Are teenage boys out of control?
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"John Jones" enuffS...@nothanks.invalid
http://www.abc.net.au/public/s746480.htm Are teenage boys out of control?
Teenage boys are under the microscope. They are often perceived as being involved in gangs and violence and drugs and car crashes. But a juvenile justice expert says the notion they are out of control is wrong. The key to stopping young people going off the rails does not lie in punishment, it lies in a better home life, according to Ken Buttrum, who was awarded an Order of Australia for his work in juvenile justice. Radio National's Background Briefing producer Steve Skinner has been looking at the issue.
Story adapted from Radio National's Background Briefing, November, 2002 If there is a group in society that scares the hell out of us, it is probably teenage boys. We are afraid of the harm that these often wild young people might bring to us, or to themselves. Look at the headlines they feature in - it seems like nothing but gangs and violence and drugs and car crashes.
But those who work closely with teenage boys say that a lot of our fear of them, and for them, is overblown. They say there is a lot more that governments, schools, local neighbourhoods, families and the media can do, to reduce our fear and to help make sure that teenage boys get through the difficult years.
A strange thing has been happening lately. Politicians on both sides of the political fence have been talking about alternatives to locking up young offenders. The new jargon includes terms like 'youth justice conferencing', 'restitution to victims', 'mentoring', and 'early intervention'. There is a focus on the causes of youth crime, rather than just on the effects.
So what is going on here? Are politicians going soft on youth crime? Are they trying to save money? After all, it costs $120,000 a year to keep a teenager in a juvenile detention centre, but just a fraction of that to help them when they are young. Or are politicians recognising that the solutions to juvenile delinquency are not as simple as mere punishment.
Ken Buttrum works tirelessly for boys in trouble. He was head of the New South Wales Department of Juvenile Justice and he has got an Order of Australia for his work.
Mr Buttrum says teenage boys get more negative publicity than they deserve.
"I think teenage boys are looking for a new identity as they grow up, they're often moving away from their family, which had been important to them up until that stage. So you move away, you do a lot of things that are experimental, and often times those experimental things, including the testing of law and order issues, just frightens the hell out of people," he said.
"And for some reason or other, the press always picks up on these things, and they direct our attention to them and they focus on the sort of negative things rather than the positive things.
"I might tell you, there are even some politicians I think that often focus on the negative side of youth rather than the positive side of youth. So you can get the majority of young people doing the right thing and nobody even takes any notice of them but the moment that there is something experimental, or that tests limits, people get very uptight about it." The statistics show that in at least some states, the number of youths appearing before children's courts is dropping. This does not mean there is less youth crime.
Property crimes, for instance, are increasingly being dealt with in other ways, such as juvenile justice conferences, where young offenders face their victims. A big chunk of youth crime is committed by a small percentage of hardened repeat offenders.
"All this stuff about kids being madly out of control, alarmingly out of control, I think is wrong," Mr Buttrum said.
"But what sort of happens is you get some outlandish crime occurring, the press picks it up, and it is outlandish crime, it' s really horrible; but the press picks it up and focuses on it, and if you get two or three incidents like that occurring in rapid succession, then people get their whole view of the teenage crime situation distorted. And we start to then have moral panics." This moral panic about teenage boys happens at the same time as we seem to turn a blind eye to what they are being fed in movies, TV, advertising and computer games.
Everywhere a boy turns he is force-fed speed, violence, sexuality and alcohol. No wonder they often follow through.
Mr Buttrum says the key to stopping young people going off the rails does not lie in punishment, it lies in a better home life.
"We don't need more discipline in our community, we need better relationships in our community," he said.
"We need better relationships in our families and rather than call for stronger discipline, I'd call for better relationships.
And we'll only get better relationships when we spend quality time with kids.
"It's an amazing thing to me that I've often asked the question of kids: If I could grant you three wishes, what would you wish for? Now at one stage, almost every young bloke that I asked that question to, said, 'I wish I had a better relationship with my old man', or some words to that effect.
"Now we've had a lot written about maternal deprivation in childhood and the fairly negative effects that that has on a kid' s growth. I think in teenage years, adolescent years, the lack of positive male relationships are very damaging in a kid's emotional growth, as he looks to find out what real maleness is." It is a sad fact that about 70 per cent of the boys in juvenile jails come from dysfunctional families. Very often the father has left, and if he parents the boy at all, it is likely to be poor parenting.
Home obviously has a crucial influence, and so does school.
Juvenile delinquents invariably have also had an unhappy time at school, Mr Buttrum says.
A report by Malcolm Slade, who works at the Flinders University Institute of International Education, found that there was no doubt that boys are having a harder time at school than girls.
They drop out earlier; they do not do as well in exams; they are slower to gain literacy; and they are much more likely to be suspended from school for a time for bad behaviour.
The report concluded something most parents already know, that boys are different to girls. They develop at a different rate; they respond better to visual cues; they are less verbal; their hearing is not as good; and they are more likely to muck up at what they see as poor teaching or irrelevant curriculum.
