Why do we have such as issue with delinquent teenagers?

I was on holiday in Italy last week. One of the many things that struck me was how well-behaved their teenagers were. Many of them milled around in the park, enjoying the warm summer nights. Not threatening anyone, not hassling anyone, not leaving piles of litter around. Some were drinking but not off their faces. They would sit in the cafes and bars, enjoying a drink or coffee, chatting happily.

What a difference compared to here, where many of us scurry quickly past groups of surly teenage boys. You know the type: tracksuit, hoodie, pasty complexions. Smashing stuff up and generally being complete dicks.

Why does this seem such a problem in the UK and Ireland? It is not seen much in mainland Europe.

People blame poverty, maybe, but I grew up in Belfast in the 80s when it was really on its arse, and we never got on like that. Are they ‘Thatcher’s Children, ‘ the outcome of 40 years of neoliberal selfishness and the dismantling of society?

What can we do? Very little, it seems. The police do next to nothing. The pendulum has swung the other way and now it seems all the rights are on the side of the ‘child’ not the rest of us. Many of these kids know their ‘rights’ and know exactly what to say to turn the focus away from their behaviour and target it towards their parents, teachers, neighbours etc.

The lack of male role models is part of the problem. Male teachers are becoming ever rarer. From the BBC:

More than one in five (22.8%) teachers in 2021-22 were male, down from one in four a decade ago.

The school sector with the highest proportion is grammar schools, where about a third of teachers are male.

But according to the department, there are no male nursery school teachers anywhere in Northern Ireland.

Only about 15% of teachers in primary schools are male.

Overall there were 4,779 male teachers in Northern Ireland in 2021-22, compared to 16,157 women.

Obviously, there are many great female teachers, but many of them look upon boys as ‘broken girls’; they try to feminism and control boys to get them to be ‘good like the girls’. When boys can’t sit still for 6 hours a day, they get labelled as having ADHD and, in the worst cases, get ‘medicated’. To be blunt, you need to handle boys differently. I am not saying we should go back to the days when they used to beat the life out of us in school but I personally benefited greatly from male teachers who would pull you aside and tell you to ‘wise the f*ck up’. At my school they did a fantastic job of taking boys from the roughest parts of Belfast and churned out barristers, doctors and every other profession.

Now, the impression is one of indifference. Teachers have significant issues with bad behaviour in class, and very few sanctions are open to them. In both the 2021/22 and 2022/23 school years, about 30% of pupils had absence rates classed at “chronic” or “severe chronic”, you can understand how schools under extreme pressure take the view that its better the trouble-making kids never come in rather than disrupt the rest of the class. You would be surprised how often schools tell problem kids not to bother coming in.

Can I stress I am not blaming teachers or schools. Our education system is very underfunded and schools are being asked to do ever more with less money. Nor is it far to ask them to take on ‘social work’ or ‘parental duties’.

The outcome of all this is boys fall at school in horrifying numbers. From a DUP report:

The statistics clearly show that Free school meals (FSME) children have lower levels of educational achievement than their non-FSME, there is a clear gender disparity which cannot be ignored. In 2014, the Northern Ireland average for all pupils achieving 5 good grade GSCEs was 62%8. Non-FSME Catholic boys were slightly above average at 64.5%, but this percentage dropped to 33.2% for FSME Catholic boys. For non-FSME Protestant boys the average stood at 58.6% and plummeted to 19.7% for FSME Protestant
boys.

These figures are ten years old, I am told they are even worse after the pandemic. We churn out huge numbers of boys with no qualifications and, worse, no sense of purpose.

There has been a massive drop in male volunteers in sports and other organisations like the Scouts. Men are highly concerned with being labelled a ‘pedo’ and so decide it is not worth the risk of getting involved in anything related to kids. This is sad on so many levels. Boys miss out on male role models, and men miss out on giving back and having a sense of purpose.

Most kids are well-behaved; even the tracksuit brigade are usually ok; they just hang around bored and aimless.

Like many issues in our society, it’s a class issue. The middle classes send their kids to grammar schools, and they have paid for after-school activities and summer schools. They get their holidays away, and dad’s taxi drops them off at friends’ or nights out.

The poor kids on the other hand, can go f*ck themselves. We only notice them when they burst our middle-class bubble if they steal our stuff, damage our cars, or pick on our kids.

I suppose it could be worse. We don’t have the gang and knife violence of the big English cities. Dublin’s city centre also seems very bad, with many high-profile attacks on tourists. There is also the flip side that you can’t get a lot of teenagers off their screens and out of the house. The internet, online gaming and p*rn help distract boys, but this causes many other issues.

But it’s sad to see such a waste of human capital. There is dignity in work, to having a purpose, to having a family, lifelong learning, to volunteering and engaging in your community.

Ubuntu is the African phrase that means ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. We are all worse off.