By Diana Holbourn
Becky and Other Students Discuss Psychopaths, Wife Beaters, Lead Poisoning Scandals and Other Depressing Things, but Also Have a Laugh
Book four of the online Becky Bexley series. Chapter 3 continued.
This series accompanies the books about what Becky does at university and afterwards, which you can find out more about on my author website. (The online series is in draft form.)
Another student said, "I heard about a counselling-type programme that was started in Chicago schools for teenagers from poor backgrounds where they were surrounded by violence and people with addictions and mental illnesses, which are pretty common in the rough areas they come from, and who were at risk of committing serious violence and going to prison for a long time. A lot of them had already been arrested for violence, but maybe quite a few of them had been let off with cautions. And none of them were doing well at school, so it was possible that quite a few would drop out of it soon.
"I think the programme's still going on. Teenagers on it are given one group counselling session a week, where they discuss their problems, and they do activities and are taught things designed to help them stay out of trouble. Part of it's learning techniques to control their anger, in the hope that they'll be less likely to do seriously harmful things to other people on the spur of the moment when they feel provoked, because they're taught to quickly question their impulses and think about whether there's another way to handle what they're angry about; and part of it's meant to give them support, since the group counselling session will often be the only thing in their lives that makes them feel cared for and as if someone wants to listen to them talk about their problems and help them.
"And being with other people who are willing to talk about their problems can make them feel less alone with theirs, which can be comforting. I think if they feel cared for and encouraged to make the most of their lives, they're more likely to start thinking it's worth staying out of trouble, maybe because they'll feel as if there's something better out there for them than crime, and because they don't want to let people who they can tell care about them down.
"A man who ran one of those programmes at one school for about a dozen boys was interviewed, and said the boys on it couldn't be expected to never get into fights, since there was violence all around them and people who'd like to victimise them, and they couldn't just let it happen, since then the bullies would think they were pushovers who they could bully some more without coming to any harm; but they could at least be taught that there are other things they could try that might sometimes work.
"And one program organiser said it wouldn't work to just tell the kids not to want to be hard, since they'd think that was unrealistic; but they would teach them that even big strong men could be soft sometimes, and that was good, like if they picked up and cuddled their babies, and they helped look after their little children. But they'd be taught that being able to show softness was still a sign of strength, and that being able to be that soft made them a better person.
"The programme teaches people to do things like thinking more before reacting. One activity they used to do was one where they passed a ball round, and students were asked in turn to go and get it from the person holding it, and most of them tried to wrestle it from the person who was holding it; and afterwards, the person in charge asked them whether they thought there could have been another way they could have got it from them, like just asking them for it. So it was teaching them how to think about trying to get what they wanted in non-violent ways, and to be less violent. And the programme teaches them how to be better people in other ways too.
"One thing it does is to try to develop the boys' consciences, by teaching them to think of things from other people's points of view, and about what's in their long-term interests, rather than just what'll make them feel best in the moment; like if one boy's asked what'll happen if he skips a day of school, he might just say he might get in trouble; but the counsellor might then ask him to think about how his mum might feel if she's worried about where he is if someone from the school phones her and says he isn't there, or that he'll fail his exams if he isn't careful and plays truant more often.
"And the counsellors can challenge the boys' thinking by asking a series of questions to get them to think about the way they react to people and whether it's fair. Like they might ask the boys why they feel as if it's OK to attack someone just for looking at them the wrong way, and how they'd feel if they were on the receiving end of something like that. The boys might say it isn't fair really, but they do it because they're upset. Then the counsellor might ask them if they think they've got the discipline to keep their feelings in, for the sake of their futures.
"And the boys can get angrier with people than is fair because they're already angry with someone else, so it doesn't take much to annoy them enough that they start getting abusive, not realising their anger's mostly caused by something else.
