During my Easter break, the cover of a recent issue of Time (April 7, 2008) caught my eye as I was on the hunt for light reading: “Unhappy, Unloved and Out of Control” with the under-title reading “An epidemic of violence, crime and drunkenness has made Britain scared of its young. What is causing the crisis?”
A good question indeed; though I am not sure that after reading the article I am any better enlightened as to the reasons. The article, however, does highlight society’s problem with youth and violent crime, teen pregnancy, heavy drinking and drug abuse. And, in comparison with its neighbours, Britain’s young people are outstripping their European peers on alcohol, sex and drugs. Is it that British teens are less integrated into the adult world? Is it the class structures or the education system? Or is it that Britons are yet to learn how to be at ease with what childhood means? Continental Europeans and people from countries further afield do find Britain hardly a child friendly environment.
And we reinforce that image by suggesting that one of the ways to address the so-called anti-social behaviour of our young people is to declare a “noise war” on unruly youths by investing in “Mosquito machine”. Imagine using machines that produced 80 decibels squeal (high pitched ultra sonic blast) – only heard by under 25’s as our adult response to our progeny’s behaviour. We are even told that the squeal is not damaging – only irritating. Ironically, we are using another form of irritation to deal with what we consider irritating without even examining how we are contributing to the irritation. After all – behaviour is caused!
Why do we need to disperse our young people? Why are adults afraid of youngsters? When are we going to learn that children and young must be seen and heard? Why are our young people congregating? And what is wrong with that? Why is it we can no longer talk with them and reason together? Where have we failed as parents, adults and a society? When will we stop avoiding something we consider too uncomfortable? Perhaps, we adults need another squealing machine to wake us up from our slumber!
Any society that degenerates to the level of dealing with its young people by installing robotic machine emitting 80 decibel squeal and ultra sonic high pitch blast to get its young people to listen (instead through a mature conversation and dialogue) has got some serious self-interrogating to do. It is certainly confession time. But even that may be a problem: for “unless we become like children”, which we certainly seem incapable of even imagining, we will remain enslaved to our use of low-level sonic weapon on our children. Who, then, is really out of control?
Copyright© jagessar 2008
