4) Criminal Thoughts

OFSTED recently commissioned an e-survey by MORI to provide a ‘snapshot’ of school students attitudes and experience of schooling http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,2212044,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront Although it’s not recorded in this article, the survey found that around 50% of students think they’ll go onto university, which is a much lower level of expressed intent than we are finding in baseline surveys of our e-mentoring projects, but about the right level of expectation given the reality. It was however, the problem of bullying that caught the attention of many commentators and this ‘coincided’ with Ed Balls announcing more money for anti-bullying schemes http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7094827.stm . Peer mentoring anti-bullying projects are not new, many have been running for years, but it’s difficult to know how useful they are, as I don’t know of any serious attempt to measure their effectiveness. I was reflecting on the apparently widespread experience by children of bullying and theft http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7036880.stm and how this is combined with a perception by children that the school authorities did little about it. I began to wonder if this was related to adult’s perception of crime in modern Britain, today. It has been a puzzle to government, police and some commentators as to why the fear of crime seems to be rising when the chances of being a victim of crime is in decline. Many blame the lurid and voyeuristic reporting of the press. While I can believe that this reporting can trigger a response, might its resonance be rooted in the largely forgotten memories of childhood, when crime was rife and no-one acted to stop it. Is it this experience, which is still lurking in the subconscious of many adults, the reason why they are vulnerable to such stories? For if one grows up in a society where crime both pays, and is ignored by the authorities, then you are more likely to believe, later in life, that crime is widespread, getting worse, and that the police won't do anything about it.