Alexander Dowty and Akosua Bonsu of Children's Express, challenge Observer columnist Cristina Odone's view of young people, arguing that adults have rejected balance and reason when they consider the young.
| Young people are learning to challenge their surroundings and environment, and that is a good thing. |
Cristina Odone wrote a blazing attack on every young person in the world. In case you missed it, she said we were guilty of the Sydney bush-fires, we trashed a 380-acre farm while exercising our need to party, and we are the perpetrators of countless killings of other schoolkids. She said we are socially autistic, and wrote with longing for a time when children were raised and educated in fear of cruel punishments.
We don't wish to put up with such verbal abuse.
For a start, we are pleased that children no longer sit in rows absorbing by rote from all-knowing teachers. "Listen to Junior giving teacher a piece of his mind" in a classroom today, and you are most likely to hear a student learning how to express and justify an opinion - a valuable lesson.
School provides more opportunities to learn social skills than it used to - it's become a place to learn about life. We no longer need to go to Scouts or youth clubs to learn how to interact with people - we learn that at school.
Not that we've completely deserted after-school activities. Taking Ms Odone's example, it's true there has been a sharp decline in membership of the Scouts since the 1980s, but not enough to explain the alleged moral collapse of a generation. In any case, it's often the adults who have deserted us. 60,000 children are waiting to join Beaver colonies or Cub packs - waiting because there aren't enough adults to run them.
And while many older children and teenagers find groups like the Scouts old-fashioned, the more traditional youth clubs are a waste of time. A battered pool table and a dart board might have been all the stimulation the young minds of Ms Odone's generation could take but it's not enough today. That is why children are running more and more of their own activities, even if some aren't approved of by their parents.
Our interest in politics and decision-making is also growing. How else do you explain the growing number of school councils and youth parliaments? Or children's rights organisations like Article 12 which are run by teenagers? Young people are learning to challenge their surroundings and environment, and that is a good thing.
The government seems to be in favour, though its signals are mixed. The Children and Young People's Unit Forum has brought together 26 young people to consult them about government policy. The Minister for Young People John Denham (also the Minister for Police, Courts and Drugs - not subjects we like having to share with) didn't visit it in eight months, and the CYPU's never been mentioned in the House of Commons, but we hope it will be less tokenistic in time.
Of course, we have much less time for extra-curricular activities these days. Recent research suggests we're among the best educated young people in the world, but that has come at a price. We are also among the most tested, which means lots of after-school study. Perhaps that explains why we are under more stress, and look to relieve it through violent video games. (And we wouldn't be surprised if George W Bush is secretly addicted to 'Age Of Empires' too.)
Better to relieve it there, though, than on the streets. Children are still far more often the victims of crimes than the perpetrators of it. Statistics show that when children do commit crimes, it is usually against property, not people. That's wrong, sure, but graffiti washes away more easily than a stab wound. It isn't fear of other children that is keeping us shut in our bedrooms. It is our own fear of out-of-control adults, and our parents' concern for our safety.
When Ms Odone referred to Frank Furedi's book 'Paranoid Parenting', she stated that parents spend more time with their children than they used to. She didn't point out that his book urges parents to let their children be more adventurous. He also says that those young people who cross the line in school or elsewhere cannot be blamed for this. "They are merely manipulating a dirty-minded world created by obsessive adults," he writes.
It is certainly true that some young people are 'disaffected', turned off by school, lost for productive things to do. These are the bored kids who hang out in the park drinking and smoking. They don't necessarily belong to a class, region or ethnic group. And they do need help - they don't know how to make their own activity, and society is not plugging the gap. But they do not reflect young people as a whole.
It is easy - indeed lazy - to generalise. It was not young people who destroyed the World Trade Centre, distributed anthrax through the US postal service, murdered Victoria Climbié and Sarah Payne, or inflicted crippling debt on the third world. Could we be blamed, as young people, for despairing of adults who are old enough to know that every deed and many words have consequences - and still don't care?
We recognise that most adults do not wish to be tarred with such an evil brush. Neither do we.
About the team
This article was produced by Alexander Dowty, 13, and Akosua Bonsu, 15, with contributions from members of the Children's Express London bureau. It was published in the Observer Comment Extra section of Guardian Unlimited.
Idle hands, idle minds
Cristina Odone's original article
