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.

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Tags: age, prejudice, Society & Issues

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?

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Tags: age, child rights, politics, prejudice, Society & Issues, youth work

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 (more…)

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Tags: Society & Issues

Apparently in Scotland they’re about to announce that under 21 year olds will be banned from buying alcohol from off-licenses - you can hear the news item over on BBC

I’ve noticed for a while in supermarkets they say you have to prove your age if you look under 21, and recently there were suggestions it might become if you look under 25 - but you still have the right to buy it if you can prove you are 18.

I think it would be interesting to see a poll for 16 - 25 year olds to ask how many would want the right to buy alcohol at the legal age and how many would like the right to vote at 16 and compare the results!

Actually I’m listening to that BBC interview as I write and somebody’s just made the point that its ‘absurd’ that people old enough to vote won’t be able to purchase alcohol. It seems to be yet another inconsistency in deciding at what age young people actually become adults. Although of course its already accepted throughout the world that you don’t need to be an adult to have sex (see this post).

So soon the running order in Scotland for taking responsibilties will be:

• Have Sex
• Vote (a couple of years later)
• Buy booze from the local shop (3 years later)

Actually now it makes perfect sense - I can see that in Scotland soon no young people will be drunk so they won’t have irresponsible sex and they’ll take a greater interest in politics! Or has nobody noticed those drunk kids in the park on Friday nights aren’t actually 18 anyway?!

Having made the comparison between wanting to vote and wanting to drink, I wonder for how many people they felt the first time they were legally allowed to drink in a pub was their transition to adulthood and how many felt it was their first vote?

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Tags: age, politics, Society & Issues

Well according to facebook anyway! I have the highest IQ of my ‘friends’, I’m in the bottom third of attractiveness and according to my latest notification X amount of people are more popular than me - even more insulting given that I never added the applications that are apparently rating my ugliness & unpopularity!

One application I did have for a while (and swiftly got rid of) reported to me that not many of my ‘friends’ wanted to sleep with me. This I didn’t feel so insulted about given that the majority of my ‘friends’ are young people we’ve worked with, male, or family members (which narrows down the minority who apparently did want to sleep with me - or at least I hope so!).

Frankly though I’m bored of facebook and (more…)

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Tags: social networks, Society & Issues

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 (more…)

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Tags: age, positive images, prejudice, Society & Issues