Bernardos demonises adults

Bernardos video on adults' attitudes to children paints a supposedly damning picture of adult's humanity to child. I can't help but be suspicious however as to the questions asked. It sounds like there a conflation between children in general and children involved in social disorder and/or criminality. The real comments made by adults are taken out of context. For example, “More than a third of the adults they questioned agreed with the statement that the streets were "infested" with children”, suggest Bernardos. I note here that the only word in quotes is “infested”. So what was the original question? Other quotes offered by the Bernardos film: “they wander in packs”; “vermin”; “to hell with their human rights”. Well, many people may vent their feelings in relation to violent or anti-social children; did they actually say this about children as a class? The advertisement is very ambiguous. It uses real quotations, but is a dramatization of a fictional incident where adults, indulging in these comments, work themselves up to go about shooting children.

http://www.barnardos.org.uk/ for the video.

The dramatisation bears no relation to what is happening in Britain today; there are no shooting gangs. That I have to say this is itself incredible but here we have a major, state-funded charity, in all seriousness and moral indignation, peddling this ridiculous picture of the world. Not only is it ridiculous but it is quite vicious in that it seems to suggest that all adults who complain about children are about to murder them; it is sentimental in that children are portrayed uniformly as victims of adults.

The Today programme took it seriously; maybe they felt that they had to be objective. They conducted an interview with teenagers who were shown the video. Surprise, surprise, the youngsters felt victimised and misunderstood; as one said, “just because some children misbehave, it doesn’t mean we should all be shot”. Of course it doesn’t but these impressionable children were swayed by the video; they felt they were victimized by malicious adulthood because they were young people. This is the picture Bernardos wanted to paint and why wouldn't the more naïve among us be taken in by it? The Barnardos video is close to an incitement to misbehave in that it reinforces the impression among those sections of sociey who refuse to accept that they are answerable to anyone of any age that none of it is their fault or responsibility; it is the fault of society, of adults. Responsible, moral children meanwhile are left unprotected. Bernardos is supposed to be a respectable national charity, whose brief is to “protect children”? Most people in this country believe that charities have a neutral agenda, but a look at the Bernardos website betrays its leftist bias.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7732000/7732723.stm. The excerpt is from 8.45am.

This is an example of a charity with an agenda manufacturing a problem by grossly distorting reality.

Many “children” being referred to will in fact be teenagers who if not wise enough to be seen as adults are closer to adulthood than childhood. Many children will have the rights of adults in that you can't handle or restrain them when they misbehave; and if you say boo to them, they are liable to threaten you in return. Not all children, Bernardos would say; well, of course not, but clearly some of them. This is Bernardos' trap.

The most prevalent assumption seems to be that there is an absolute divide between adults and children; on the contrary many adults have children, and most children live with parents. This absolute divide that Benardos posits mirrors the marxist divide between bourgeois oppressors and oppressed proletariat, which itself became the template for radical feminism and black rights: for bourgeois and proletariat, read men and women, black and white. It is the assumption behind political correctness, which is why the rules of political correctness are so selective and unfair. Now we have oppressor adults and oppressed children – and never the twain shall meet, except in inter-generational revolutionary conflict.

This is false since most children are brought up by adults who love them, provide for their material well-being and formation. Youngsters need guidance from adults; they take their cues from the attitudes and behaviour of their parents. Empirically, something not covered by the Bernardo's visits, problem families lead to problem children. Let us not forget that the usual victims of youth violence are young people themselves: playground bullying, stealing mobile phones. I remember one incident a few years ago at a bus stop when a number of youths surrounded another youth for his mobile phone: no adult at this crowded bus stop was doing anything to help the young teenager,who was frightened; I asked them if everything was alright, because I was unsure if this was not just pranks among friends; one of the perpretrators said don'be a hero; as they were all about 12, I was courageous enough to look him in the eye and say “I wasn't talking to you”, which shocked him into silence. The victim then begged me, “leave it, don't interfere”; he was clearly frightened, but it was enough to confuse me: would I make it worse for him the next day​? did they all know each other? The bus came and the gang of children got on the bus, as did I; they were jumping up and down laughing and in their hands was the other teenager's mobile phone. They got off the bus the next stop. None of us adults managed to prevent a mugging and a humiliated child. They were all about 12 or 13, I would estimate; had they been 15/16, would I have interfered?

This incident demonstrates the fallacy of Bernardo's portrayal. I suspect that in general, we should conceive of young people less as a class separated from older people; more as putative adults, whose closest ties are to their parents, teachers, older and younger siblings. Rather than emphasing horizontal stratification based on supposed alienation and oppression, we should encourage vertical integration among the generations. This makes sense because, rather than being an homogenous group with common interests, children often pray on children. They need protecting and adults are meant to protect them: to allow children to push the boundaries but keep them broadly inside the pale of good behaviour. The real inhumanity is when we adults step aside.

Bernardos is state funded and as state aid always ends up as state control, we must suspect that the perspective of Bernardos is left-learning liberal in orientaton. One of the major mistakes of the left this century is the belief that if someone commits a crime, it is because he is alienated by society, that the responsibility lies with someone else, probably the victim or the class/race/sex/age group to which he belongs.