Adults reckon we are single biggest threat to society
Teenagers are closer to understanding and accurate statistics
News of the World: Ian Kirby
Good Story:
1. Kids out of control more dramatic: In business of relfectiing insighting, there to entertain.
Demand, public concern, newspapers are more interactive
Older generation: presumes all teenagers bad.
News of the world: Not said all bad< but reporter believes drip fed> "What readers believe before reading paper; not responsible for increase fear"
Exaggeration overall scale of problem
2.Luton
Media portray image of hoodies which create fear< people then call police. 95% Time no problem: Adults forget youths are part of that community. Problem: Tide of paranoid adults: Out of propertion
3. Swindon Estate "Afraid to go out after dark"
Misquito and dispersal order: Punished for small groups behaviour> Park North relfects all teenagers are suffering because of the minority that breaks the law
Dispersal order: Break up youths 2 teenagers and if back in 24 hours arrested
4. Newcastle: ASBO girl Queen
Corner of Street and Street she was bammed. Evening Chronicle: Foul mouthed and teen terror chav scum
5. Brighton: Veteran Mod
Cses were press have paid teenagers to fight to write something interesting to write.
Crucial moment: Death james boldey: Killed cctv killed 10 year olds. Crucial moment which changed the perspectives of teenagers and the change of teenagers.
Consequences
1. Age criminal responsibilty
2. Increase in surveillance society: now have 4.2 million cctv in country. Caught on camera now when youths behave badly: Can turn on tv actually makes it more fearful. not calmer.
More fearful more loose sense perspective.E.g Knife Crime: Knife attack only 102 people.
Higher others. Media have to take responsibilty for growing asbo society. Have to change it.
crimes small minority used to demonise a whole generation: there is hope if adults and teenagers try to communicate better.
Class Points:
12% done by youths
A negative story gets bigger reception than a positive one
Rupert Murdocks Agenda changes society: government changes: therefore cementing hegemonic gaps.
responsibility newspapers creates moral panic: seasonalist
Cultivation theory: Amount of profileration of press coverage causes people more likely to believe that it is more likely to happening in real life which in turn creates moral panic, but even before talking about these two theories
Hyperdermic theory: we believe everything we see in the media and adults are injected against the youths. Highly disputed theory: but because of moral panic created this theorys still exists. Adults are passive consumers of these texts
Youth: Self forfilling theory: More criminality we see the more desentitisated we become by it and we respond violently: self forlling profiency: London riots direct response
Generation Asbo: Responsibilty of the newspaper of the government and the ownership
Press creatred a divide: newspapers arent trying to promote and market just respond to demand> living in blame culture: Chicken and egg what came first:
We are an ageing society: amount old increasing young decreasing, so newspapers have bigger impact on them as their is more on them
Reading The Riot Acts 1st March 2012
Representing Youth
IPSOS Mori Survey 2005: 40% of articles focus on violence, crime, anti social behaviour, 71% are negative
Brunel University 2007: TV News: violent crime or celebrities, young people are only 1% of sources
Woman in Journalism 2008: 72% of articles were negative: 3.4 % Positive
75% about crime, drugs and police
Boys: Yobs, thugs, sick, feral, hoodies, louts, scum.
Only positive stories are about the boys who died young.
TV News Broadcasts:
When Tv was covering the riots on a round the clock basis, it seemed as always with rolling news that they were desperately trying to keep talking about it all the time too. An endless search for experts (anyone with an opinion)What role did new media technologies, particularly social networking sites play in the London riots?
Do media cause riots or revolutions?
Technology or surveillance: mobile phones, cctv, 24 hour news
Guardian: Article
'Broken Britain' rhetoric fuels fears about state schools
Tories must stop linking poverty to bad behaviour, leftwing thinktank warns
- guardian.co.uk,
- Article history
'Broken Britain' rhetoric fuels fears about state schools
This article was published on guardian.co.uk at . It was last modified at .
Tories are playing to stereotypes of state school pupils, says report. Photograph: Alex Segre/Rex Features
Tory "broken Britain" rhetoric has fuelled middle-class anxieties about state schools, an influential thinktank warns today.
The left-leaning Fabian Society says the Conservatives have "massively exaggerated the problems in state schools", linking poor families with educational failure and anti-social behaviour.
