A new underclass?
 

The tragic increase in serious youth crime (often gang related) which has been evident in the last few years seems to have revealed a new underclass of young people who feel isolated and alienated from society? In London recently there have been a number of deaths due to gang activity but also through accidents usually connected with vehicle crime. Take a look at the message boards on the relevant local newspaper web sites and you see part of the problem - teenagers who have clearly escaped the attention of the educators not to mention their parents (if indeed they have any). The talk (for those who can translate the text speak language) is of fallen warriors, brothers who've died for the cause, angelic loving kids who'll be sadly missed on the one hand but have all too often been regularly involved in serious trouble on the other. From what I've seen there is a serious problem, gangs of almost feral children whose parents clearly exercise little or no control, who can barely read/write, who speak their own 'language' and whose sad lives are destined to amount to very little. Most worrying is their propensity to resort to the most extreme violence with little or no provocation, a punch is no longer sufficient apparently, the blade and the bullet rule.

Clrearly the various social and educational systems are failing these people so what if anything can be done to reverse this trend?

Re: A new underclass?
 

Teenagers have always felt isolated from the rest of society. Thats pretty much what being a teenager is about imo.
The problem is that there appears to have been a shift in attitudes to violence resulting in a greater readyness to carry and use weapons.

Re: A new underclass?
 

Well we've all been teenagers of course but, in addition to the extreme and gratuitous violence, what makes the current situation different from when I was one is that this new group seem to have acquired their own culture and language. That IMO doesn't bode well for the future.

A tragic recent example:

http://www.newsshopper.co.uk/display..._schoolboy.php

Re: A new underclass?
 

Much of the 'gang' related activities can be traced to the breakdown of the family unit and ineffectual parenting in a lot of cases, the sense of belonging, love and even discipline sadly lacking in a lot of homes is provided by the gang, as is the 'respect' and money that a lot of these disillusioned youngsters would find hard to achieve in normal society, action needs to be taken now to avoid a bleak future for a hell of a lot of people

Re: A new underclass?
 

When teenagers become isolated or isolate themselves they cut themselves off from the wealth of experience that older people could put at their disposal particularly when facing the problems of growing up.

Having strong, positive family ties allows teenagers to put problems in perspective. What they perceive as a major problem may not be when discussed with other family members.

Teenagers need to make relationships with people of all ages and experiences but need to take care to make the right ones.

Many teenagers would be a lot better off if they realised that having a supportive family is more cool than hanging out with your mates.

Re: A new underclass?
 

I keep hearing about how it is us bad parents to blame for everything and we should exercise more control over our kids. Could someone actually tell me how this control is to be had as over the last 10 years parents have been made basically impotent by this government and do good organisations.

Also did your parents know exactly where you were all the time when you were a teenager and what you were doing. i had good parents but it didn't stop me being a little sod when i was out and about with my friends.

What has changed and what is fueling this is a change in what is seen as "being cool" also the more agressive and disruptive kids seem to hold greater sway over other kids then they did in my day.

It is an old thing but one force must have a counterforce to keep it under control and that is where the problem is now there is no counterforce. Christ when i was a kid if i did something wrong i would get a clip round the ear off a copper no paperwork no running me to the station and you know what it worked i didn't do the same thing twice and i actually respected that copper a bit more.

We live in a world that is moving so fast and media are having a massively larger impact on the youth of today far more then they had when i was young and thats where we need to start looking.

Re: A new underclass?
 

Yes, we get the usual:

who was also who were all the kids there were but of course the reason is There's loads of things that kids could do if they wanted to, everybody has choices, this kid made the wrong ones and died because of them, but it's nobodys fault but his own.

Re: A new underclass?
 

Many of the forces which kept children in check have been removed. Consequently, though they have greater freedom they are also more vulnerable and many of them are not mature enough to take on the responsibilities being thrust upon them.

Teenage suicides and murders by teenagers are a very worrying sign. So is a government that wants to declassify dangerous drugs.

It seems that greed and profit amongst our leaders is more prevalent than employing common sense in the service of our country.

Re: A new underclass?
 

It's far from ALL parents which are to blame but a significant proportion. I would agree that parents and adults in general have a much bigger problem now than ever before but that is primarily because the liberal PC brigade have successfully ensured that the youths have been made fully aware of their rights but NOT their responsibilities. The pressure on both parents to work and the fact that so many families have no permanent male role model are additional factors but don't excuse the fact that too many parents have simply absolved themselves of any responsibility for their offspring.

Re: A new underclass?
 

AHEM!

The vast majority of teenagers are NOT in gangs,are NOT carrying weapons,DO attend school/college regularly,ARE in LOVING families and MOST of them are NOT hanging around street corners.


Let's not run away with the idea that we are dealing with huge numbers.The percentage of so called feral youth are very tiny compared to those who are upright members of their communities.

IF we actually PRAISED those teenagers who are behaving well a lot more, I think we might be employing our time much better and maybe we can encourage them to stay on the right side of the law, instead of terrifying our teenage population into carrying weapons because the media over-hypes the dangers of the streets so they feel they MUST tool up 'just in case'.

Re: A new underclass?
 

The strange thing is that:
and yet:
I didn't realise that it was 'normal' to be in an 80 strong gang these days....

Re: A new underclass?
 

Nobody said the vast majority were - nationally the proportion is probably small but in certain areas a sizeable proportion of youths are either in gangs or engaged in antisocial behaviour of some sort. These form the underclass I mention.

Re: A new underclass?
 

and yet

Ben's headteacher, Brian Lloyd, said: "We are all absolutely devastated and shocked, it's a tragic loss of a young man's life.

