London's Burning

[Griff]

Originally Posted by Rhianne

I hate cities in general - and perhaps London more than most. I don't understand the rioters at all but then nor I can't understand why people would choose to live in what seems, to me, to be the ultimate shit-hole.

I don't think of them as shit-holes but I can't imagine handling daily life with so many people in close proximity. Even the small city I'm working in this summer has class issues based largely on people being unable to imagine a better way of life or how to achieve that and burdening their children with the same. Opportunities are limited especially for kids whose parents neglect or actively oppose the free education society presents on a silver platter. Our so-called connected information society still has to bribe with bread and circuses because people don't get it. I'm glad I don't have to live in an urban setting, most humans are just not wired for it, we only just left the trees an eye blink ago. <I'm grouchy this morning>

[DanaC]

Politicians are lining up to offer tough talk. Apparently we live in a 'broken' and 'sick' society. Children growing up with no sense of themselves as citizens. No discipline in schools. Being failed by teachers and parents alike. They've grown up with a sense of warped entitlement, borne partly of state handouts etc etc etc.


OR:

How bout the fact that this government and indeed the last two governments have consistently downgraded the role of teachers? Their wages have not risen at the same rate as other professions of similar qualification level, so that they are comparatively low paid. They've been the whipping boy of three successive governments when it comes to child crime and lack of social cohesion amongst the youth. But they've been hemmed in at all bloody sides when it comes to actually teaching these kids.

In the tabloid press, in political speeches, in the constant refrain to save our broken schools, and start turning kids into citizens again, teachers as a profession are at best disregarded, or at worst villified. How can we expect children in schools to hold their teachers up as social models and respect them as a matter of course, when we as a society have lost respect for their profession.

Then I hear from Cameron, that kids 'are growing up not knowing the difference between right and wrong' and the government are going to restore a sense of moral decency in all our towns etc etc. As usual this is placed firmly on the parents and teachers, not instilling these values, and not providing a proper civic example.

OR: how bout these kids are growing up seeing their elected officials prosecuted for expense fiddling and outright fraud, the top police officials standing down pending enquiries into fraud and corruption at the highest level, and a financial meltdown caused in large part by the unscrupulous actions of the banking and broking elite.

Yes, parents have the ultimate responsibility for their children's upbringing and moral outlook. But to place the blame so firmly on to them and the teachers who are struggling to try and find a way to actually educate these kids beyond the test-passing exercises they're dragged through at every new stage, and ignore the wider picture is disengenuous.


Utterly hypocritical to stand up there and point fingers at a section of society that is 'without morals' when your own social group has been shown to be morally bankrupt.

[ZenGum]

Dana, someone should give you a column.

[Aliantha]

If the parents are not at fault then who is? Seriously.

If my kids misbehave as they do, I don't find excuses for it in the latest political scandal. I look to myself and recognise that I have obviously not got the message across properly so I try something else. Yes it's frustrating, and yes it's hard and it's also largely thankless, but kids don't ask to be born. Parents decide to have them.

Society starts at home within the family. Fix those issues and you'll fix the problems of society at large.

eta: I don't believe it's a teacher's responsibility to teach kids morals or right from wrong. A teacher's role is to facilitate learning. no more.

[Aliantha]

I just have to say that if you can even imagine a world where kids do learn morals and right from wrong at home, so that when they go to school they know how to behave and recognise and appreciate that the teacher is there to help them, a teacher's life would be so much easier, and maybe they (we)'d all stop complaining about what a tough life teachers have.

[DanaC]

My point, Ali, is that the leaders of my country are pointing accusing fingers at various different levels of society for the loss of moral context, when they have themselves, as a group, been found with their fingers in the till and somebody else's fingers in their pockets.

Cameron stands there and bemoans the fact that children no longer respect authority. That children no longer have the basic respect for law and rules that their generation respected, and have no respect for those who uphold the laws.

I look at the news coverage of the last few years and I have to ask myself, why on earth would any sensible child growing up in Britain today feel that the politicians who govern them, or the police service that polices them have in any way shown themselves to be worthy of authority and respect?

They are pointing fingers every which way but their own.

[Aliantha]

Seems like everyone's pointing fingers and no one's really doing anything about it.

