Perhaps I have been living under a rock too long. Perhaps it’s because I’m just a Cowboy Yank who cannot fathom the nuances of Old World moral standards, but I find myself quite appalled by this UK Times article: “Most Adults Think Children Are Feral And A Danger To Society.”
What’s appalling is not the premise that standards of acceptable behavior among kids have greatly slackened in modern Society, nor that more kids naturally are taking on the tincture of barbarism to greater or lesser degree as a result of such slackening. No, what is horrifying is that the whole tone of the article is to blame adults for daring to notice:
Public intolerance of young people has reached such levels that more than half of all adults think that British children are beginning to behave like animals, a poll has found.
The poll, commissioned by the children’s charity Barnardo’s, found that 49 per cent of adults regard children as increasingly dangerous both to each other and to their elders, while 43 per cent feel that “something has to be done” to protect society from children and young people.
More than a third of people agree that “it feels like the streets are infested with children”.
The YouGov poll of 2,000 adults suggests that the great strides made towards children’s rights and child welfare through the Government’s Every Child Matters agenda, in which the interests of the child are supposedly put at the heart of all policy, have had little impact on public consciousness.
The picture to emerge from the poll is of an adult population exasperated by what they perceive to be a breakdown in social order among the young. For children and young people, the upshot is a world in which they are made to feel unwelcome in public spaces and where adults have become fearful of them on the streets.
Emphasis added.
Bad adults! Wicked adults! How dare you? You’re not worried about getting roughed up by a gang of young thugs on the street some lonely night, you’re really just a bunch of intolerant ageists!
Off to the Reeducation Camps with you!!
6 comments
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November 18, 2008 at 6:21 pm
beth
So. Um. Why are said adults – most of whom probably failed to rear at least one of said children adequately in the recent past – not doing something, like, oh, teaching children how to behave and right from wrong?
Oh that’s right…that’s judgmental and intolerant. I keep forgetting.
November 18, 2008 at 6:41 pm
Robbo
Tsk! Tsk!
In fact, when my gels are acting badly, I often call them barbarians. When they’re at their worst, I call them baboons.
They know when Dad considers their behavior out of line.
Would I get a Good Parent Award for this? Nope, probably get hauled away by C.P.S. for verbal abusiveness.
(Don’t tell, by the way.)
November 18, 2008 at 9:54 pm
The Abbot
There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar trying to make up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening. The Korova milkbar sold milk-plus, milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom, which is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultra-violence.
November 18, 2008 at 10:03 pm
The Abbot
I’ve been meditating lately on how America seems to be living out “Atlas Shrugged”, while Britain has gone straight to living out “A Clockwork Orange.”
Life imitates Art, or maybe we just get the dystopias we deserve?
November 18, 2008 at 10:29 pm
Robbo
I’ve never actually read Rand, largely because I don’t want to turn into one of those people who spends all his time in his basement cleaning his assault rifle and muttering about secret guv’mint mind-probe radio frequencies and those “damned commie squirrels”.
I started reading Clockwork, but the lingo gives me a headache so I just stuck with the movie.
And speaking of movies, my very favorite movie dystopia is Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil”.
November 19, 2008 at 2:18 pm
lumps937
You should give Rand a try. After all, I did and I don’t spend *all* of my time in the basement.