In seeking to revive a culture of respect, Tony Blair has got it all wrong by thinking it can be restored by him and his like constantly banging on about how ill-behaved young people are today.
So said yesterday Tom Wylie, Chief Executive of the government-funded National Youth Agency, in a speech reported in today's Times.
Instead, Mr Wylie is reported as having said, the way in which young people should be taught to respect others is for their elders to show them greater respect than they are shown by Mr Blair and other government ministers who constantly berate them for being yobs.
Mr Wylie proposes the best way elders can show the young the respect which he claims their due is by the Government throwing more of the hard-earned money it has taken from them in taxes in the direction of the young.
This act of homage to the nation's youth, doubtless, is to take place under the close supervision of the agency over which Mr Wylie presides whose role is described in its web-site to be that of 'influencing and shaping youth policy and improving youth services'.
Mr Wylie is reported as having said, ‘Young people don’t learn respect through osmosis. They need good youth work, managed by respectful adults, who can tell them, ‘That’s not how to speak to your mates, that’s not how to lose a game or treat a girl in a club’.
Apparently, Mr Wylie believes only government can and should be trusted to supply youth with the ‘clubs, sports facilities, theatre groups, music workshops, computing classes and other group activities’ in which they are to receive the lessons in how to behave Mr Wylie wishes to see delivered in them.
The Times reports Mr Wylie as having indicated he considers it 'absurd that the Government was prepared to spend £50,000 a year for every young person kept in a young offenders institution but only £71 a year on activities that might prevent them from being sent there in the first place’.
Eh? Shouldn’t the cost of providing youth with schools, universities, parks, playing fields, and national museums and art galleries, be factored into the equation -- not to mention the cost of policing the streets and maintaining the entire social infrastructure and fabric of civil society?
In any case, why should Mr Kylie presume it necessary for government to tax the public for there to be available for the young the specifically youth-dedicated institutions he has in mind for their socilisation to be carried out in?
Why can’t it be left to the voluntary efforts and donations of parents, local communities, charities and churches to create, fund, and run them?
And wouldn’t their provision through agencies formed, financed, and run by voluntary initiative in civil society be likely to be more effective in socialising the young than when they are provided and financed by the state, when what is more likely to motivate those who staff them be concern with the size of their public sector pay-packets rather than the more admirable altruistic motives that tend to lie behind genuine voluntary endeavour?
Finally, how can the chief executive of the national agency responsible for youth policy be supposed to be taken seriously whose idea of how to instil respect in the young is to suggest that adolescent boys on a night out, who, say, might have called for their ‘bitches to be smacked up!’, should be politely informed by some club official, ‘That’s not how to treat a girl in a club’?
Comments (3)
The law has become increasingly onerous. In my area there have been 'dispersal zones' where any two people (child or adult) may be forced to 'disperse', to leave the zone without evidence of wrong doing. Meanwhile all under 16's are not allowed out on the streets after 9 without a guardian. On the evidence of a (not necesarily sane) neighbour children can be issued an asbo not to walk down a certain street because they cause alarm - often these are the same streets that the government closed off to cars so that kids could play on them (play areas).
Children are continually told that they are yobs. The media inspires people to fear them. Fear is visible, the flinch, the averted gaze. This is disrespect. Children often suffer from prejudice that they are up to no good. They are taught in schools in 'citizenship' classes the acceptable way to behave.
This all comes down to a one way dialogue. What the NCA is talking about is providing facilities for children to release their energies constructively and enjoyably. The children should have a hand in setting the rules that they believe are acceptable in, for example, youth clubs, they should have a hand in making sure that they obey the rules or face the consequences - bans, temporary closures.
Youth workers who understand the kids can set up a dialogue with them where they are not being lectured to but can come to understand the consequences of their actions.
What on earth is crazy about this? Once you have sent a child to an Offenders Institution they have to toughen up fast. They have to criminalise themselves. This is tough to then stop. It is tough for them to find ambition to being a responsable member of society. Instead they try and make a place in criminal society. They have a record and find it hard to get jobs. They know criminals who encourage them to engage in criminal activity, pressurise them. But at least the gangs value them, at least they speak to them like human beings, after all every man needs respect.
Tony Blair acts like a gang master with a big stick. He does not encourage us to engage in socially acceptable behaviour for our own sake of civility. He threatens to beat us with criminal offences. How can we stop this cycle of continuing withdrawal from society, when government behaves like a criminal junta?
Posted by Chas | June 9, 2005 4:56 PM
Posted on June 9, 2005 16:56
Sack him, abolish the agency! Funny, I seemed to manage to struggle through my adolescent years without the aid of these lavishly funded muesli wardens...
Posted by Paul | June 4, 2005 11:51 AM
Posted on June 4, 2005 11:51
The NYA 'only' costs £7.5m of taxpayers money per year.
It's a drop in the ocean for this government.
Posted by HJ | June 2, 2005 5:32 PM
Posted on June 2, 2005 17:32