In their report – What's fair? Applying the fair test to education – the Fabians accuse the Conservatives of playing to middle-class fears and invoking "a moral panic" about education.
While thousands of pupils come from low-income families and attend schools in deprived neighbourhoods, just a small number behave anti-socially or commit crimes, the report argues. Too often, Tory MPs and ministers group poverty and bad behaviour together under a banner such as "broken Britain" – and risk entrenching class divisions in education even more deeply.
And while some of the coalition's policies, such as the pupil premium – a fixed financial incentive for schools to take pupils from the most disadvantaged backgrounds – are "laudable", they are unlikely to make much difference.
Others, such as the flagship free schools policy that allows parents, teachers and charities to set up new schools, will further segregate rich pupils from their poor peers, the report argues. The expansion of academies, another key coalition reform, will benefit many more schools in wealthy areas than in deprived neighbourhoods.
"It has always suited the Conservatives to play to middle-class fears and moral panics around education," Tim Horton, one of the report's authors and the research director of the Fabian Society, said.
"They link together issues such as bad discipline, falling standards, crime, and 'feral children' with educational standards in disadvantaged schools. In so doing, they end up encouraging a massively exaggerated view of problems like crime and drugs, and stigmatise schools in disadvantaged areas."
David Cameron's comment in July that he was "terrified" by the prospect of sending his children to a local state secondary school is proof of this, said Horton.
"Stirring up this middle-class anxiety only makes it more likely that our education system will become increasingly socially segregated. We need a new narrative that doesn't stigmatise disadvantaged kids and make middle-class households scared of mixing with them."
The Tories have "admirable intentions" to transform the chances of disadvantaged pupils, the Fabians argue, but some of their policies work against these aims.
It is unlikely that the pupil premium will compensate for the increased segregation brought about by other government reforms, the report says.
Horton added: "There is absolutely no guarantee that schools will spend [the pupil premium] on activities that narrow the gap in attainment. At the moment, it is hard to see what difference it will make."
The free schools policy will "ultimately make the education system more socially divided", the report argues. "The whole ethos of free schools is one of trying to incentivise families to exit local authority schools, rather than focusing on improving them.
"Putting more weight on parental choice risks increasing inequality, since different parents have very different capabilities to make informed choices, and those who are more capable will be able to get a better deal. There is a real concern that introducing these reforms into a system that is already highly unequal will only exacerbate inequalities."
The proposal to turn schools rated outstanding into academies – if they request it – will be "bound to benefit a far greater proportion of less disadvantaged schools, since only a small proportion of schools recently judged as outstanding can be categorised as having a disadvantaged intake".
The report also blames Labour for not doing enough to narrow the gap between the achievements of poor and better-off children. Labour failed to reduce the number of teenagers not in education, employment or training – Neets – and should have provided more one-to-one tuition for children who fall behind in school, the Fabians argue.
A DfE spokesman said: "Ministers have been crystal clear that addressing the attainment gap is a top priority of the coalition government. And as part of its radical agenda of reforms, the government is implementing a pupil premium to ensure that extra funding is targeted at those deprived pupils that most need it."
The left-leaning Fabian Society says the Conservatives have "massively exaggerated the problems in state schools", linking poor families with educational failure and anti-social behaviour.
In their report – What's fair? Applying the fair test to education – the Fabians accuse the Conservatives of playing to middle-class fears and invoking "a moral panic" about education.
While thousands of pupils come from low-income families and attend schools in deprived neighbourhoods, just a small number behave anti-socially or commit crimes, the report argues. Too often, Tory MPs and ministers group poverty and bad behaviour together under a banner such as "broken Britain" – and risk entrenching class divisions in education even more deeply.
And while some of the coalition's policies, such as the pupil premium – a fixed financial incentive for schools to take pupils from the most disadvantaged backgrounds – are "laudable", they are unlikely to make much difference.
Others, such as the flagship free schools policy that allows parents, teachers and charities to set up new schools, will further segregate rich pupils from their poor peers, the report argues. The expansion of academies, another key coalition reform, will benefit many more schools in wealthy areas than in deprived neighbourhoods.
