Public Affairs Reporting program at Sangamon State University in Springfield and a former correspondent in the Springfield bureau of the Chicago Sun-Times.

7/October 1994/Illinois Issues