Youth justice — now there’s a tricky one. What picture does it conjure up in your head? Drunken mobs of unruly children needing locked away or young maturing adults arguing for their rights as not quite fully paid up members of society? Is this a law and order issue or should the emphasis be on education?

Trends rather than targets the way to tackle youth crime

Our tabloids are on a feeding frenzy of youth crime. Our politicians are reacting with tough justice, threatening quicker court action. At the same time our classrooms are suffering from bad behaviour denying the majority a proper chance to learn. Isn’t the link obvious?

Does this daily diet of delinquency tell the real story? Does "lifting" the kids from the street corner, those for whom self-motivation extends to emptying a bottle of Buckfast, get to the bottom of the problem? Can the classroom antics of a few disruptive souls tell much about the real problems facing Scotland in 2003? Or should we be getting tough on crime?

Youngsters seeking an escape through drink or drugs haven’t got other, more exciting options available. Youngsters creating chaos in the classroom develop skills to disrupt, ignoring other more structured challenges presented to them.

In both cases, bad behaviour deserves punishment. Drop litter — you pick it up with interest — other people’s too. Scrawl graffiti — you whitewash the whole wall. In school or on the street, Newton’s Third Law (N3) applies: for every action, that is your anti-social behaviour, there will be (at least) an equal and opposite reaction, your public punishment.

But at the same time we need to recognise, as some schools in England are now doing, that young minds need a full-on experience. Newton’s First Law (N1) is also instructional: a (young) body will stay at rest, or in constant (destructive) motion unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. In education this should be a positive experience that engages youngsters and helps them to develop skills for society. Our current subject driven, standardised, sanitised school experience is great in theory ... but.

In order to tackle both the cause and effect of youth crime and its classroom cousin, disruptive behaviour, Newton’s Second Law is a good starting point. N2 — that force is equal to mass multiplied by its acceleration - in layman’s terms it lets energetic youngsters fly their kites as high and as fast as they can. Just keep a loose grip on the strings to keep them from tangling with society’s power lines — rules of reasonable behaviour!

Is our tax better spent teaching Newton’s Laws of Motion or teaching kids how best to put them into practice? Force feed them a stale, subject based curriculum and then squeeze them through a ridiculously tight testing regime and they will find much more imaginative ways to develop their knowledge and understanding of the world around themselves; behind the wheel of a stolen car, for example.

Would we rather churn out social misfits who can recite the works of Burns or develop communicators comfortable in a few languages? Should we stifle enterprising youngsters by cramming the curriculum with prescription or encourage them to develop their own business idea? Can we (recreate the conditions in and around the classroom that our generation benefited from, with the full range of cultural and sporting opportunities we enjoyed to provide a genuine choice of context for learning?

The First Minister accepted the need to shift the emphasis in education from "targets to trends" allowing schools the local flexibility to ensure that standards are raised year on year. More youngsters passing exams, more marks at the top end of the scale, more entrants to FE and to HE, more jobs secured straight from school, more young enterprises spun out from schools. Just get the graphs going in the right direction.

Ross Martin is director of the Scottish Forum for Modern Government.
9 July 2003

http://news.scotsman.com/education.cfm?id=745202003

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