Tolja

[fpb]

This - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1215389/Abandoned-parents-betrayed-schools-young-boys-turning-criminal-gangs-protection-sense-belonging.html - is without a doubt the best and most important article printed by any British newspaper in months if not years. And Harriet Sergeant is an exceptional journalist - I have seen other items by her, and she is brave as a steel sword. But I regret to say that I foresaw every word of it before I ever started blogging, and described it in my article about the Tony Blair generation two or three years ago.

Comments

[inverarity.livejournal.com]

Actually, I didn't say they don't threaten society, though I do think the threat is overstated. Nor did I dismiss the threat because they largely victimize other poor people rather than the middle class.

Also, to be clear, I do not think either you or Harriet Sergeant are racists. But I do think the way in which these stores are framed is often used as cover for explicitly racist assumptions.

I agree with you that the abandonment of the children themselves is the greatest tragedy.

(I also agree with much of what you said in the other article you linked to, including that computers in classrooms are largely a waste of money.)

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I think they are much worse than a waste of money. I think they are positively counter-educational. I have sat in on a few lessons where twenty-eight children sat in front of twenty-eight screens. The teacher could not follow almost any of them. It wasn't a lesson, it was a free period with free internet access on the side.