Picture above provided by Sam Belcher. More of his work can be found at Sam Belcher Photography.
Saturday 6th August 2011. This date holds some significance to me for two reasons, it was the day that my youth group came back from week away camping, and it was also the day a part of English society decided to rear it’s ugly head.
It only feels like yesterday when I last wrote an article trying to promote a good name for youths across the country. Not much has changed to be honest, and with the events of the last week or so, you could arguably say it’s gotten worse. The young population has never seemed to stand in good stead with the older generation, but it is getting harder to defend them with the rioting that has occurred across the country. With the rioting slowly coming to an end and over 1,500 arrests later, there are still questions to be answered about the motives of the riots and who exactly the rioters are. It is no wonder that many people are pointing the finger of blame towards adolescents, with near on 70% of the guilty aged under 24.
Unfortunately, the easiest thing with an age group is to generalise, and so every young person is getting painted with the same brush, being labelled everything under the sun. Some children might even think that they have to give a customary smile to every passer-by to ensure that they don’t live in fear that the kid doesn’t mug them. Okay, so maybe it hasn’t got to that stage but people’s perception of youngsters in some areas seems to be escalating that way.
It’s weird that at one end of the spectrum you’ve got young people breaking into shops, bringing home whatever they can carry whilst setting off the odd petrol bomb. Then at the opposite end my youth group are happily making the journey home from a week filled with wet, messy and adventurous activities. I guess you could call these the two faces of life amongst youths. More often than not though it is the ugly side that hits the headlines and what everyone sees on a daily basis. Not many people would be too fussed about reading a news article on a pleasant camping trip that ran smoothly. Stories jam-packed with drama are what make the front page and even though people love to read about it, they would always choose a life free from drama.
I’d imagine all parents would rather seeing their children throwing water balloons instead of bricks through windows, and hurling themselves down a water slide instead of running into burning buildings in order to thieve the latest tv. Even singing round a campfire seems light years away from chanting “hate the police” from the other end of a street but it is two different “activities” that have been undertaken by different sets of young people within the space of a few days.
Of course, I think everyone would love to pack their kids off for a week each summer to experience things like climbing, rafting, mountain boarding, water fights and high ropes courses in the glorious sunshine, but clearly life isn’t that simple. You will always get youths playing hell and tarring their generation’s name, and unfortunately that will always be a stain on society, but all we can do is try and minimise it.
A lot of people are also bemoaning the lack of discipline within society these days, such as not being able to smack your children anymore or policemen not being allowed to give a kid a traditional clip round the ear. I’m not promoting these practices but if children learn that they can’t be touched and have more of a right than previous generations then that’s got to be a powerful tool to have. I don’t think things will ever revert to how they were, but parents and respected figures of the community alike will have to reinvent new ways of keeping kids in check to stop anything like the England riots happening again.
So, a year on since my last article on this topic, and youths still take the blame. All youths are scapegoats. It’s no surprise really but until there’s a lengthy period of no fiascos or dramas then those haters will keep hating.
