First Place
Sindiwe Mvubu
Sindiwe Mvubu (16)
The problems facing young people today can be traced back to the failure of parents to give their children what they need most: time, attention and love. Discuss.
The problems faced by young people today are schools and the access to education. Schools alone hold many problems for children such as; the competition to do well in lessons, the pressure of receiving homework everyday, balancing life and social life, wanting to be accepted by other students, the pressure of peer groups and avoiding being bullied. Also being pulled into dangerous activities in the street such as gang culture, vandalising and stealing.
School is such a challenging environment, as children know that for them to be able to follow their choice of career they must get good grades. However, most children still want to enjoy time with their classmates and close friends something that is vital for socialisation. “School should be enjoyable” teachers and parents say, but once you approach year 9 you have SATs, Mocks and then your GCSE’s. The pressure is high and a lot of work is required. The stress of it could make children unhappy or even decide not to do some of the work. Children entering year 9 desperately need parental support. Children need their parents to be very supportive and regularly encourage them to try their hardest, and this encouragement should not just be received from the parents but extended family members too. Parents should issue their children discipline when it comes to coming home and doing homework they received in school and completing it on the same day. Time doesn’t wait for anyone and avoiding doing work just ends up becoming stressful as you try to cram it up at the last minute.
So how does this link to the parents? “New Right Thinkers“, a group of people who have views similar to sociologists but have tended to be journalists and politicians, see the problems with youth today as a result of the increase of the following: lone parent families, fatherless families, divorce rates, cohabitation and gay and lesbian couples. New Right thinkers believe the consequences of having these changes in families can result in young people underachieving at school and behaving in anti social ways ranging from rudeness to crime.
The problems young people face is because there is not enough time, attention and love in the families. When the things listed above are not ensured in the family home you see children going below their targets and losing their sense of mind that school is important.
Once children find that they don’t need school, children begin to truant and spend their time on streets and not in school. What children find on the streets isn’t child friendly, you hear about gangs starting up, children smoking. They ask adults to buy the cigarettes for them and some adults do, this may even go as far to finding drugs and starting an addiction and possibly even stealing to feed the addiction. Parents focus so much time and energy on working hard and earning money for the welfare of their children and also material things like buying a house, buying a car, going on holiday, that they don’t spend time with their children to find out how everything at school is going. Parents don’t have time in the evenings since they’ve come home late and are stressed out at their day at work. Children just need this quality time so that they can open up and let their worries be known to their parents. Instead the time is lost. Pugh 2002 (sociologist) suggests that parental spending on children is ‘consumption as compensation’. This means parents that are ‘cash rich but time poor’ release their guilt about what is lacking in their child’s life by giving them material things. Parents believe as long as their children have the latest technology and clothes they will be satisfied. Parents give their children what they demand but don’t look at what they need which is time, love and attention. Charles Murray (Functionalist Sociologist) says young children growing up without fathers lack a male role model in the home, they lose out on learning the discipline of respect and respect for work. This is the sort of care they need from fathers.
Divorce affects children in many ways. Some may find it traumatic, some may be able to deal with it. It’s when a situation like this happens that children then lose their consistency in daily habits in the home and for a period of time, love attention and time lacks. The attention from both parents will then be decreased and if they are in a situation where they have other siblings the one parent can only issue out enough attention to all children which could make children feel like they aren’t wanted. Children then go through depression which could alter their mood swings and lead them to do unsociable things.
However, the problems children face today aren’t just because of the lack of attention, time and love but because parents simply can't discipline their children. In contemporary we see that children have more rights than they used to. The Children Act 1989 gave children greater legal status and rights. Children cannot be harmed or hurt and have the drastic option to divorce their parents. Although the act is good in protecting children from harm it has in some ways taken away the right for parents to discipline their children as they see fit.
However although we can say parents are to blame for the lack of time, attention and love we cannot ignore the impact of the commercial world that we live in. Most parents feel that they have to work in order to provide for their families. In most cases companies want to make as much profit as possible, even charities want to get the most out of their employees with the least input. This forces most people to work harder and harder and fall into the rat race.
I myself have experienced times in my life where I felt I had lacked attention time and love. The times I’ve felt this way is because of my parents not just having me but two of my brothers who are younger than me. I have found I should just accept that I have younger siblings who need time attention and love slightly more than I do and try to understand how the difficulty my parents go through day to day to offer us time, attention and love.
