Tag Archives: kids

Down Wiv Da Kidz Part 2

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Previously I have commented on how the “youth” of today are pretty much down trodden by adults and today there has been another screaming example of it.

Today is the day school children learn their “A” level results (final school exams) in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The A level exam is the culmination of 13 years schooling and decides what (if any) university education the person can begin. The exams are taken in around 3 subjects and follow two years of dedicated study. In a nutshell, they are very important for the children who sit them.

Set against this, is the news headline “A level pass and A grades up” in which the BBC leads with:

There has been another increase in the A-level pass rate and the proportion of entries awarded the top A grade.

This has set the talking heads on various news outlets raging. There is, weirdly, outrage that a higher percentage of people who have sat A levels have passed this year than last year, and this pattern has (apparently) been the case for the last two decades. If you listened to some of the radio news programmes today you would think this was the end of the world, but for context we can go back to the BBC:

Figures from the Joint Council for Qualifications show 97.2% of entries in England, Wales and Northern Ireland passed, up from 96.9%.

Yes, the increase is actually only 0.3% – not exactly head line news… Interestingly, these figures are broken down as follows: (source BBC)

  • UK: 97.2%
  • Northern Ireland: 98.2%
  • England: 97.2%
  • Wales: 97.6%

(Call me old fashioned but that appears to be an average of 97.67% but obviously Wales and Northern Ireland dont count as much. 🙂 )

In a normal world, you would think that there was much to celebrate in this numbers – our children are studying harder, our teachers are working harder, our schools are better, access to things like the internet are improving education and so on.

Oh no. In this world all this means is our exams are “too easy.” The notoriously literate tabloid press is calling for an “overhaul” of the exam system because obviously it is not testing enough if after two solid years of study, backed up by a further 11 years of general education, nearly every one passes. Ironically, I have been on a seven day professional course which had an exam (and awarded a qualification deemed to be at a higher level than an A level) and it was assumed that after SEVEN days study EVERYONE would pass the exam. Does that make the qualification “worthless?”

For some reason we live in a world where no matter what children do it is never enough. If they play outdoors they are accused of being “hoodies,” if they play indoors they are anti-social fatties, if they fail at school they are unemployable retards and if they do well then, obviously, exams are too easy.

Is it any wonder they seem to be unwilling to get involved in our society? Shame on us all.

For any one reading this who got their results today and passed – well done, the exams are hard and you have done well to pass.

(and my heart goes out doubly to the poor teachers – they work harder now than when I was at school yet any sign they are producing better standards of education and obviously it just means the exams are too easy…”)

Down wiv da kidz

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It is certainly true that if you don’t have a vote, you don’t count in a democratic society.

One of the (many) demonised groups in the UK now seems to be the “youth” – of which the middle aged, middle classes seem to be inordinately frightened. Coincidentally, this is also an age group in which most are unable to vote, and most of those who do, don’t seem to bother. As a result, it seems, they have become fair game for any crackpot ideas. Oddly, they are also a group politicians seem to constantly appeal to (obviously knowing they wont be arsed to vote…). Isn’t the world strange.

Two recent mad ideas spring to mind. First from the Guardian:

Road safety: Impose total alcohol ban for teenage drivers, says chief medical officer
A zero drink-driving limit should be imposed on all drivers under 20, the chief medical officer recommended yesterday, saying that such a ban would save lives.

This hits two of our current “fears.” First it panders to the idea that the UK is in the grip of a “Booze Culture” and secondly it cries that some new restriction will “save lives.” Nicely it wraps all this up by targeting a silent group of society, so the fall out would be minimal (and it was).

For me, despite being neither “yoof” or a novice driver so immune to any resultant laws, this is insane. I completely, 100% fail to see any logic. I am reasonably sure that any young driver mature and grown up enough to go out and stick to the 1 pint limit is also likely to be mature and capable enough to drive sensibly. The problem, and it isn’t just young drivers, is being over the limit.

Some figures are bandied about:

Justifying his call for zero alcohol for 17 to 20-year-olds, Donaldson said they were six times more likely to have a car crash if they had been drinking. A young person who had been drinking was 2.5 times more likely to have a crash than an older person who had been drinking. “I’m aware it is a controversial recommendation, but I believe it would save lives,” he said.

Now, so far I have been unable to clarify this, but I am reasonably certain that the problem is young people are more likely to be over the legal drink driving limit – I seem to recall the alcohol level is not recorded by the police if the person is under the legal limit.

Basically, this is saying young people over the limit have more accidents than old people over the limit, so lets lower the limit for young people.

Madness. But it is the madness that comes from some one with a fantastic knowledge of one subject area (medicine) being given implied authority in another area (crime reduction, driver safety etc).

