In what he describes as "the most fearless piece of reportage I've heard in a long while", Edward Wickham commends Winifred Robinson of BBC Radio 4 for her report on one of Britain's most deprived areas.
The climax was an interview with Tony, the father of Adrian Thomas, who was last year imprisoned for leading the gang that abducted, tortured, and murdered Mary Ann Lenehan. Adrian is the youngest of Tony's four sons, each of whom has a different mother.
"Why did Tony have Adrian when he had failed his other three boys? Because a woman he had been dating for three weeks asked him for a baby. "Why do some people bring children into the world with less thought than getting a pet?" asked Ms Robinson. Tony was starting to get riled, but she didn't let up. "But you must have known about contraception." These things happen, said Tony blithely. "They don't happen to me," came the retort."
"It was tremendous stuff. So careful are we not to judge (at least publicly) the lifestyle of others - particularly those from non-white, non-middle-class backgrounds - that I half wondered whether Ms Robinson was breaking some kind of broadcasting code. Nor did she let up when describing the kids at the local school drop-out centre as showing symptoms of "arrested development", behaving like toddlers who have not learned how to deal with the disappointment of having their whims frustrated."
"A boy made excuses - "They're not polite to me" - for not respecting his teachers. "Aren't you supposed to be polite to them?" came Auntie Winifred's unanswerable reply."
1 comment:
I don't know exactly what I think regarding the raising and disciplining of children.
After my husband and I were married for 11 years, we adopted our son, Eric. Eric was very much wanted and cherished.
But discipline? We simply didn't understand what that was? I don't remember EVER punishing or "time outing" or anything. I don't remember TRAINING Eric to mind his manners. Of course, he wasn't perfect, and he needed guidance in how to be in social situations, but for the life of me, I can't remember putting any effort into this.
Eric is now 23 years old, and he's a polite and thoughtful young man. I don't know if it's because of anything that we did (or didn't do), or if he was, by nature, that way.
I tend to think that this whole business of raising children goes a lot deeper, though, than "training". If some kind of bond is in place (or not), at a deep level, then the kid will pick up on that and messages will get through from parent to child, whether we know it or not.
Hope this makes some kind of sense.
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