Streathamite
ideological dogmatist
OK, fair enough, that's a better explanation, but what about w/c kids who DO - genuinely - aspire to join the professions, and have what it needs to get there?
Three murders and at least three serious assaults in two weeks...
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stuff_it
Too skool for cool
I'm sorry how many teen drug dealers have you personally known? There is a definite element of wanting to provide or at least wanting to not be a burden on often financially overstretched families. Even if it's just 'I really want an x-box, some new shoes, etc - so does my kid brother/sister; there is no way in hell we could ever hope to ask for them off mum. Maybe I could be buying her something instead from time to time.'
A lot of the violence will come from young men that have a false sense of what 'being a man' is. It doesn't mean they aren't trying in their own way.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
No-one has said it's a reason, you knob. They've said that it might have contributed.
I'd have to know what the fuck you meant, first.
Fuck me, stereotype much?
I live on one of those "social housing estates that are riddled with gangs, drugs, and violence". Know what? They're not "riddled". They're mostly no worse than Clapham Park was when I lived there in the '80s, and as for "white educated liberals", you assume that anyone trying to make a case any more complex than "social housing estates that are riddled with gangs, drugs, and violence" is some kind of gentrifier. Fuck off. I'm white, and I'm educated (at my own expense), but I'm no fucking liberal, and I've lived on council estates in SW London for most of my half-century of life.
So many assumptions, so little content.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Let me guess: In fishworld they get involved in dealing because they're evil!!!!
Right?
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Is it just me, or does this read like "we must educate young people to know their place"?
TBF, I didn't do more than skim Stoaty's post at first, because...well, it was stoaty, and you can only read so much right-wing Catholic crap in a day without chundering. However, even given his proviso that "I am not saying that working class kids cannot enter the top proffession", his post does have a "Know your place, be grateful for whatever crumbs you're given" air to it.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Streathamite
ideological dogmatist
PMSL!Well if giving these kids a chance to learn a trade is 'crumbs' at least those crumbs are based on some sort of reality rather than some soppy bollocks about them all becoming QC's and so on.
This is what I dont understand about you lefties. We have a terrible skills hole in this country. And its growing bigger every day. Yes, working class people tend to be the ones who become trades people and so on but they can then provide for their families and actually be part of society in a way that has to be benefical. Giving young people from the estates of Brixton and Tottenham and all sorts of other areas would actually give loads of them a real step up. But instead all we get is 'community' groups which invariably look to just blame the Police and the Tories, ignoring the fact that you lefties have had almost complete control of the education systems in the areas affected for decades and have fucked them up beyond all recognition.
If you want me to be right wing about this I will. I reckon lots of you on here actually want black people to not climb up the social ladder. You actually get some sort of kick out of watching them kill and maim each other because it allows you to sustain your own fucked up notions of the 'class' struggle because you have a ready made victim group on your door steps.
Of course it used to be the white working class who filled this role for you but most of them got a trade, moved out to the suburbs and then started voting Tory so you had to find another group to foist your ideas, garnered from long dead Germans, onto.
Still you can have your little daisy chain on here and all pat yourselves on the back for being able to say that there are plenty of 'art' groups. Maybe get some theatre group into the schools so that it can all be acted out ? Naturally those doing the acting with be nice middle class kids but it will so rewarding.
FFS. You want to stop black people killing and beating the shit out of each other then maybe give them some skills which mean they can make something of themselves in the world rather than keeping them as your own pet little cause to justify your own archaic and irrelevent politics.
Streathamite
ideological dogmatist
I think you've missed the point by about a million miles. I'm all for working class kids getting sellable skills that could earn them a comfortable and law-abiding life - i'm a working-class bloke myself.
i just don't want to see any of 'em denied the opportunities for other careers, if that's what they've set their hearts on.
Christ, the two aren't mutually exclusive, ffs!
stethoscope
Well-Known Member
So it's all some leftist conspiracy. Brilliant.
A week or two ago I had the police on the phone at work. Turned out they were looking for some kind of sponsorship for a sort of youth-club scheme involving the baby Bill doing their bit to deal with anti-social behaviour by "keeping the little monsters off the streets". These were his actual words. I only thought afterwards that I should have said, "hang on, it could be my kids you're talking about there".
