Anthony Horowitz: Why do we treat children as the enemy?
Digg
del.icio.us
Facebook
Reddit
Google
Stumble Upon
Fark
Newsvine
YahooBuzz
Bebo
Twitter
Independent Minds
It's very strange. According to the press, the country is awash with yobs, thugs, sick, feral, hoodies, louts and heartless, evil, frightening scum. These words, shown at the WiJ conference, came from one year's pick of the main newspapers. The point was repeated again and again. The vast majority of stories about teenage boys centred on crime and drugs. Sport and entertainment barely got a look-in and, even more depressingly, when they did, the majority of the coverage was neutral or negative.
How can this be? In my work I visit hundreds of schools and meet thousands of boys who read, pass exams, live normal lives. I have given out Duke of Edinburgh awards to kids who have shamed me with their energy and generosity. None of these are ever reported. And although, yes, 27 knife murders in London in one year is an appalling statistic, we all know in our hearts that this is a terrible variegation, not the golden rule.
At the conference, I was sitting next to Adam, 19, who in many ways exemplified all our worst nightmares about modern youth.
Excluded from school, dropping out of education, in and out of work, a self-confessed drug-user with no obvious ambitions – one shudders to think what the tabloids would make of him.
Yet he also won over the audience: articulate, intelligent and completely relaxed in his own life. By a bizarre coincidence, it also turned out he had sat next to my own son at school, when the two of them were eight.
Isn't this the underlying fear that the media are playing on? Nothing is more valuable to us than our children. So it pays to rub our noses in it, to remind us day in day out that a very thin line divides them from the wastelands of drugs and delinquency. Blink, and they could become victims. Worse still (and Julie Myerson is dining out on this particular insight) they could become the enemy.
The most poignant moment came in a film screened before the conference where young people were invited to give their views. "There shouldn't be any need for us to be afraid of each other," said one teenage girl. She was echoing, very poignantly, what the statistics had already proved – that the real harm being done by this constant, negative reporting is actually being done to the people we most need to protect.
Anthony Horowitz, 52, is author of the Alex Rider series of books for teenagers. He has two children, aged 17 and 19
View all comments that have been posted about this article.
Offensive or abusive comments will be removed and your IP logged and may be used to prevent further submission. In submitting a comment to the site, you agree to be bound by the Independent Minds Terms of Service.
- Print Article
- Email Article
-
Click here for copyright permissions
Copyright 2009 Independent News and Media Limited
Comments
Oh, and Adam, 19, is not a boy - he is a man. The infantilising of the youth of our society is a huge problem you seem to be adding to.
I think Women in Journalism are only promoting this story about boys in order to justify their sexist existence so they can say: 'look, wwe don't only deal with wimmin's issues so we're not sexist so we should still exist'. Read between the line eh...
Every soap contains unpleasant teens, though children's TV itself seems to make a better fist of it.
The kids in my local town turn up to do communal 'river cleans', spending their free time pulling crap from the local river and canal. And when a child at the school went missing, the older ones travelled to London and spent the day handing out photographs of her and tramping round hostels and shelters. Very little of this kind of activity ever seems to get reported in the press.
My own son risked his life saving someone elses, again, no one ever wants to concentrate on these positive stories.
The British media is a monster, eating our young alive.
And depsite good parents like you, there aremany kids who have grown uo with either neglectful parents or molly-coddling helicopter mums and paranoid parents - which has all left our teenagers far more infantilised than teen in mainland Europe. We also have the highest rfate of divorce and single mum families - NOT a good thing, despite PC propaganda, especaiily damaing to boys too.
It's not the same now as even 10 years ago. And the religion of self-esteem means their parents and teachers never allow them to lose or fail, so they think they're wonderful and know everything and have a crap attitude. This is not just teenagers being teenagers and a bit of rebelling - it's different now from what it was.
Also, the elephant in the room is race... Most mugging and knife/gun crime is done by black boys in the inner cities - not white or chinese boys... But our dishonest PC press and media - and politicians - will never look this problem i n the eye. Shame. It'll never get solved then.
The only thing that I learnt from British Society as a youngster is to never believe the "truth".
Negative stories sell newspapers. Unfortunately that's the same with everything, although the "youth" is a particulalry strong example.
It's time for parents to be accountable. If kids under 18 can't behave, prosecute the parents. If kids under 18 mother/father babies, do not pay benefits to these irresponsible teens but make their parents pay the bills - up to the family of the girl to discover with DNA tests if necessary who the father of the baby is if they want a contribtion from the baby's father. There are so many obvious ways by which parents can be made to step up to the mark but Labour have eliminated most of these with their no blame society. IT DOESN'T WORK! If kids bunk off school, penalise the parents severely but also ascertain why the kids won't go to school. If kids are on drugs, the councils must have means for getting them clean. Telling kids at earlier and earlier age how to do sex won't work either as they just can't wait...... Tell them the basics of how it happens and then "if you do this before you're 16 and beget babies, you will suffer heavy penalties and these are what they are........." and then for heavens sake stick to the penalties. There Must be blame sometimes and accountability and discipline and boundaries.
God forbid that someone who lives amongst the feral scum running our streets might get a word in edgeways.
Where I live crime is still being ignored, and the criminals are still hanging out in a gang which numbers over fifty, and is steadily growing. To add to this the young scumbag gangleaders, in their twenties seem to be getting as many young teenagers pregnant as possible, so we can have a quick turnover in terms of new generations of scum.
When not complaining that prison costs too much, the overpriveleged rich seem to ensure that the wet, unemployable social studies students amongst them get well paid jobs running regeneration schemes, which benefit the very worst amongst our youth. Whilst doing this the decent kids are imprisoned in their homes to avoid being forced into the gangs, along with any elderly people who don't want to be mugged or worse.
If we had a genuinely honest mass media, which served the truth, and not a meduia ran and owned by people who never seem to suffer because of the society they do everything to manipulate, then the press would be putting steady pressure on the government to make life in the slums worth living, rather than lobbying for less taxes whilst reitterating government lies about how crime is only a perception.