Second Place
Tunde Sowole
Tunde Sowole (Age 14. Hobbies: playing basketball, running and going out with friends)
Community safety is important for all communities irrespective of where we live in the world. What are the key concerns around vulnerable young people and violent crime (e.g. gun, knife and gang related crime)? What do you think influences and contributes to young people being both perpetrators and victims of violent crime? What are the barriers to solutions? What do you see as the solutions to protect vulnerable young people and to stop young people being sucked into gun, knife and gang related crime?
has reached critical point as the amount of youths involved in crime is increasing at a substantial rate with 70,000 breaking the law every year. The question is, ‘who is to blame?’
More and more teens are falling victim to gang-culture and gun crime. The murder of young Rhys Jones in Liverpool should be enough to highlight the “downfall” of ’s youths. Mr Duncan Smith said in 2007, “The murder of 20 teenagers in London this year by the gun or the knife is a wake-up call for politicians of all parties.” This figure is rising every year and needs to be stopped before Britain falls into destruction.
In my opinion people should feel safe living in their communities. But instead, they are afraid of what might turn up on their door step or who might try to harm them while they are out and about on the streets. Currently is facing a war over “post codes” and people murder for phones. Living in London is becoming more dangerous where young people are trying to become infamous by representing where they live. They do not represent it in a good way, they instead attack people on other roads.
is becoming more of a broken society because youngsters feel that they are above the law. The “slap on the wrist” punishments only encourage them to continue. Influential figures show that 70,000 school-aged offenders enter the justice system and ¾ of these break other law after they are set free. With the majority, not much is done to ensure that it does not happen again, many are let loose to cause another crime and clearly ASBO's do not help with some teens, who refuse to be retrained.
Crime is all around teens these days and many variables influence them to get involved. A major one is a television set, where they have access to everything they need. Almost anything can be broadcast on television, including violence and youths showing disrespect towards their parents. Fuelled by alcohol and driven by the influence of others, youths cause the majority of ’s anti-social behaviour. Copying adults is what most teens like to do and after 9 pm almost anything can be shown such as programmes that highlight bad behaviour, bad language and general disrespect to others.
Plenty of today’s young anti-social behaviour can be traced back to the failure of parents, but is this true? Recently, past misbehaving young people have grown up to become troublesome adults who pass on the tradition to their children. Teens look up to parents as elders and as leaders, but if the parents are teaching their children how to swear and antisocial behaviour, with all this happening how could there ever be peace on the streets? Some parents are too busy or do not want anything to do with their children, and so these young people turn to crime and gangs as a cry out for attention. Often joining gangs are where they feel they are part of a family.
Divorce also result in anti-social behaviour, because once the parents have separated, one parent might be softer than the other, leaving teens to take advantage and disobey the parents. 2/3 of teens that get involved in the law have divorced parents.
Our young people are amazing, and the world we live in is amazing. There have been high hopes and expectations for this generation but forcing them to go to school and having strict rules will surely let loose those desperate for responsibility, opportunity, achievement and recognition, go to drugs, violence, self-harm. Some believe that even though they are out on the streets and don’t have an education; they can still earn a lot of money, for example like the rapper 50 cent and Virgin owner, Richard Branson. If they cannot get to this stage then they turn to stealing. For example, four out of ten muggings are committed by under-16.
I believe that a solution lowering the number of youths who misbehave in society is that they should be sent to concentration camps where they will be trained to have discipline and respect. If they refuse to do so then they will have more days added to their stay. These camps could also be opened to young offenders who have first-time or second time offences. If they continue then they shall be sent to a young-offenders institution for 5 months where they will have disciplined treatment by military officers. Using this method should cut down the 18-20-year old first-time offenders from 42% to about 10%.
Other methods would be to persuade teens to do something other than living life on the streets. Young people need something to motivate them and keep them active; the reason why some are on streets is because they are bored. They need to be doing something that will benefit the community instead of doing the negative things that they usually do. A suggestion would be after school clubs and youth clubs where they could go and do something beneficial. In these there could be pool tables, small football pitches, a computer area etc. Having these around will take their minds off stealing and causing anti-social behaviour. It should also be welcoming by placing posters around that area to promote the centre and encourage people to come.
Problems facing this might be that youths may not like their stay at these camps and try to sue. Others might take revenge later on by committing a worse crime. Although the youths may resist we have to stamp out anti-social behaviour before everything turns to chaos. For example, many turn to guns and knifes as a form of protection and rank in the society. However, turning to knifes and guns are never the right choice. It may be easy for some youths to stab someone, but if it happened to them, they would not like it. It has been said that caring a knife doubles the chances of you getting stabbed by it. Youths are vulnerable and need to be kept away from crime like this because gangs today look for young people to join so they can become active members and continue their ‘legend’ of violence.
Most of you that would have read this are adults and fear that one day you or someone that you know will fall victim to the gun or knife. Keeping youths away from this may be the only way to lower the level even if crime is all around, on streets, TV and computers. Parents have to simply teach their children to resist.
