There were some good discussions over on UKYouthOnline about developing policies for interacting with young people online.

In particular there was a debate about whether youth workers should separate their personal social networking profiles from their ‘professional’ persona’s (and profiles) that they use to interact with young people professionally.

Well over in the US theres a proposed law to make it illegal for school teachers to have ’social networking friendships’ with children and young people. CNN has an article online including an interview with a teacher who does use a Myspace page to allow students to contact him.

The proposed law has come about following fears that ’social networking sites are breeding innapropriate behaviour between teachers and students’. In the CNN article an Education Lawyer says that having clear professional boundaries are important “You’ve got to establish it from Day One and say, ‘I’m not your buddy, I’m not your friend, I’m just your teacher.”

I wrote something similar in ‘What Makes a Good Paid Youth Worker‘ - that relationships with young people need to be on the basis of what you can professionally offer them - not just ‘friendship’. But of course social networking is all about how many ‘friends’ you have and now that services offer to show how many of your email contacts are registered with them it means that any person you’ve had email contact is likely to easily find your profile.

Of course you don’t have to accept ‘friend requests’ providing you can get over the fear of causing offence! I’m not quite sure what I think about this yet - on the one hand some good clear rigid guidelines could work fairly well, on the other hand there is a point that its similar to saying if you work in an area you can’t also be seen to socialise there.

Actually that reminds me of a situation I found myself in when I first started as a ‘Youth Development Worker’ on an estate. I also played for the local cricket club and through one of the players I became friends with somebody who invited me for a meet up in their house which happened to be on the estate where I worked. I did attend, only to discover it was his parents house and his little sister was a regular member of one of my youth clubs - she wasn’t there but I did wonder about how weird it would have been if she’d been at home while I was getting drunk with her brother and his mates in the back garden!

For youth and community work the boundaries will always be a bit more blurred than teaching but it will be interesting to follow what happens in Missouri and whether or not it has any impact over here.

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?

According to ‘V’ a recent survey by them found that 70% of 16 - 25 year olds say they are “negatively perceived by the public”, and of the 3000 that took part in the survey 60% think this is unfair (which to me seems a surprisingly high amount that think it is fair?!) The survey also found that 49% of young people “believe young people do things which justify this negative opinion”.

Besides recognising the behavior of some young people doesn’t help their image, others to get the blame include celebrities (apparently Amy Winehouse topping the bad example list which is in conflict to the findings of a poll last month when supposedly she was voted as the “ultimate heroine among the UK’s youth!), and in the words of V’s Chief Executive “This survey reveals the growing gulf of understanding between the generations which is leading to young people being unfairly tarred with a negative image.”

Over on the CYPNow Forums Neil asks “How very sad. As a Youth Worker, it is really disappointing to see that nothing has changed. What have we got to do to change this image of our YP?”

Both comments seemingly assuming that because some young people feel that they are perceived negatively by ‘the public’ they actually are. This feeling by young people of Continue Reading »

Apparently in Italy touching your bits in public is now illegal. It made me smile because I wonder what they’d make of the tendency of some lads recently to walk around with their hands stuffed down the front of their pants!

In a landmark judgement with far-reaching social implications, Italy’s highest appeals court has ruled it is a criminal offence for Italian men to touch their genitals in public.

The judges of the court of cassation stressed that the ban did not just apply to brazen crotch-scratching, but also to what might be termed superstitious pre-emption.

Link to article here

So a new report has found that more black role models are needed - heres a summary from the BBC report:

The Men’s Room charity said black youths need “a greater diversity of images and portrayals”

The group wants a national programme to encourage lawyers, doctors, teachers and others to become mentors.

It says that, too often, celebrities and rappers who glamorise crime become the role models for young black men.

Reach group chairman Clive Lewis runs The Men’s Room charity which helps young black men to achieve their potential.

“Black boys and young men desperately need a greater diversity of images and portrayals, showing that black men can be, and are, successful in a wide range of careers including business, teaching, the law and health care.”

In some ways I can see logic in this - Continue Reading »

The last time I wrote a blog, I believe the title was “Pigeons and Ears” exploring the issue of these earless creatures, later discovering they have holes in their heads, as do most birds, also receiving vibrations from their bottoms?! Hopefully my interests, knowledge and general ideas have progressed since then…

It was interesting reading mas’s blog about judging people after working on a course this weekend. I was warned to expect anyone, anything! But when six 20 year old lads with diamonds in their ears from lewisham turned up, I did feel rather nervous! Continue Reading »

following on from a discussion the other day about how everyone makes judgments all the time about people and whether or not we’re aware of our own prejudices got me thinking about how some prejudices are accepted and some are not. So heres my ranking system for ism’s!

1. Racism
2. Sexism
3. Ageism

So all of the above are generally accepted as not being acceptable. What about the following - how acceptable are they?! Continue Reading »