We see the same sort of deterioration in family values here as well. It's very sad, but I just try to change things just in my own area. I try and support those in need and give the kids that are struggling a bit of a leg up if I can. It has to start at grass roots. The politicians can't help. Only the individual can make a difference.

I just don't believe the government is capable. It's up to communities to work together to help their kids and families in trouble. The problem is just too big to solve all at once.

[DanaC]

Here's a thought:

Riot and disorder have always been a part of the political expression of this country. From the highly organised protest marches that fly out of control, through the street level violence and anger at race motivated police brutality, to the mindless ransacking that springs from a less obviously political place.

What we're seeing here has been seen before. The big differences are that the people concerned are primarily very young. And they've been able to organise a response around looting, using social media. Instead of the atmosphere of a riot stretching across the people in the immediate vicinity, and then other places kicking off as news slowly spreads, this time the atmosphere of a riot was able to spread far from the immediate crowd, into a virtual space which these youngsters live in.

This is no different really to what happens from time to time in Britain, except that it was accelerated beyond anything we've previouisly experienced. What took a year and a half to play out in the 90s, as town centres and housing estates accross the land began to erupt in riots and disorder, with a new spate occurring every few weeks or months, and again in the mid 00's, with race riots in the northern towns, this time happened across three nights, everywhere, simultaneously.

I would not be at all surprised if many of the people involved are not particularly criminal or immoral in their day to day life. And whilst it is ill-articulated, I think somewhere behind their 'it's the rich people's fault' excuse for looting, a genuine political grievance is operating. They may not fully understand it themselves, and it in no way should be taken as a reason not to prosecute criminal behaviour, but it absolutely needs recognising and tackling.

This is not simply a moral decline in our youth. We've been singing that particular ditty for generations. Yea, even unto the middle ages. Nor is it the result of a state that helps people to stay out of work. Because, we've also been singing that ditty for generations, and again, yea even unto the middle ages. The debate now is about the 'Welfare State' and then it was about 'The Parish', 'The Poor Law, and 'The Poor Union'. Then as now, the indigent poor were seen as a feckless and irredeemable underclass. Provide them and their families with shoes and linnen for their clothes and why would they choose to work? Allow a subsistence of existence to be supported by the Parish, and vast swathes of feckless layabouts choose that rather than work. It teaches them to be lazy. It teaches them to be immoral. They are different from us. They can't raise their children properly. Their children are immoral. Poor children, whose parents are little more than beasts that walk.

[sexobon]

Originally Posted by DanaC

Here's a thought: ... What we're seeing here has been seen before. ... This is no different really to what happens from time to time in Britain ... We've been singing that particular ditty for generations. ... we've also been singing that ditty for generations ...

Here's another thought:

Sheep get sheared.

[infinite monkey]

Good to hear from you Sundae. I think all are present and accounted for now!

[tw]

Originally Posted by Aliantha

Seems like everyone's pointing fingers and no one's really doing anything about it.

Long before any blame is cast, first the problem must be identified. So many are quick to cast blame; ignore the problem.

The problem: adolescents doing what adolescents do. A normal stage in cognitive development. Or what happens when an adolescent stops growing.

Skeptical adolescents react to this uncertainty by rejecting rationality. The take the attitude that if they cannot be certain bout what to do or whom to believe, then all opinions and positions are equally valid and they don't have to listen to any (or to anyone in particular). They lose respect for authority and have little patience for those who parade around as experts. Because they have lost faith in logic, these adolescents behave impulsively (without reasoning through situations), intuitively (doing what their emotions, rather than their logic, tells them to do), and indifferently (without attempting to choose a good course of action, "going with the flow"). They are apt to conform to others, letting the majority make their decisions for them, and they become rebellious or disengaged. ... Again, many people never outgrow this stage of reasoning.

Now, are these adolescents who stopped growing? Or just so many adolescents at that stage of development where crisis causes them to respond emotionally as an adolescent would do? If so, then what is the widespread crisis?

Long before casting blame, first reasons for that problem must be defined? Does England have so many adolescents with arrested development? Or just a smaller numbers that could so easily create a 'herd mentality'? Or why have so many lost faith in logic?

Yes, top management - the parents - are the source of 85% of these problems. If kids are not growing, a parent's job to address it or to seek help. But is that the reason for so much emotion?

