London Riots: The Fine Line Between Reasons and Excuses

London Riots: The Fine Line Between Reasons and Excuses
|

I understand that people are disturbed by the violence in London, but people are asking why I'm condoning or defending the destruction of my city. I do not condone it, and I'm not defending it. There's a fine line between explaining reasons and making excuses.

It's sickens me that people are living in fear of an entire generation of young people as they burn our homes down. We're afraid of our children, they have our entire city held hostage with knives and petrol bombs and, oddly enough, nobody saw it coming.

For years people have been complaining of youths with knives, running around in gangs based on the post code they live in or the colour of their bandana. If a gang of reds see a boy in a blue bandana walking alone, they will assault him.

They're bored, restless and angry. Now they're losing 382 charities across the country that have spent time and energy helping to keep them engaged and part of society, and they know worse is coming.

What this country needs is an education system not based on the industrial age. Sir Ken Robinson gave a TED talk five years ago on the flaws of the system, particularly how it basically divides children into the profit-friendly academics, and the troublesome non-academics that must be moved aside to allow the academics the best chance to succeed without disruption.

Kids are bored in school. They have access to so much useful and interesting information around them on the internet, then they arrive in school to learn about the same things people were learning about 100 years ago and cannot understand why this applies to them now. Schools need reform so that no child is left behind, segregated or made to feel stupid for lack of intellectual ability when they have other skills beyond reeling off long words and adding numbers together.

What has happened to our society that our children are destroying everything and all we can do is call them animals? When your own children misbehave, do you dismiss them as 'mindless thugs' and walk away? Hoping the police will come along and hose them down with a water cannon and lock them up so we don't have to deal with them anymore?

We need practical, well thought out solutions, not Catholic-style condemnation, persecution and prison sentences for everyone.

We've failed our children, so let's get back on track and actually fix this.