A while ago I downloaded an audio book of Richard Dawkins ‘God Delusion’ - so far I haven’t got past the first couple of chapters but he makes an interesting point early on that children shouldn’t be referred to as ‘Muslim Children’ or ‘Christian Children’, but instead ‘the children of Muslims/Christians etc.’ - this part of a wider point that children aren’t capable of making decisions about their spirituality and are in effect indoctrinated into religion.

Interesting point for me anyway as I had a very heated discussion with a Priest prior to getting married about my refusal to agree to bring up my children as Catholics. My wife is a Catholic and I’m not, so we had to jump through a few Catholic hoops to get married in a Catholic Church - part of which involved signing a form promising to bring up any children we had as Catholics. I disagreed because my opinion is that they should have the right to choose what if any religion they will follow when they feel they’re old enough to do so.

Indoctrination seems a pretty strong word but then I did agree with the points Dawkin made except that maybe for many people spirituality is a part of their overall culture and there are good arguments for encouraging people to ensure children understand their families culture. Anyway that’s not the point I was trying to make - I got thinking about the indoctrination thing because earlier today I found I’d got a song stuck in my head thanks to Radio 1, and then I realised what the song was - “I Kissed a Girl” by Katy Perry. Well this was all the more annoying because I remembered some weeks ago I commented on Jon Jollys blog that ‘surely young people over here have better taste‘!

Well maybe they do because what I was wondering is if I can get the song stuck in my head (and I really don’t like it), does the radio also unduly influence us about what we listen to/buy (I don’t doubt that it does), but does this also go further and could those songs influence the behaviour of children/young people? Is it possible that young women actually will now go out and ‘kiss a girl’ when they otherwise wouldn’t have?!

I don’t suppose this really classes as ‘indoctrination’ - more likely ‘influence’ except perhaps for the fact that Radio 1 in particular is notorious for hugely overplaying songs to the point you can’t help but get them stuck in your head, so maybe its somewhere in between indoctrination and influence (maybe somebody cleverer than me knows a word for this?).

So now I’m wondering what other things have these kinds of influences on children? I’ve noticed for example the ‘eco message’ on BBC childrens programmes which is maybe a more positive example.

Tristan Donovan wrote an interesting Opinion piece that you can see here. His original question was

• Are we getting older sooner or staying young longer?

I thought it interesting anyway because I think maybe the answer is both. Often I’ve wondered whether children “grow up” too fast, I also sometimes question if youth work may even hasten this with so much emphasis on ‘empowering’ young people.

In the rest of Tristans article he discusses how proposed restrictions on under 18 year olds seemingly contradict the campaign for 16 year olds to be able to vote. I’d agree that it would…… that is if you agree with the premise that you should reach a magic age and then all the entitlements of adulthood are yours. On the otherhand you may argue there should be a gradual transition of responsibilities - in fact perhaps there already is if you look at this post showing the different ages at which young people gain legal responsibilities.

Although reading through that list doesn’t give the impression that it was planned to be a system to support young people to take on increasing responsibility until becoming a ‘full adult’ - instead it looks more like people randomly deciding ages they think may be suitable for certain things.

Arguably this is also whats happening right now - on the one hand theres the camp that argue young people should be able to vote at 16, and then there are those saying 18 year olds are not yet capable of drinking alcohol responsibly or purchasing knives etc. Nobody though seems to have taken an overall view and said what is the best process through which we can support young people to take on all of these responsibilities, and in what order or priority are they handed over to them?

Thanks to a 4 hour delay at Luton Airport I bought myself a lads mag a couple of weeks ago and within was a feature article about a festival organised by V - the volunteering charity for young people (aged 16 - 25) - the ‘article’ was slanted towards showing how funky modern volunteering actually is (Its not about beards & sandals - learn dj’ing etc. & so on) - except that it wasn’t an article by the magazine at all - it was a full page advertisement in one of the biggest selling monthly magazines and I suspect a very expensive one too.

I remember a couple of years ago being shocked when I first saw an advert for Connexions at the Cinema and then later on TV, plus of course plastered all over billboards, buses & the various media. I say shocked because at the time I wondered how much bloody money is being spent on that?! and at a time when I was trying to fundraise for our own youth programme.

Well I felt similar with the V advertisement, except I can perhaps see a better argument for V who are ‘in the business’ of trying to recruit more young people to volunteer. My question though is given the huge amount of costs of using Continue Reading »

Here’s a couple of films from the brilliantly talented people at Bold Creative…..

The first is  ‘Dillons Story’ - a young boy living in poverty.

The second is ‘It Ain’t Disneyland’ - quite an inspiring story about young people in Tower Hamlets taking the lead in trying to rebuild their community.

You can see more of their stuff over on their site. I hope they do more animations soon!

I enjoyed watching the first of the Disarming Britain series on Channel 4 last night, although I didn’t so much enjoy the first programme of the evening ‘Kids, Knives & Broken Lives’. I shared the feelings of Wallace over on the Disarming Britain blogs who says

“what I seen last night was a bunch of wannabe gangsters who watch and copy American Gangs……I was expecting more up and close talking with Gang Members from around Britain but what i seen was not actual gang members but some groups of boys who dont claim to be in a gang, but talk about gangs and hang about their street”

The programme itself rang true with quite a lot of what we see on courses from groups who discuss gangs and weapons - lots of talk from people who are apparently in the thick of things, yet little of any substance or that comes across as truly believable.

Thats not to say there aren’t problems, of course there are, but if you’d taken away the moody gangster music what you’d have mostly seen Continue Reading »