"He had worked so hard to pass his exams and I understand he was looking to do a course at Bromley College.

"He was just a normal kid who did normal things."

Hardly the sentiments I'd expect to associate with a member of an underclass

Re: A new underclass?
 

Well I take the point but what is a headteacher supposed to say under such tragic circumstances? I've never yet heard anyone interviewed about any of these awful deaths say anything other than the kids involved were all normal, decent, well liked, hardworking etc etc.

I have no idea who this lad was but it seems likely from the postings on the message board that he was a gang member. Who knows how much the headteacher really knows about the lad and his background.

Re: A new underclass?
 

Atempting to apply old classifications is part of where we are going wrong tbh it is not only kids from the so called "under privilaged" group that is the problem i see on a daily basis kids from so called middle-upper class bracket coming to my area trying to fit in with the kids that they see as "rough and cool". It is also that bracket that take things to extreme's as they feel they have to do more to be accepted.

But as someone above said the vast vast majority of teenager's are polite helpful and non aggressive but yet again we are going to concentrate on the idiot minority and no doubt some new legislation will come in to help us do that.

Under labour in the last ten years it has become the norm to praise and understand failure and bad behaviour (perhaps a reflection of the politicians we have representing us) and it is time to get back to heaping the praise onto the decent hard working and socially responsible instead of devoting time and large amounts of money to the "i want an excuse for my crappy behaviour" brigade.

Re: A new underclass?
 

If he was the violent criminal gang member, as his death suggests, I would have expected his head teacher to have said nothing, in fact if he was a member of an underclass I wouldn't have thought he'd have bothered with school at all, let alone passed exams and tried to get in to collage

Re: A new underclass?
 

True and 60 million UK residents didn't get blown up by today's bomb in C. London but the newspapers and programmes are full of it and understandably so. Whilst I agree that success, achievement etc. (however that's measured) amongst the young should be better publicised and celebrated, there's no way that the editors are going to fill their pages with good news.

Re: A new underclass?
 

Maybe the media needs to re-adjust and lay its focus on the positive achievements of young people.

If they can't do that maybe we need to ask if there are enough opportunities for young people to express themselves positively.

Maybe too the government needs to step in to make sure the opportunities, the successes and the photocalls reporting the successes actually happen.

When youngsters see things being achieved in other areas of the country they have positive role models to emulate.

Re: A new underclass?
 

Music plays a big part (though i use the term music loosely) by promoting gang culture, When i was a teenager music was about having a good time and sexeh women:tu: and so it was, we had a good time and not one person or animal was hurt :D

Re: A new underclass?
 

Yes I can see that scenario - "............we approached the head teacher for comment on the student's tragic death and he refused to do so!"

Well I don't know where you live but there are any number of large colleges in this part of London which attract all sorts of people some of whom attend and achieve far more than others. Isn't that one of the reasons HMG would like to raise the school leaving age further still?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6254833.stm

Sadly, passing some GCSE's doesn't preclude anyone from being in a gang and/or being involved in any amount of serious trouble - in fact, some colleges seem to be centres of such activity for a proportion of their students.

---------- Post added at 14:54 ---------- Previous post was at 14:47 ----------

........and of course the often abusive and aggressive video images which accompany it.

Re: A new underclass?
 

I've been a secondary school teacher for over 30 years....and for all of that time and in my own teenage years the media periodically points the finger at a minority of teenagers and gets quite jingoistic about them and fails entirely to notice that 95% of teenagers are normally well behaved and not indulging in gang warfare at all.It certainly peed me off when I was a teenager in the 60's and 70's.:rolleyes:

In fact if you go back far enough I'm sure you'll find all sorts of newspaper reports of gangs back into Edwardian and Victorian era and even further back still than that.

Adults screw the world up and then complain about the young....Typical.:rolleyes:

Re: A new underclass?
 

Not all adults screw up the world and not all kids are yobs, that's obvious isn't it? The media report news - a youth going out in a gang and getting killed is news whereas a 1000 youths staying at home and diligently reading their books isn't. Some time ago I started a thread on here about the role of the media in inflaming tensions in society so I'm hardly a fan of them to be honest.

Re: A new underclass?
 

Alternatively the head teacher said it was a tragic incident and left it at that, rather than launching into a heartfelt eulogy about the youngsters hopes and aspirations

Passing exams doesn't preclude you, although it's well know in America that their education is the first thing to fall by the wayside, perhaps things aren't to bad over here after all, it could even be a government soundbite 'we have the best educated gang members in the world'

Re: A new underclass?
 

And it is to that point i am going to work REAL hard at bringing up my daughter to understand that everything she does/will do has an effect on herself and people around her because parenting plays a huge part in how your child will turn out in the end, Obviously the government likes the youth culture of today because it seems you cannot discipline children anymore without fear of reprisals.

In the old days if you misbehaved you knew you was in for trouble with your mum n dad and you kinda feared the police but had respect for them at the same time, but nowadays it's a case of kids telling parents "i'm divorcing you" and they know the police can't really touch em.

They should bring in penalties for parents or something EG:you child has commited a gang related crime...cough up £2000 or go to jail because where i live (which is chavtastic to say the least mums walking around under umbrellas to protect their outragous haircuts and the kids get drenched) the parents either don't know or don't care what their kids are upto.

Re: A new underclass?
 

I think had the headteacher done what you suggest he would have been on the receiving end of some serious comeback from several avenues.

Things could be a lot worse definitely but isn't the purpose of debates like these is to raise issues such as this with the hope of preventing things from getting worse?

As for having the best educated gangs in the world, LOL, did you read the content of the message boards?

:D