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In WRA Boot Camp for Troubled Teens, troubled youth are not given a complicated road map of explicit rules they must follow. While rules obviously are necessary in any society, still problem youth must be able to make decisions when no clear rules for behavior exist. Too often rules are geared to keeping troubled youth in submission and meeting the adult's need for control. Adult rules do not prepare a problem youth to live responsibly amid the complexities and uncertainties of the real world. While our troubled youth may learn to obey all the rules we concoct, they may still fail miserably at the business of living. All too often rules give problem youth an easy way out of having to make wise and independent judgments. Troubled youth must learn how to make sound decisions even in the absence of specific guidelines. A prominent federal judge has a large law library in his office. On an adjacent wall he has placed a sign with the familiar ethic, "Thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself." Beneath the sign an arrow points in the direction of the thousands of law books, and another inscription notes, "All else is explanation." Problem youth must learn the basic values for living and not merely memorize a set of rules. WRA Boot Camp for Troubled Teens does not tell problem youth that they should stop their behavior to avoid punishment, for perhaps they are intelligent enough to avoid being caught. Trouble youth are not told to alter their behavior because it is logical; honesty may not always be logical, and a case sometimes can be made for a crime. Is it always more logical to work at low wages as a domestic servant than to accept employment as a well-paid prostitute? Why should a person work at a tedious job if he has the skills to be a successful thief? WRA Boot Camp for Troubled Teens does not develop logical arguments against every misbehavior, but turns instead to the issues of teenagers’ values. Is this helping or is this hurting? While WRA Boot Camp for Trouble Teens is oriented toward the teaching of values, we should emphasize that this reference is not to middle-class values or any specific ideology. Rather, there is one basic value-the value of the troubled youth. Such a value is tied neither to social status nor to culture and does not become obsolete with the passage of generations. Anything that hurts any person is considered wrong, and people are assumed to be responsible for caring for one another. Caring means "I want what is best for you." This value is reflected in the thinking of the Judaic-Christian tradition and in most other ethical systems.
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