But even though they won't solve it with attitudes like that, the problem is huge. It's not just a London, or a UK problem; but it is mostly, an urban problem. You could summarise it very briefly as a "crisis of masculinity". It runs in favelas and townships as well as on London estates and in the projets of the French banlieues.
It's been around for years and is a consequence both of urbanisation - and the loss of rural masculine activities like hunting - and a changing economy for which young women are often better equipped than young men. The Nation of Islam's Million Man March a year or two back was one response.
Education and aspiration are part of the answer but not the whole answer; not everyone can be or wants to be a successful scientist or barrister. Or rapper or footballer. Societies have often had formal or semi-formal institutions whose purpose is to funnel adolescent testosterone somewhere harmless; eventually, the new urban societies will work something out. But until they do, oppressive policing may well be the only way to keep the stabbings and shootings under control.
But even though they won't solve it with attitudes like that, the problem is huge. It's not just a London, or a UK problem; but it is mostly, an urban problem. You could summarise it very briefly as a "crisis of masculinity". It runs in favelas and townships as well as on London estates and in the projets of the French banlieues.
It's been around for years and is a consequence both of urbanisation - and the loss of rural masculine activities like hunting - and a changing economy for which young women are often better equipped than young men. The Nation of Islam's Million Man March a year or two back was one response.
Education and aspiration are part of the answer but not the whole answer; not everyone can be or wants to be a successful scientist or barrister. Or rapper or footballer. Societies have often had formal or semi-formal institutions whose purpose is to funnel adolescent testosterone somewhere harmless; eventually, the new urban societies will work something out. But until they do, oppressive policing may well be the only way to keep the stabbings and shootings under control.
No thats fair enough.
Mmmm. How about this.
At the age of say 11-13 we get the kids to sit some exams or be assessed in another way and those that show an ability in the academic side of education go to a school that puts a special emphasis on that and the other kids go to ones that push them into getting more technical skills ? Do you reckon that might work and give them all a better start in life ?
ericjarvis
give a feck for the feckless
No bloody way. That's more of exactly the same shit that causes the problem in the first place.
What we've done is completely remove education from the priorities of the education system. These days it's all about quantifying and labelling children rather than educating them. What we need is less early specialisation and more chances for them to pursue special interests as they develop. CHILDREN ARE NOT A MANUFACTURED PRODUCT. You can't get the best out of them by using approaches more suitable to prducing tins of baked beans. They aren't uniform and they don't develop in the same way or at the same rate as each other. Anything that doesn't take that as a basic fundamental of the system is going to be a complete waste of time for any child that isn't very close to average in every way.
ericjarvis
give a feck for the feckless
This reads like something from a complete fantasy world. This is precisely what ticks me off about nearly all debates about youth crime and violence. A whole bunch of us who actually live on the council estates involved will explain carefully what we see around us. Then a bunch of pompous knowall middle class snobs will completely ignore absolutely everything we tell them and spout a load of ignorant crap over and over again until everyone who disagrees with them (ie has any knowledge of the subject at all) gives up and goes away.
Currently there are three kids from our street (on the "notorious" Angell Town Estate) who are at university. It's not all that unusual even in these snobbish "know your place you fucking chavs" times. The basic problem is that too many of the kids here don't have the sheer bloody mindedness required to ignore all this sort of ignorant crap and end up writing themselves off before they start.
Maybe you live in a world in which it's possible to accurately define the capabilities a child will have as an adult. If you do then it's a very strange world that has fuck all to do with Planet Earth.
ericjarvis
give a feck for the feckless
The chap from Operation Trident seems to think that pretty much all are likely to turn out to be gang related, but he's not making assumptions until the investigations are completed. Which is precisely how it should be. "Word on the street" is that the KFC one was drugs related and not gang related.
stuff_it
Too skool for cool
TBF if they really want to do uni later on then working as a part time sparky or plumber would still put then through uni in far more style than working in a pub.....not that I haven't known people deliberately go to college or university with the intent of flogging drugs to the poshos to get by.
There are quite a few music and graffiti projects for the yout in Nottingham, they are quite popular and also ensure there is a lively new music scene that doesn't involve guitar bands.
100% masahiko
i is a professor and is magical like totoro
Half term madness imo.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
You miss the point. Many of them may well learn a trade. Does that mean that they shouldn't ever want to perhaps do something else?