"It has always suited the Conservatives to play to middle-class fears and moral panics around education," Tim Horton, one of the report's authors and the research director of the Fabian Society, said.
"They link together issues such as bad discipline, falling standards, crime, and 'feral children' with educational standards in disadvantaged schools. In so doing, they end up encouraging a massively exaggerated view of problems like crime and drugs, and stigmatise schools in disadvantaged areas."
David Cameron's comment in July that he was "terrified" by the prospect of sending his children to a local state secondary school is proof of this, said Horton.
"Stirring up this middle-class anxiety only makes it more likely that our education system will become increasingly socially segregated. We need a new narrative that doesn't stigmatise disadvantaged kids and make middle-class households scared of mixing with them."
The Tories have "admirable intentions" to transform the chances of disadvantaged pupils, the Fabians argue, but some of their policies work against these aims.
It is unlikely that the pupil premium will compensate for the increased segregation brought about by other government reforms, the report says.
Horton added: "There is absolutely no guarantee that schools will spend [the pupil premium] on activities that narrow the gap in attainment. At the moment, it is hard to see what difference it will make."
The free schools policy will "ultimately make the education system more socially divided", the report argues. "The whole ethos of free schools is one of trying to incentivise families to exit local authority schools, rather than focusing on improving them.
"Putting more weight on parental choice risks increasing inequality, since different parents have very different capabilities to make informed choices, and those who are more capable will be able to get a better deal. There is a real concern that introducing these reforms into a system that is already highly unequal will only exacerbate inequalities."
The proposal to turn schools rated outstanding into academies – if they request it – will be "bound to benefit a far greater proportion of less disadvantaged schools, since only a small proportion of schools recently judged as outstanding can be categorised as having a disadvantaged intake".
The report also blames Labour for not doing enough to narrow the gap between the achievements of poor and better-off children. Labour failed to reduce the number of teenagers not in education, employment or training – Neets – and should have provided more one-to-one tuition for children who fall behind in school, the Fabians argue.
A DfE spokesman said: "Ministers have been crystal clear that addressing the attainment gap is a top priority of the coalition government. And as part of its radical agenda of reforms, the government is implementing a pupil premium to ensure that extra funding is targeted at those deprived pupils that most need it."
Questions:
1. How can you link cultural hegemony to this article?
The middle/upper society are trying to dominate the lower classes with thier values. The conservatives have exaggerated the problems in state schools, linking poor families with educational failure and anti social behaviour. The fabians accuse the conservatives of playing to middle class fears and invoking a moral panic about education.
Tory MPS and ministers group poverty and bad behaviour together under a banner such as broken britian and risk entrenching class divisions in education even more deeply. Moral panic is created to maintain cultural hegemony
2. How does the article suggest moral panic is being caused?
The article suggests moral panic is happening because the media is outlining problems of a small number of pupils from state schools, and then expanding upon it giving all children from those state schools the same branding or label.
3. Can you link in McRobbies Symbolic violence theory? How?
4. How far do you agree with this article that governments decisions and policies are continuing to create a divide between the middle and working class? Discuss
Years of liberal dogma have spawned a generation of amoral, uneducated, welfare dependent, brutalised youngsters
By Max HastingsA few weeks after the U.S. city of Detroit was ravaged by 1967 race riots in which 43 people died, I was shown around the wrecked areas by a black reporter named Joe Strickland.
He said: ‘Don’t you believe all that stuff people here are giving media folk about how sorry they are about what happened. When they talk to each other, they say: “It was a great fire, man!” ’
I am sure that is what many of the young rioters, black and white, who have burned and looted in England through the past few shocking nights think today.
Rich pickings: Hooded looters laden with clothes run from a Manchester shopping centre
If you live a normal life of absolute futility, which we can assume most of this week’s rioters do, excitement of any kind is welcome. The people who wrecked swathes of property, burned vehicles and terrorised communities have no moral compass to make them susceptible to guilt or shame.
Most have no jobs to go to or exams they might pass. They know no family role models, for most live in homes in which the father is unemployed, or from which he has decamped.
More from Max Hastings...
