When Dreams Are Crushed

Part One

"Collective stupidity and irresponsibility sometimes take people’s lives."

The Moment Of Truth (movie)

Collective irresponsibility is one of the negative features of Peer Pressure. This force could lead to the destruction of a whole generation of young people who are the future of any country, and this country in particular.

The world is poisoned by drugs on a large scale. Forced by peer pressure, juveniles are taking drugs at schools, at wild parties, at friends’ homes, at beer halls, and at many other places. They take them because it is considered "so cool!" But only a few of them use common sense -- thinking about what would happen to the world if all of them took drugs. Really, just think what would happen to the human race if all of them started being "cool"?! What would happen if common sense vanished completely?

And it could happen because of our ignorance of the brain’s functions. The lack of our knowledge of this mysterious circuitry, given us by the Creator (call Him what you wish), has been neglected, at least since the High Tech Revolution. We are moving into the most technologically developed millennium! And we haven’t bothered to ask ourselves the question, "Are our children prepared for the highest skills this technology will require?" Will it even be possible to educate them properly if we have no idea of how to put the "chemicals of knowledge" into their memory banks? And how to keep it there and process it into thoughts which are the building blocks of intelligence? The most difficult task of all is how to teach our children, or any students, to separate good (academic) knowledge from "trashy" and "dangerous" knowledge which destroys intelligence and crush juveniles’ dreams.

The story that I am presenting could happen in any country under certain circumstances. My personal motivation and my major goal are to prove the possibility of turning the negative forces of juvenile peer pressure into positive ones. And it may happen in the coming millennium if we give it enough effort.

Now that brings me to introduce my main character: Ann, a straight-A high school student. She was very sociable and outgoing. Everybody loved her -- students, teachers, the school administrators, and the whole community of the small city of Rocky Mountain. Her parents adored her, though they had two other children who also were good students and (relatively) well reared. The parents loved them, too. But Ann was their pride and joy. She was so beautiful and so funny! She made them laugh even during the worst family crisis!

Ann really had a great sense of humor, which she sometimes used as a defensive shield at school, at home, and among her numerous friends. And she had a lot of friends -- as any "people’s person" would. Her popularity lay in her brilliant personality and her great skill in sports, especially basketball. She was also quite smart by any standard and very generous.

Hope, on the other hand, was a shy and reserved girl, of whom psychologically we might label "a lost child". Among the students of Rocky Mountain High, she was known as a "geek", even "weird". Hope was interested in math and the sciences -- physics, psychology, and physiology -- particularly the development of the human brain -- a subject upon which she collected notes extensively based on her reading. She had read a great deal during her 17 years.

Good reading was in her genes. Her parents read to her from the time she was conceived until she grasped the alphabet and started reading with their help at age two.