Leave the kids alone

Jim used to say "leave the kid alone". Jim used to take me to go-karts. Showed me how to roller skate. We used to make slides out of piles of matresses spewing out of the back of the truck he drove. Out of all of my sister's boyfriends, I liked Jim the most.

Not only was he generous with his time - he was generous with his spirit. Most of all, he respected me. And he urged others to. I was only 8.

Jim didn't have a degree, but he was smart enough and street-clever. He grasped what most adults failed to then and still fail to now: kids of any age crave and deserve respect.

And this was the very point that the lovely Michelle James, director of marketing for music charity, Music Youth, made at the Marketing Youth conference on Tuesday. Like most of the presentations I caught that day, Michelle's was full of utterly interesting information if not a thoroughly captivating delivery. That is, until she went off script - to express a very personal view of how Britain is treating it's children. Suddenly, she became far more engaging than any other speaker that day.

Michelle argued that, as a nation, we're starting to completely stop respecting our youth, with disastrous consequences. She should know. Broadly, Michelle's charity works with extremely disadvantaged youth. Kids from broken homes, patchy educations, even ex-criminals. The one thing that each kid has in common, says Michelle, is that have all suffered from respect neglect. This is no tinpot issue. Forensic psychology long ago discovered the link between respect and crime.

Michelle argued that the media's awful, dramatic portrayal of all UK kids as "hoodie thugs" bent on wrecking Britain is become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Hell yeah, Michelle, finally someone said it. And at a marketing conference of all places. High five, girl.

Pick up any British newspaper, quality or tabliod, any day of the week, and you'll find them screaming about some kind of impending social apocalypse - with teenage Brits cast as the four horsemen.

Take today's Daily Mail,for instance. "ASBO DEFAULTERS GET OFF SCOT-FREE", shrieked one headline. This scary-haired harridan of a newspaper neatly twisted statistics to make teens the focus of the story - ASBOs (Anti Social Behaviour Disorders) are neither exclusively handed out to teens, nor do they necessarily carry a jail sentence. Indeed, they're as likely to be issued to a Daily Mail reader letting their trees grow into a neighbouring garden as a teenager on a street corner. It wasn't the only Mail story ntoday to show such downright disrespect to nation's youth - as well as its own readers by manipulating the facts to such an extent.

According to the mid-market tabloid, a "68 YR OLD WOMAN KICKED OUT (of a restaurant) FOR WEARING A HOOD." It interviewed the woman, who claimed that she would “in no way call (her top) a hoodie”. The implication was that she was treated like a common thugish teenager - a second class citizen. Another Mail headline, still in today's paper shouted "BLAIR: CHILDREN NEED DISCIPLINE", while another lamented that it's now "OK 2 USE YXT ANSRS N XAMS". The latter article implies that teenagers themselves have relentlessly driven down the country's once-proud education standards.

More disturbingly, the Daily Mail wholelsale labels teenagers as "teenage tearaways", "yobs" and "teen thugs." It relentlessly implies that British youth is contaminating the country. Doesn't that sound a little like a syphilitic chap called Adolph a few years back? And this is the paper that informs, educates and entertains about 6 million Britons every day. Forget what we are teaching or kids for a moment, and consider this: what the hell are we teaching our adults?

Perhaps we should force all mail readers through a re-endoctrination scheme, developed by none other than Save The Hoodie campaigner, Lady Sovereign. At least until they agree to start respecting the massive chunk of the country's population that they continually diss. Peace, out!