Youth, the UN and the Social Worker

The front page headline of the local rag reads "Youths Out Of Control". After reading through the article it was obvious that not much has been happening in the area over the past week. I mean, the article described youths behaving, in the main, pretty much as they have always behaved. However, it got me thinking about the way kids behave nowadays. I realise that anyone over the age of twenty-four that compares the behavior kids of today with the behavior of kids of their own youth are reminded that they sound like their own parents (a comparison we all dread). Well I am prepared to accept the comparison.

I think kids today are basically the same as they have always been. All well and good so far but I am starting to hear dad's voice echoing in the background. There are a couple of things that set the youth of today apart from the youth of my day. For one, there is a lack of respect. I don't just don't mean a lack of respect towards others but a total lack of respect for anything. The other thing is there seems to be a particularly nasty streak apparent in a small but growing minority of teens and pre-teens. These differences have come about in spite of, maybe because of, the greater rights given them through the ratification of the UN Convention of Child Rights, I'll come back to that later. Who is responsible for the way kids function in society today?

I will always speak out for the rights of the child. Children are extremely vulnerable and need and deserve our protection. There are certainly enough predators out there ready to prey on their vulnerability. The very fact that there is a need for a special set of rights for children says more about where we are as a species than I can articulate. But I am straying from the point here. Anything worth having seems to have conditions attached and in some cases are protected by laws. If you break the conditions or laws you are penalised in an appropriate way. Well that's how it is supposed to work anyway. I know I seem to be jumping all over the place here but bear with me. Earlier I spoke of a particularly nastiness in today's youth. A short while ago over a period of 5 months, 6 kangaroos were mutilated and decapitated at the local golf course by a couple of teens; last year on Rottnest Island (a small island off the coast of Australia where us West Aussie's go so we can say we have been overseas) some quokka's (a small marsupial about the size of a rat) were kicked to death by kids using them as football's; recently in London a 10 week old puppy had it's skull crushed by a 15 year old thug. I don't know what the latter youth's penalty will be but in the other incidences, the kids received a small fine and received a short probation period. The penalties for these barbaric acts are certainly too low and I doubt very much if the kids involved gained any respect for animals, the law or anything else. Now I know that the Convention of Child Rights does not lay down laws on how children should be penalised, it only give guidelines. The problems arise when people begin to interpret the guidelines.

A lot of the blame for the way children behave today is laid at the feet of parents. I guess to some extent and certainly in some cases this is true. But in recent years, parents have become less and less effective simply because their rights as parents have become eroded and that erosion has been brought about by the rights of the child. This was certainly not the intention of the UN when it drew up the Convention of Child Rights. Like laws and codes, conventions are open to interpretation. Unfortunately the responsibility of interpreting the convention of child rights fell to sociologists. I have nothing against sociologists per se, they are well intentioned people in general and do a lot of good for the general welfare of mankind and I in no way say that in a patronising way. They do, however, tend to
have a very blinkered view of the world and as a consequence tend to cause as much harm by their actions as they do good. As such we have laws in place that disenfranchise not only parent but also anyone who has dealings with children. As a short example of this, I was speaking with a bus driver late last year about how the bus seats were torn and the glass in the windows were scratched on new buses. He told me it was work of school kids. I asked why he didn't stop them, he said he did not have the power to stop them. He was not allowed to psychically stop them, he was unable to remove them from his bus or stop them leaving the bus. All he was able to do was radio ahead and have the police meet the bus at the terminal (most often the kids would alight before the last stop). Even when the police were able to apprehend the culprits the maximum penalty was a small fine. In most cases the kids were given a warning and allowed to go on their way. What I am saying is, the conventions guiding the way we interact with children has gone way beyond their original intentions simply because of the way they have been interpreted.

I for one am not advocating bringing back corporal punishment, that is about as effective as capital punishment is at stopping murder. I do think, however, that kids need to be taught to respect their place in society. That they have to accept the consequences of their actions and the penalties need to match more closely the deed that brought about the consequence in the first place otherwise they learn nothing. OK, so maybe dad's words forced their way through at the end, whatever, I stand by em.