That's what my younger brother is doing. He learned and plied a trade, now he's doing a law degree. Should he go back and work on sites for the rest of his life rather than seeing if he's got it in him to do something different?
In terms of "the trades", we don't have a significant "skills hole", what we have are companies who'd rather hire in cheaper labour from the newer EU states, and then whine like fuck about a "skills gap" as an excuse for not wanting to pay a living wage to all those people who've done the apprenticeships, got their papers, and want recompense commensurate with their labour.
"Do what you're told, be a good citizen, and you might one day earn enough at your trade to afford a family and decent housing, peasant".
Fuck off.
You mouth cant phrases like "beneficial to society", but what you mean is "beneficial to the maintenance of the status quo, with everyone in their pigeonholes.
And just where is this reality, outside of your head?
The government has control of the education system. Blaming the LEAs is like blaming the school cleaner when the school lino wears through.
Class over-arches all other social cleavages. In other words, whatever your skin colour, if you're working class you get a worse deal, both practically and in terms of life chances. If you're black then on top of your class giving you a worse deal, your colour does too. Anyone aware of this should (and generally do) strive to make the situation better for all. Remove or ameliorate the causes of crime, and crime falls. That's a basic criminological verity that both the left and right strands of criminology accept.
As for your thesis of blacks as sacrificial lambs for the furtherance of class struggle, what sort of demented halfwit are you, to even think up something as conspiratastically-horrendous? I want to see everyone treated the same, based on their common humanity, not treated differently based on their skin colour.
Masturbating when you wrote that, were you?
If (and it's a contentious point unsupported by demographic flows over the last 60 years) "most of them got a trade, moved out to the suburbs and then started voting Tory", then why is the urban working class still larger than the suburban and rural working classes? You're talking about a minority of the working class (or, more accurately, the "lower middle classes"), not "most" of them, and in terms of changed voting patterns, your claims are again not supported. The biggest change in voting patterns has been from "tribal" voting to "pragmatic" voting, which has benefitted both Labour and the Tories at different times.
As for dead Germans, the accusation of Marxism was juvenile 50 years ago, nowadays it's mostly acknowledged by everyone except the sects that Marxism is a good system for analysing society and economy, but not a particularly helpful ideology.
What the fuck are you on about? You've either been sniffing paint-thinners or reading the intellectually-garbled junk over at Harry's Place again.
Or, better still, alleviate the causes of crime so that staying in education, and learning a trade seem like a better option for actually getting some sort of employment, rather than kids having to grow up in a system that rubs the rewards of crime (from the local dealer's car to the banker's mansion) in their faces from when they're old enough to understand the media.
Well on the planet I live in the work market is all based on people having skills and abilities that others are willing to pay them for.
And the reality is that for working class people having a trade skill empowers them massively. Thats a nailed on fact. I tell you what, have a chat with the people you know on your estate. Ask them if they would like to be taught a trade skill whilst they are at school. Ask them if they understand the importance of it. You might be surprised to find out just how highly they are valued.
Now I will admit to a personal interest in this because I work in the training industry. I sell courses for people who wish to train to become plumbers and electricians. And every day I speak to people who are desperate to get a trade because they KNOW that its the only real route for them to make something of their lives. Lots of them tell me that school was an utter joke, that they just pissed about because they were allowed to. And yes, I put this down to left wing social engineering experiences in our school system which are only now being put right or at least attempts to do so.
This is not about 'capabilitys', its about looking at a problem and coming up with a solution that actually works in all senses of the word.
With the biggest irony of it all being that London has no shortgage of Graduates. But electricians and plumbers, thats a different story.
If you truly want to empower black youth then give them a realistic chance of earning a living wage through giving them a trade. Its how the white working classes climb the ladder so why would it be any different for black people ?
Streathamite
ideological dogmatist
leaving everything else aside...wot, no working class kids have made it through universities and into other ('professional' careers that they want)
Some do. Thats for sure. But a lot dont. And for those who dont then a trade skill gives them a good start in life along with there being a genuine need for people with such abilities in our economy.
What is so difficult to understand about this ?
TruXta
tired
You sound exactly like my dad (working class lad made good) - "we can't all cut each other's hair now can we?"
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