Mr Slade surveyed nearly 2,000 boys from 60 schools, and also talked to girls. He says girls are not as rebellious as boys.
"The girls were saying 'We do well because we comply and conform'. They didn't use those terms, their terms were 'We're better at sucking up. We can make the teachers do things the boys can't'," Mr Slade said.
"They are very much more in control and looking at the long term.
Year 12 is important to them. As far as they're concerned, if they don't get Year 12, they're going to be a hairdresser or something like that, and there's not much you can do. The boys see it differently. There are many other options as far as they' re concerned. The long goal may not be worth it, many of them are convinced it's not. But the girls feel it's that or nothing." The Federal Minister for Family and Community Services, Amanda Vanstone, says most teenage boys, given the chance, are a credit to society.
"I get mad when I see things in the paper about young people being criminals, you know young people are more likely to be ***aulted than they are to do the ***aulting," she said.
"I think they're faring very well, they're doing a great job, we can be really proud of them." Meanwhile, juvenile justice expert Mr Buttrum, who has been working in this field for more than 30 years, says in all that time he has only struck a handful of teenagers who are devoid of any conscience.
He says most boys, even amongst those who get into trouble, do not mean to harm anyone and do not understand how risky their behaviour is. They need help to channel all that boundless energy and anxiety into constructive things.
"The majority of young guys are really good kids. I'm not a believer that every one of them should be avoided as you walk down the street, I think it's crazy," he said.
"In every generation we've had Jonahs who think everything's bad, and that life's terrible and it's getting worse. I'm not one of those, but I think we should look around at the society in which we live and say, OK, what are some of the problems that some -
not all - that some of these kids have? What are the causes of them? And let's deal with those and bring those to people's awareness.
"We've got to try and work out ways all the time of sure, helping people to face up to responsibilities for their own behaviour, but at the same time, hold out some hope to them, that there is something better for them in the future."
Bob bobx23...@hotmail.com
The "key" is almost always having a father in the home.
Bob
"PETER BUONO" PFBU...@worldnet.att.net
Great article, John. Maybe there's some hope.
Youth in general has always been a fear to the older people running things.
Of course this fear has always gotten amplified when looking at boys.
I think that many feminists become "educators" because they know that they can stack the deck against males easily in a school setting (and they have) and seriously **** a boy up at the very beginning - right through college, causing irrepairable damage later in life. It's all about the agenda.
(Couple this with the likes of the idiots that convicted the West Memphis 3 (white male teens) for murdering a couple of small ...
"John Jones" enuffS...@nothanks.invalid
Yeah, it was sympathetic to boys and their problems. Don't see many of those.
[...] I've not only seen it, the murders happened not far from where I live. I don't know if those boys did it or not, but I know this: There wasn't a shred of physical evidence tying them to that crime. The circumstantial evidence was unbelievably weak, the boys did not get competent representation, and the investigation was incredibly unfair.
They interrogated the retarded 17-year old suspect for 8 hours without a lawyer or parent present, only recorded the last 45 minutes, and his coerced confession was wrong on critical elements of the crime. He said they killed them at noon, but the victims were in school at that time. He said they sodomized the boys (the cops originally thought the victims had been), but the coroners report said their was no sodomy.
I can't believe that they got a conviction. That Damien Echols was his own worst enemy though, he was flippant, sarcastic, and smug throught the trial.
A surprising number of male serial killers had moms who made them dress like girls during their childhood. Henry Lee Lucas comes to mind.
[...]
Bob bobx23...@hotmail.com
The current movie, "Gangs of New York" is about the origins of the NYPD and FDNY. It's how street gangs took over city government and became the official gangs they have today. Not much has really changed in their abuse of citizens though.
Bob
use ...@ebernard.greatxscape.net (Eddie Bernard)
Over the hills and far away in soc.men, John Jones came to play...
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Stephen Morgan ncaval...@ntlworld.com
Of course they should have a better home life. Children of single parents are far more likely to "go off the rails".
Does anyone really think "juvenile justice conferencing" and so on is going to reform people? This stuff's hilarious.
[...] "We live in a decaying age. Young people no longer respect their parents. They are rude and impatient. They frequently inhabit taverns and have no self control."
-- Inscription, 6000 year-old Egyptian tomb (quoted in R.Buckminster Fuller's I Seem to be a Verb) "What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?"
-- Plato "Children are now tyrants...they no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize over their teachers."
-- Socrates [...] Blaming boys, fathers and video games. Beyond parody.
--
"The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words."
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Peter J Ross heresia...@meow.org
On the 7th day of Christmas Eddie Bernard sent to me 7 Deans real-lifing, 6 wiccans waffling, 5 PKBs, 4 snuhbois sneaking, 3 kooks conspiring, 2 losers laming and a message in soc.men: Tee-hee.
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