Warning against demonising youth

Yob culture is being tackled by the UK government. The danger of demonising a generation of young people by labelling them all yobs has been highlighted by the Children's Commissioner for Wales. Peter Clarke said it was not right to focus on problem cases and then “paint everyone with the same brush”.
Archbishop of Cardiff Peter Smith agreed there was a risk of over generalising on the issue.
Prime Minister Tony Blair has made tackling yobbish behaviour and “disrespect” a priority.
Last week, Home Office minister Hazel Blears sparked a debate by calling for young offenders to wear uniforms while carrying out community service punishments.

Respect was also a key theme of the Queen's speech, and a shopping centre in Kent recently made headlines by banning people wearing hoods and baseball caps.
Mr Clarke warned that “some of the things that have been said recently are very unfair and unhelpful”.
“There is a lot of serious work going on with young people who cause a problem and I am very happy to be part of the discussions about how we deal with them, but let's not lose sight of many of our youngsters who are absolutely inspirational,” he said.
“The vast majority of our young people bring joy and pleasure and a real major contribution to their communities.
“We ought to be quite able to differentiate between the two.
“I know lots of adults who would not be not be a joy to live next to, but we don't hear the same debate about how all adults are going to the dogs.
“Children in some ways are an easy target, they don't have the vote, they actually have very few people like me who can speak up for them and very often national politicians and national newspapers don't listen when we do speak up.”

Archbishop Peter said there were “some pretty difficult youngsters and some rather nasty ones” in society.
But we mustn't fall into the trap of suggesting that all youngsters have no manners and are not interested,” he said.
“There are a lot of good youngsters about — it is how we deal with the ones who are causing real difficulties socially.”
He added it was important to build up good manners and respect for other people, which he said had slipped “both amongst a few youngsters and certainly amongst some adults”.

20 May 2005

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/4561629.stm

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