No wonder these kids think stealing trainers is OK. Everyone makes excuses for them – Telegraph Blogs
Katharine Birbalsingh
Katharine Birbalsingh is the teacher who exposed the failings of the comprehensive school system at the Conservative Party conference last year. Katharine has been teaching in inner London for over a decade and plans to set up a Free School in south London to help to serve underprivileged children. Her book, To Miss with Love, is out now. Follow @Miss_Snuffy on Twitter to see what Katharine's doing now. Katharine's personal website is www.katharinebirbalsingh.com.
The reason your house is not regularly robbed is not because you lock your doors. It is because most people don’t steal. Sure, locking is a deterrent used to deter those on the fringes of society, but the main reason you are not attacked on the street, shops are not constantly looted and burnt down, and we all don’t take things that don’t belong to us is because someone, when we were little, taught us the difference between right and wrong.
Put a child in front of an insect and he will take great delight in making it suffer until his mother or father tells him that causing pain is wrong. Children need to be brought up properly with parents who care enough about them to say no, with a school system that cares enough to admit when behaviour is out of control, with a community that recognises that we are ALL responsible for our children.
Many of these mindless thugs involved in the riots don’t think more than 10 minutes into the future. They think that stealing trainers is ‘fun’, not even considering that it might be wrong. Many of them are, quite literally, unable to read and write: 17 percent of 15-year-olds are functionally illiterate. If you de-educate an entire generation, if you constantly make excuses for their behaviour, if you never teach them the difference between right and wrong, then chaos is what you reap. These young people are just implementing what they’ve learnt at school!
Teachers can only keep the peace in the classroom because they have established authority. Where there is order in classrooms, children show respect because they have been taught to respect teachers. ONE teacher can therefore command the respect of hundreds of children. It is the same with the police and order in society. The police cannot hope to outnumber the rioters. As a civilised society, we rely on a sense of morality in our people to keep the order. How did the Japanese survive their recent nuclear disaster? They queued quietly for food and help, and waited. They didn’t say ‘ME ME ME’! Do young people wear hoodies in Japan? Do Japanese children question their teacher’s authority? Do Japanese adults defend the appalling behaviour of their youth? NO.
We are an international disgrace. What would happen if the teacher left her classroom and said that she was ‘keeping a close eye on things from her holiday home’? Theresa May, Home Secretary, was the only one of our leaders, whether Conservative or Labour, who returned from holiday immediately when Tottenham exploded. Where were all of our leaders? If even our politicians refuse to take responsibility for their ‘classrooms’, then how can we expect the children to remain in their chairs?
Ken Livingstone blames everything from Thatcher to the Conservatives to lack of youth clubs. Darcus Howe is comparing our riots to Syria’s! I look on in horror at our BBC reporters, as well as ordinary people being interviewed on TV, as they all chant the usual mantra without even thinking: cuts, cuts, cuts. A man whose shop had been looted met Nick Clegg on the street, clearly distressed, and rather than blame the looters, he attacked the Deputy Prime Minister over the cuts. What is wrong with everyone? Have we been brainwashed by aliens?
Even the sensible people (and there have been a few) refuse to denounce ALL of the violence. Brixton, Croydon, Birmingham are bad, but Tottenham somehow was ‘understandable’. Come again? You mean sometimes looting and violence are acceptable? Apparently, the Tottenham riots are understandable because the police shot Mark Duggan (father of four, according to the Guardian). Do we really think that the police went out and killed a random innocent man? Or rather, as the local residents say, was he not a ‘major player’ in the Tottenham criminal underworld? They say he ‘lived by the gun’, and caused ‘grief’ to local people. Some say he was a crack cocaine dealer. His fiancée says he was determined not to go back to jail (so he has been in jail) and he has a child with her and another woman. She also has another 2 children from another man. Yet what do Mark Duggan’s parents say? That he was a good father and a respected member of the local community. How can someone with that reputation be considered a respected member of the local community?
Was Mark Duggan a good father? Who knows! Certainly, Jens Breivik, father of the Norway bomber, was absent during his son’s childhood. He refused to see his 16-year-old son because he ‘wasn’t ready’ (whatever that means). Jens Breivik, rather than feeling remorse for having failed as a father, was only interested in his own reputation when the appalling Norway killings took place. But when I criticised him, I was shot down by ordinary readers of this blog. How dare I criticise parents when I am not a parent myself! White readers say that they are unable to speak about black absent fathers because they’re white. Fine. But is Jens Breivik black? Yet no one was willing to be critical of his questionable parenting. Parents teach their children the difference between right and wrong. If they are absent, then the child grows up without a moral compass.
These criminals are responsible for their behaviour but so are their parents who sit at home, knowing their children are out there, looking forward to the goodies their children will bring home. I am so angry, so ashamed, so utterly dismayed. The vast majority of these criminals are black. No one will say it. I hang my head in shame, both as a black person and as a teacher. I naively thought if I could tell people what was happening in our schools that we would change things. I wrote a book, thinking that this would stop the liberals from the excuse-making. But instead, I was told I had made it all up. Our great capital city is on fire and even this isn’t enough to convince people that the excuse-making must stop!
What does the Socialist Workers Party say? “These riots are a bitter reaction to racist policing and a Tory Government destroying people’s lives.” It beggars belief. Our reaction to these riots is the greatest worry. What will defeat us is not the rioters. Scary as they are, they are a minority of yobs. What will defeat us is the power of bad ideas. Given our refusal to change, the worst is yet to come.
