The war on youth clubs



The Institute of Public Policy's report 'Freedom's Orphans' is still being trailed by the media. According to the press release the report shows that young people who attended structured youth activities were 'less likely' to be single, in social housing, have no qualifications, be on a low income. In contrast young people who attended youth clubs were more likely to smoke, more likely to have no qualifications, and more likely to be an offender and to be on a low income.

It is simply not clear in the Press Release what is being compared. More likely than what? We aren't told. Do they mean more a youth club attendee is more likely than a structured activity attendee or more likely than the general population? One wonders about the level of thinking in this report which can't even make this clear.

Notice the New Labour catalogue of vices; being a single parent, smoking, not having any qualifications, living in a council house. This is simply Tony Blair's pious Victorian morality.

Either way the message is clear and indeed is made a policy recommendation by t Nick Pearce (as mentioned in article this article) of the IPPR. Compulsory structured activities. And by implication less youth clubs.

New Labour has already insisted that youth services deliver courses which lead to qualifications thus eroding the social aspect of youth clubs in favour of yet more skills and training. And then we wonder why youth have no social skills.....

The thinking behind this recommendation is astoundingly naive. For something that calls itself a think-tank it is pathetic. Who goes to Scouts? Well; middle-class families who already have strong values. The sort of families that encourage their children not to smoke and to study hard and who promote marriage. Who goes to youth clubs? On the whole more working-class children. The sort of children who are more likely to end up being criminalised ("offend"), not to have qualifications (partly because they go to schools which are less effective at training for exams) etc. So this survey tells us nothing. It certainly doesn't tell us that sending a child to Scouts (or other structured youth activities) is the cause of these 'good' outcomes. If you wanted to do a serious piece of social science research you could for example compare your chosen set of outcomes (which of course represent your value set) against one group of children who went to structured activities, one group who went to a youth club and a control group who went to neither, all from the same socio-economic circumstances.

It is precisely this lack of awareness of social and economic factors which characterises the whole New Labour approach to social problems which as we have already discussed is in fact a sort of semi religious Victorian morality apparently emanating from Tony Blair.

This kind of slavish report echoing the party line while posing as thinking is either stupid or cynical.

BBC on ASBOs
Also today the BBC produces one of its asinine reports about 'anti-social behaviour'. This makes all the Government required noises; 'anti-social behaviour' is talked about as it it were an objective fact and is confused with 'crime', and we are told that ASBOs were introduced to do something about 'the problem' , not to get politicians votes for kicking teenagers (all governments try this one). This one surpasses itself for the little section at the end where a stern and disaproving woman reporter interviews two young people considered 'at risk' of offending (omg). They are attending a youth club which has a pool table so if the IPPR is to be believed do indeed have a 5% greater chance (than something) of offending. She asks one of the young people what her friends did to get ASBOs. She replies that they were 'carrying on' outside a house. The reporter, arms folded in disapproval, asks what that means. The girl replies "shouting, throwing eggs and drinking". The point that ASBOs are being given for trivial adolescant misbehaviour or 'high jinks' (as for example the YMCA recently pointed out) seems to escape the stern-faced reporter and is made eloquently by the young person interviewed - who may not even realise it.

Links


IPPR
BBC ASBO nonsense
YMCA