WHO'S AFRAID OF THE KIDS?
British education secretary Estelle Morris turned on the 'feckless' and 'yobbish' parents of supposedly delinquent children, in an outpouring of spleen that is becoming characteristic of the government's attitude to the public. Morris blames parents bad behaviour for the bad behaviour of children, and demands to know why local authorities have failed to use the 'parenting orders' that empower them to send adults to 'anger management' classes.
Morris's bizarre chain of reasoning has many weak links: it is by no means clear that children are any more yobbish than they have ever been; her assertions that children take their lead from parents is unsupported; her government is widely seen as undermining teachers' authority over children; and local authorities failure to use parenting orders is because they cannot find instances that the orders are supposed to address: parents' bad behaviour influencing children.
A real source of tension has been created between parents and teachers because of the way that education has been artificially inflated - by this government - into the principle means of social advancement. With a higher premium placed on educational attainment, but only limited access to good schools, it is obvious that many parents will be disappointed by school choices. But there is little evidence to support Morris's extraordinary accusations of an increase in parental assaults on teachers. More likely is that the education secretary's attempts to scapegoat parents will create greater tensions between them and teachers.
Estelle Morris's attack on parents' poor example - ironic given the education secretary's less than perfect command of the language - follows hard on the heels of a flurry of high-profile law and order 'initiatives' on street crime. Mid-week ministers met police chiefs for a summit on young offenders' street robberies, promising on-the-spot fines and tagging. Magistrates in Kent joined in the hullabaloo by lifting reporting restrictions on 'persistent' young offenders. It was left to criminologist Jock Young - no liberal, but a pioneer of New Labour's crime panics - to protest that street crime has been falling for years, and any recent increase can be accounted for largely by the opportunities posed by mobile phones. (The mobile companies' masked charging policies, in which the cost of the under priced handset is recouped in high service costs, encourage users to place less value on the technology than do thieves.) In the event more ministers turned up to play-act tackling crime than were ever consulted about the decision to send 1700 British troops to Afghanistan.
Cranking up fears of disorder is a vicious way for politicians to connect with public anxieties over the loss of community. The results of the policies can be seen in the growing trend towards the criminalisation of young children. Young offenders institutes at Feltham and elsewhere are bulging with children as young as 12 being imprisoned. And all of this in a country where the 1991 Children Act makes the interests of the child 'paramount'.
WHEN WE BUILD AGAIN...
The Joseph Rowntree Trust called for a new housing programme in Britain to meet the needs of young adults. New starts of houses have fallen to their lowest level since 1924, and many younger people have been priced out of the property market in the South East, where restricted supply has sent prices spiralling. Controversially the trust is calling upon government to use compulsory purchase orders and planning to institute new building. The previous Tory administration modestly estimated a shortfall of 4.4 million, but since then only one million new homes have been built.
Though the problems of housing shortages are just now being recognised, most professionals remain hidebound to the model posed by the Urban Regeneration Taskforce, of reclaimed - supposedly more environmentally friendly - brownfield sites. But to meet demand the industry and the government will have to confront the need for green field developments, taking advantage of land freed from farm use by contracting agriculture. Sadly, the political climate of 'nimby' environmentalism makes it unlikely that homes will win out over nature reserves in the debate over what to do with Britain's growing land surplus. -- James Heartfield Sustaining Architecture in the Anti-Machine Age is available at GBP19.99, plus GBP5.01 p&p from Publications, audacity.org, 8 College Close, Hackney, London, E9 6ER. Make cheques payable to 'Audacity Ltd'. www.audacity.org