- I've not changed my mind: our banks are brutish institutions run by brutes 16/02/12
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- The film may be historically questionable, but it's right to weep over War Horse 15/01/12
- MAX HASTINGS: The seriously rich regard tax as something only silly folk get stung for 10/01/12
- Tony Blair's tiny tax bill and the foul stench of fat-cat greed 09/01/12
- 2012 offers Britain great hope 02/01/12
- MAX HASTINGS: Clegg in a sulk. The Commons at its most infantile. And Europe led by pygmies. What a way to face a crisis! 12/12/11
- Why the euro liars must stop deceiving us - and themselves 05/12/11
- VIEW FULL ARCHIVE
They are essentially wild beasts. I use that phrase advisedly, because it seems appropriate to young people bereft of the discipline that might make them employable; of the conscience that distinguishes between right and wrong.
They respond only to instinctive animal impulses — to eat and drink, have sex, seize or destroy the accessible property of others.
Their behaviour on the streets resembled that of the polar bear which attacked a Norwegian tourist camp last week. They were doing what came naturally and, unlike the bear, no one even shot them for it.
A former London police chief spoke a few years ago about the ‘feral children’ on his patch — another way of describing the same reality.
The depressing truth is that at the bottom of our society is a layer of young people with no skills, education, values or aspirations. They do not have what most of us would call ‘lives’: they simply exist.
Nobody has ever dared suggest to them that they need feel any allegiance to anything, least of all Britain or their community. They do not watch royal weddings or notice Test matches or take pride in being Londoners or Scousers or Brummies.
Not only do they know nothing of Britain’s past, they care nothing for its present.
They have their being only in video games and street-fights, casual drug use and crime, sometimes petty, sometimes serious.
The notions of doing a nine-to-five job, marrying and sticking with a wife and kids, taking up DIY or learning to read properly, are beyond their imaginations.
Undercover police officers arrest looters in the Swarovski Crystal shop in Manchester. One rioter lies injured and blood can be seen on the wall
An underclass has existed throughout history, which once endured appalling privation. Its spasmodic outbreaks of violence, especially in the early 19th century, frightened the ruling classes.
Its frustrations and passions were kept at bay by force and draconian legal sanctions, foremost among them capital punishment and transportation to the colonies.
Today, those at the bottom of society behave no better than their forebears, but the welfare state has relieved them from hunger and real want.
When social surveys speak of ‘deprivation’ and ‘poverty’, this is entirely relative. Meanwhile, sanctions for wrongdoing have largely vanished.
When Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith recently urged employers to take on more British workers and fewer migrants, he was greeted with a hoarse laugh.
Mindless: People wearing masks swig alcohol next to a burning car in Birmingham city centre last night
Ken Livingstone, contemptible as ever, declares the riots to be a result of the Government’s spending cuts. This recalls the remarks of the then leader of Lambeth Council, ‘Red Ted’ Knight, who said after the 1981 Brixton riots that the police in his borough ‘amounted to an army of occupation’.
But it will not do for a moment to claim the rioters’ behaviour reflects deprived circumstances or police persecution.
Of course it is true that few have jobs, learn anything useful at school, live in decent homes, eat meals at regular hours or feel loyalty to anything beyond their local gang.
This is not, however, because they are victims of mistreatment or neglect.
It is because it is fantastically hard to help such people, young or old, without imposing a measure of compulsion which modern society finds unacceptable. These kids are what they are because nobody makes them be anything different or better.
Rampage: We are told that youths roaming the streets are doing so because they are angry at unemployment, but a quick look at an apprenticeship website yields 2,228 vacancies in London
John Stuart Mill wrote in his great 1859 essay On Liberty: ‘The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited; he must not make himself a nuisance to other people.’
Yet every day up and down the land, this vital principle of civilised societies is breached with impunity.
Anyone who reproaches a child, far less an adult, for discarding rubbish, making a racket, committing vandalism or driving unsociably will receive in return a torrent of obscenities, if not violence.
So who is to blame? The breakdown of families, the pernicious promotion of single motherhood as a desirable state, the decline of domestic life so that even shared meals are a rarity, have all contributed importantly to the condition of the young underclass.
The social engineering industry unites to claim that the conventional template of family life is no longer valid.
Protection: Asian shopkeepers stand outside their store in Hackney that was battered by the looters. This time, though, they're ready to take them on
This has ultimately been sanctioned by Parliament, which refuses to accept, for instance, that children are more likely to prosper with two parents than with one, and that the dependency culture is a tragedy for those who receive something for nothing.
