A new underclass?

[TheDaddy]

Originally Posted by Osem

Well what would you expect a headteacher to say under such tragic circumstances?

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

[Osem]

Originally Posted by RizzyKing

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.

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.

[ntluser]

Originally Posted by Osem

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.

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.

[bringerofnoise]

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 and so it was, we had a good time and not one person or animal was hurt

[Osem]

Originally Posted by TheDaddy

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

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 ----------

Originally Posted by bringerofnoise

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 and so it was, we had a good time and not one person or animal was hurt

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

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.

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.

[Osem]

Originally Posted by Incognitas

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.

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.

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.

[TheDaddy]

Originally Posted by Osem

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!"

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.

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'

[bringerofnoise]

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

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.

[Osem]

Originally Posted by TheDaddy

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'

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?