The next bit really annoyed me. From the Times a few days ago:

Curfew tames feral yobs of Cornwall
An experiment to bring peace to a yob-plagued town by imposing nocturnal curfews on its teenagers had a promising start this weekend when the streets of Redruth in Cornwall were free of the usual intimidating gaggles of youths.
Under the experimental curfew, named Operation Goodnight, parents in the most troubled part of the town have agreed with police that they will keep children under 16 indoors after 9pm, and that under10s will not be allowed out after 8pm.

What a wonderful culture we live in. When you read things like this it really makes you despair for what the adults of 2020 will be like.

I have two big issues with this. First off – why are we sending kids so many mixed signals? We (as a society) say they should be more involved in the community, say they should spend less time on their playstations and more time outdoors, say they should spend more time interacting with others. Simultaneously we say they cant go out, cant hang round together and everything they do means a paedophile will get them.

Secondly, the sheer unadulterated nonsense behind this.

  1. It is a voluntary scheme. So if you are a NAUGHTYKID™©® all you need to do is ignore it. All the good, well behaved kids will stay at home. Hang on, isn’t that the wrong way round?
  2. It is being done with the approval of the parents and targets the children in the most troubled part of the town. What? It actually says “a Sunday Times poll showed that nine out of 10 parents backed restrictions on their own children going out after dark.”

Right, let me get this straight. The parents of these “feral” children want restrictions on when the children go out. They have enough control over the children to stop them going out but wont do this simply because their children are little s***s, they demand that the police tell them to do this.

Nope, still cant get my head around it.

Why in the name of Zeus dont the bloody parents control their children? Why do they have to agree with police to follow this “trial” curfew (which will, no doubt, report a positive outcome and then spread to other areas – just like the criminal nonsense that is congestion charging)?

Our children are fine. They are the same mix of evil little turds and fantastic kind angels they were 30 years ago, 60 years ago, 90 years ago and even 900 years ago.

The bloody feral parents are the problem…. but then, they can vote…

Little terrors

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A 16 June New Scientist piece about children and ADHD talks perfect sense, well, that’s in my opinion – but bear in mind I am never wrong.

The opinion piece is by Dorothy Rowe, entitled Children are not mad or bad, they are just scared .

She makes the point that scared children can easily be diagnosed as having mental illnesseses, because adults don’t see that the kids are just exhibiting fear.

ADHD is not a diagnosis most mature adults face. Children, on the other hand, are being diagnosed with it in their millions. In the US nearly 4 million people, mostly children and young adults, are being prescribed amphetaminelike drugs for ADHD (New Scientist, 1 April 2006, p 8). The number of children diagnosed with bipolar disorder has also risen astronomically, according to child psychiatrist Gabrielle Carlson and colleague Joseph Blader at Stony Brook University, New York. They say that while in 1996 just 13 out of every 100,000 children in the US were diagnosed with bipolar disorder, by 2004 the figure had leapt more than fivefold to 73 in 100,000. They also showed that of children diagnosed with a psychiatric condition in 1996, 1 in 10 were bipolar, compared with 4 out of 10 in 2004 (New Scientist, 19 May, p 6).

These are pretty monstrous figures. Children bi-polar, for Freya’s sake? Doesn’t that mean excited at times and miserable at times. As kids are?

I really like this article because the author actually has the face to say a truth that is becoming increasingly rare to hear.

In saying this I have broken a powerful rule: namely, that parents and those in loco parentis must not be criticised. If a child behaves badly, the child is at fault. If she or he can’t be regarded as naughty and be punished, she or he must be mad, and the madness treated with drugs, the effects of which on thedeveloping brain are still largely unknown. ….
Diagnosing children with ADHD or bipolar disorder requires collusion. Parents and doctors must agree the fault is in the child. So parents fail to mention their own economic, social or personal problems, or underplay them, while doctors don’t ask because they lack the skills and resources to help the parents. Thus parents can go on believing they are good parents faced with an inherently flawed child, and doctors that they are good doctors. The child continues to be afraid.

Parents are so scared of being seen as “bad parents” that they become incapable of admitting any failures at all. It takes courage to examine one’s own actions and identify where we might be making mistakes. It is much easier to assume the child is somehow “wrong”. And being “sick” seems so much more modern and tolerant than seeing an angry kid as intrinsically wicked (the Victorian view) – although it has the same effect of invalidating the kid’s experience.

In the mid-twentieth century, it became customary to blame parents for every psychological ill experieneced by their offspring. The (bi-polar style :-D) pendulum has now swung the other way and we seem intent, as a society, on denying all the needs of children and forcing them to fit uncomplaining into the adult-dominated world, as soon as they take their first breath.

It is good to hear someone actually saying that adults are indeed scary to kids. The adult world is scary. The way we ALL behave to our kids is going to frighten them sometimes.

However, some people are truly terrifying. If their kids are confused as a result of realising that, maybe we could start paying a bit of attention.