There is an evil oozing through our schools and streets. It captures teenage lives whilst promising a trouble free future filled with hope and unequalled happiness. It becomes the parent to the forgotten, the moralist, the ethicist and the educator. Absolving the real biological parents of any responsibility by assuaging their guilt through bribery and comforting promises. Yet this faux-parent regales in horror at the children it has produced when they attack others around them, how could their progeny reject their cold hard love?
Camila Batmanghelidjh writing in The Times highlights how children that are unloved, or exposed to violent, and/or abusive familial relationships are often those that are involved in violent crimes. These children are the ones that bully others into undertaking violence purely so that they may survive, something that is prevalent among the gang culture within cities. As she says, “Violence is therefore a public health issue - like a virus it is spreading among children." How did this situation come about whereby parents can completely disavow their responsibilities to their offspring?
The state has been complicit in undermining the family via the extensive welfare programmes it has introduced and also through state education. The state’s reliance on welfare to solve the problems of modern societies has created a moral vacuum filled with nothing but wasted taxpayers money. When children see parents and others achieving a level of wealth with little effort it sends the wrong message to them, this is where the state becomes culpable for the lack of morality. It then seeks to teach/care for these children within the education system, an education system that many parents of those that become violent do not care about. All the state wishes for is the indoctrination of these children so they become even more reliant on the state to survive.
Whilst this government seeks to find solutions to this ever increasing problem, it should pause for a moment, look down and it will discover that they are the ones holding the weapons that are currently destroying lives.