The judiciary colludes with social services and infinitely ingenious lawyers to assert the primacy of the rights of the criminal and aggressor over those of law-abiding citizens, especially if a young offender is involved.
The police, in recent years, have developed a reputation for ignoring yobbery and bullying, or even for taking the yobs’ side against complainants.
‘The problem,’ said Bill Pitt, the former head of Manchester’s Nuisance Strategy Unit, ‘is that the law appears to be there to protect the rights of the perpetrator, and does not support the victim.’
Police regularly arrest householders who are deemed to have taken ‘disproportionate’ action to protect themselves and their property from burglars or intruders. The message goes out that criminals have little to fear from ‘the feds’.
Do rioters, pictured looting a shop in Hackney, have lower levels of a brain chemical that helps keep behaviour under control? Scientists think so
How do you inculcate values in a child whose only role model is footballer Wayne Rooney — a man who is bereft of the most meagre human graces?
How do you persuade children to renounce bad language when they hear little else from stars on the BBC?
A teacher, Francis Gilbert, wrote five years ago in his book Yob Nation: ‘The public feels it no longer has the right to interfere.’
Discussing the difficulties of imposing sanctions for misbehaviour or idleness at school, he described the case of a girl pupil he scolded for missing all her homework deadlines.
The youngster’s mother, a social worker, telephoned him and said: ‘Threatening to throw my daughter off the A-level course because she hasn’t done some work is tantamount to psychological abuse, and there is legislation which prevents these sorts of threats.
‘I believe you are trying to harm my child’s mental well-being, and may well take steps . . . if you are not careful.’
That story rings horribly true. It reflects a society in which teachers have been deprived of their traditional right to arbitrate pupils’ behaviour. Denied power, most find it hard to sustain respect, never mind control.
Mob: A crowd of people rush into a fashion store in Peckham
I recently received a letter from a teacher who worked in a county’s pupil referral unit, describing appalling difficulties in enforcing discipline. Her only weapon, she said, was the right to mark a disciplinary cross against a child’s name for misbehaviour.
Having repeatedly and vainly asked a 15-year-old to stop using obscene language, she said: ‘Fred, if you use language like that again, I’ll give you a cross.’
He replied: ‘Give me an effing cross, then!’ Eventually, she said: ‘Fred, you have three crosses now. You must miss your next break.’
He answered: ‘I’m not missing my break, I’m going for an effing fag!’ When she appealed to her manager, he said: ‘Well, the boy’s got a lot going on at home at the moment. Don’t be too hard on him.’
This is a story repeated daily in schools up and down the land.
Making a run for it: These four looters dash from the Blue Inc store in Peckham with plundered goods
If a child lacks sufficient respect to address authority figures politely, and faces no penalty for failing to do so, then other forms of abuse — of property and person — come naturally.
So there we have it: a large, amoral, brutalised sub-culture of young British people who lack education because they have no will to learn, and skills which might make them employable. They are too idle to accept work waitressing or doing domestic labour, which is why almost all such jobs are filled by immigrants.
They have no code of values to dissuade them from behaving anti-socially or, indeed, criminally, and small chance of being punished if they do so.
They have no sense of responsibility for themselves, far less towards others, and look to no future beyond the next meal, sexual encounter or TV football game.
Behind bins: Rioters in Hackney stand in front of a makeshift barricade
Most of us would say this is nonsense. Rather, they are victims of a perverted social ethos, which elevates personal freedom to an absolute, and denies the underclass the discipline — tough love — which alone might enable some of its members to escape from the swamp of dependency in which they live.
Only education — together with politicians, judges, policemen and teachers with the courage to force feral humans to obey rules the rest of us have accepted all our lives — can provide a way forward and a way out for these people.
They are products of a culture which gives them so much unconditionally that they are let off learning how to become human beings. My dogs are better behaved and subscribe to a higher code of values than the young rioters of Tottenham, Hackney, Clapham and Birmingham.
Unless or until those who run Britain introduce incentives for decency and impose penalties for bestiality which are today entirely lacking, there will never be a shortage of young rioters and looters such as those of the past four nights, for whom their monstrous
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