Third Place
Kyron Stewart
Author Kyron Stewart, Age 14, Favourite hobbies: Reading, Writing and Maths
What are the key concerns around vulnerable young people and violent crime? What do you think influences young people to be both perpetrators and victims of crime?
Gang crime is a big issue within the community. It has caused a lot of problems for families such as: deaths, injuries, embarrassment, fear and even kidnappings. Gang culture has gone up our community and now it has become easier to get hold of guns and knives. In this essay, I will be explaining the consequences and rising issues, to do with gang culture and gun/knife crime.
In this current day and age gun crime has risen dramatically in a small period of time. It has become an issue for young people as well as adults. It is not just the older generation who suffer the fear of being robbed or beaten up. It is teenaged youths who feel the full effect; teenaged youths feel the peer pressure of joining a gang; teenaged youths feel they have to steel, fight, or even have sex to be like their peers.
Influences are a major part of gang crime; rappers, singers, actors and wrestlers all influence youths in some way, shape or form to commit the sins they do. “Young adults” are what teachers and older people like to call us teenagers. So bearing this in mind, imagine what youths must think of themselves when they see for example, 50cent the rapper on TV with guns and a load of money. They would think about trying to be just like him and will believe that being a young adult should lead to having a gun like 50cent which should also lead to money.
This is what I think the media is trying to portray: especially amongst black people. The main phrase everyone knows is from 50cent’s first album, “Get Rich or Die Tryin”. Keeping the minds of young children in consideration, imagine what this title sticks in their heads. You either get rich, or you die trying to get rich; meaning that you must go to any extent and do what ever you possibly can to reach the goal. Become rich.
Youths these days do not understand the real lifestyles of rappers or actors. Most rappers give a negative view on their life, as if they are the hardest people alive; yet they have a family at home. Their family even includes a WIFE, which blatantly shows that they can never be “pimps” or “thugs”. They will probably struggle to sneak out of their house without having to tell their wife every detail of where they are going, and what they are going to do. They are most definitely not on the streets twenty four seven, committing crimes and doing drive bys. Their wives will probably beat them! All famous celebrities have two sides to them; this is their alter-ego. Take the rapper Snoop Dogg for example; he used to make me think he was a gangster and a pimp from all of his songs. Especially the song he collaborated with 50cent called “P.I.M.P”. The title alone gives away what the song is about, but this was just Snoop’s alter-ego.
Snoop Dogg just makes songs that sell and make him money, the content of the song can be a load of rubbish which has absolutely nothing to do with his life what so ever. Yet he still gets all the credit and all the ratings for it, but I am sure if you could make money that easily you would too. However, the truth is that Snoop Dogg has a happy family of three children, a wife, two sons and a daughter. He has recently made a TV reality show “Snoop Dog’s Father Hood” based on his life within his house hold and their day to day life. Although you can tell that Snoop and his family are still slightly acting and playing up towards the camera, you can see that Snoop is actually a nice person who just likes to have a laugh and enjoy life like every other human being.
So as you know, most rappers just use their songs as a cover up on their real lives. However, there is a large population of youths who take rappers as role models and look up to them. I feel that this is the wrong thing to do. There are too many lies within a celebrity’s life, which makes it basically impossible to understand. So how can you possibly be able to follow their lifestyle? There is only one answer. You can not. The only part of their life you can follow is the lifestyle that the media wants us to believe.
This is where one of my other concerns comes to mind. Today’s generation of youths are living amongst only a single parent (mainly the mother). So I think this is why youths feel they have to look up to the closest male image they have. So referring to my previous point; it is impossible to follow a celebrity’s lifestyle, only the life the media portrays.
I think having a male role model within your house hold is very important. Not just for boys, but for girls as well. A girl also needs to know what kind of man she should be looking for when she is older. She would not be able to find out by looking at rappers and actors.
Living with both parents makes a big difference towards your views on men and women. Imagine what a teenaged boy, who grew up with no dad, must think of a man. He must think a man is rough and violent. But when a child gets the best of both worlds through living with both parents; he would be able to establish the difference between a man and a thug. This knowledge should lead him to having a better understanding of reality and commercial lives. In my experiences I have established that my friends who have been raised with out a father; have a stereotypical image of what a man should be and how a man should act. This negative image was collected from the media.
To conclude this essay I feel the media has a powerful and influential role in the way that perpetrators of crime and victims view life and their peers. This has an even more serious effect on those young people who have no positive male and female role models in their lives, especially in terms of parents. Whilst we cannot get away from newspapers, magazines, radio and the television; it is important that young people can talk and debate about issues that are shown to be controversial in the media with their positive role models. (Hopefully their parents)