Casting blame is junk science reasoning if a problem is not first defined. Provided is an example from researchers (the authors of The Adolescent) for how one might answer those questions. Casting blame without first identifying the problem is an example of illogical thought.

Shameful is anyone looking for answers in soundbytes. Soundbyte reasoning makes one no different than adolescents who have lost faith in logic while behaving impulsively, intuitively, and indifferently.

If parents are a primary reason for this problem, then what is it that parents have not addressed or encouraged?

[Aliantha]

To answer you in your own language tw, the parents have not addressed issues with cognitive development, possibly (probably) because they've never reached stage 4 themselves, and so are unable to reason properly to find a better answer than the one that's not working.

For example. I developed parent might look at the circumstances they live in and think to themselves, "Hmmm, this is not the ideal environment to raise my child in. Maybe I should think of a way to improve our lives a little by using the education system (or something like that)", where as a stage 3 might say, "Hmmm, this is not the ideal environment to raise my child in. Who's fault is it?"

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by DanaC

@ UG:

So because a relatively small number of people went on a rampage for a few nights we should utterly change the way we as a country function, and have functined for some considerable time?

Exactly. The sooner, the better. It will bring this kind of thing to an end. And do it determinedly, permanently, and thoroughly. Among other things, this means for you personally to quit being a socialist. I know what you've got invested in this false god, but were I you I'd simply jettison the whole construct. The riots are precisely the Clockwork Orange result of socialistic thinking and policymaking, further aggravated with classist thinking, which plagues European society and I am not excluding the British. At least one British editorial has drawn this very point.

This is the end of the welfare state, in flames and broken glass. Good riddance, say I.

The Sun Never Sets . . .

[Trilby]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

This is the end of the welfare state, in flames and broken glass. Good riddance, say I.

That's funny. I was thinking the same thing about capitalism.

Nothing lasts forever - not even economic systems.

the second law of thermodynamics proves it.

Good riddance to capitalism!

[Sundae]

I'm still very conflicted about the way I feel about this.
I've said before that I have a right-wing reactionary core beneath my liberal exterior, and shocks like this bring it out.
On the other hand I feel extremely concerned at the idea of people involved losing benefits and social housing, because how on earth are they going to survive?

I've heard points made to take people out of social housing - let them find housing in the private sector! They have proved they are no longer part of the community! Well, moving people on has never had great success. Look at the sink estates blamed for the "benefit culture" because none of them work and apparently you're seen as a mug by your neighbours if you do.

Moving them into the private sector just makes more money for private landlords, devalues other properties in the area and costs local authorities more.

Or again - don't turf them out, just stop their benefits.
WHAT? How will they pay for the all time record high utility bills?
How will they eat? As someone who has had their benefits screwed around with I can tell you it makes you feel desperate and outside of normal society, constantly borrowing and begging and asking for extensions and assistance. And I was living at home with my only dependent a cat!

I do see support and help as more important than punitive measures.
Let the courts deal with criminal complaints. Where people are found guilty, this is where the charges should be decided and applied. Nothing to do with housing and benefits.

I heard a man explaining the issues these youths were facing and yes, it did ring a bell. Children born to girls of 14, 15. Never had a father figure. Children brought up by children who did not have a work ethic, who did not have a sense of family, who had never learned respect for education. The boys get taller than their Mums at 13-14 and from there on have no reason to listen to them, respect them, pay attention to anything they say. Not a cause for rioting, but it works fairly well as an explanation of the mindset of these people and why they step outside what we see as society's basic rules.

But then on the other hand I heard a woman from Ghana on the radio. Woooo-eeee she was livid. She was like all the Ghanian and Nigerian women I met in South London. I came from a country with NO free education, NO free healthcare, where you had to FIGHT every day to work! Britiain gives out too much, it lets kids get away with this, there should be more laws, more police, more control! This doesn't happen in Ghana because your mother would slap you silly. You GO to school, you DO your homework or your Grandma will kill you etc etc.

I'm not blaming immigrants for the riots at all, but I do wonder if in some cases the children of immigrants are equally disenfranchised by the attitudes of their parents compared to the laissez faire attitudes of their schoolfriends' parents. It might be an additional point to consider, that alongside those with no guidance, there are some that are trying to escape theirs.