"One counsellor talked about an incident where a boy burst into his office one day, swearing and cursing because his teacher had told him to put his phone away and he'd refused, and it had turned into an angry argument with two teachers who were trying to find a security officer to arrest him. The counsellor gave him some boxing gloves, and put on some himself so the student could spar with him to let off steam. While that was going on, he kept asking the boy who he was really angry with. The boy said it was the teacher a few times, but then said that his dad, who he hadn't seen for six years, had visited him the day before, and he'd got angry because his dad had told him what to do, as if he thought he had the right to just start bossing him around where he'd left off all those years ago. So he realised the teacher's asking him to put his phone away had just reminded him of being told what to do by his dad, or that he couldn't tolerate being told what to do again after that, and that was the main reason he was angry, so the teacher didn't deserve all his anger.
"It helps if the counsellors show that they can identify with the boys, like if they're from the same backgrounds, so the boys can think of them as more like father figures they can trust than distant authority figures telling them what to do.
"I heard one boy on the programme talking about how the programme was helping him, who said he'd learned to control his temper a bit so he'd got into fewer fights.
"He said he used to get into fights easily, like there was one time when some hooligans from his school tried to steal his jacket after school, and he'd interpreted that to mean not just that they were trying to steal from him, but that they thought he was the kind of person they could disrespect and push around. So he was angry about that, and stewed in his anger all night, plotting revenge, thinking of it as an insult to his pride, and that he wanted to get his pride and honour back by showing them he couldn't be pushed around like that. The next day, he went into school, and thought he'd show them he couldn't be pushed around, and went up to one boy who he thought had been in the group of boys who'd tried to steal from him, and punched him in the face a few times, only to find out that that boy hadn't been involved in the attack! So he realised he'd made a mistake, and needed to change and think a bit more before responding.
"He said that after he'd been on the counselling programme for a while, there was an incident where he would normally have got straight into a fight, but he didn't. He said he saw another man talking to his girlfriend; and he'd been conditioned to think of that as disrespect, assuming the other man was thinking it would be easy for him to take his girlfriend away from him, and insulting him by thinking, 'You aren't man enough to keep your girl!' He's got to have been living in an unhealthy environment if he'd been made to believe that another man just talking to his girlfriend meant he was disrespecting him and insulting his manhood, and trying to take his girlfriend away from him! But anyway, it made him angry, and before he'd been on the counselling programme, he would have just gone up and punched the man. But because it had taught him to think more before reacting, he decided to just go up and talk to him. And it turned out that the man had no interest in taking his girlfriend away from him; they were just chatting.
"There was a controlled trial of the programme, where a group of boys in it and a group that wasn't were compared for a year, and it found that compared to the boys who weren't in the group, the boys who were were about 45 per cent less likely to commit crime; and they were nearly 20 per cent more likely to stay in school and do their exams, and actually pass them, instead of dropping out as well. So that seems like a real result. But the people who did the study found out that after they left, their crime rates started going up again, till they were just as high as the ones of the boys who hadn't been in the programme, as if they'd forgotten what they learned, or they were partly controlling themselves before because they didn't want to let the people running the programme down, and after they lost contact with them, there was no one to please and to support them any more so they stopped caring.
"Maybe what's needed is for programmes like that to carry on for a few years after the boys leave school, till they're hopefully a bit older and wiser than to get into crime so easily, or they've moved away from the violent environment to go to college or something, and that hopefully influences them to change."
Another student said, "It might help as well if parents were routinely taught better parenting skills, like if it became compulsory for all pregnant women to go on free parenting courses with their husbands or boyfriends. Not that everybody would need them; but if everyone had to do them, it wouldn't lead to some people getting angry and defiant and objecting to being told to go on them because they felt singled out, like some people might if they thought they were offered them because they were especially under suspicion of being likely to treat their children badly. I mean, the courses wouldn't work for people who actually want to be abusive to their kids; but they might help people who just can't cope with them very well, like with all their tantrums and yelling and things. I wouldn't be surprised if all parents have difficulty with that, so they would all benefit from finding out what the best child psychologists have discovered about what works best to tame their toddlers' tempers, and that kind of thing."
One of the others said, "Actually, when you think about it, raising children well must be a pretty amazing achievement really, you know, if they end up being kind and caring and responsible, and nice in other ways. It must be difficult to bring them up to be like that, since it's not as if kids come with an instruction manual or anything; it seems people have to just do what they hope will work, unless they read parenting books and try doing what they say."
Another one of the students grinned and said, "It might be a good thing babies don't come with instruction manuals in a way, since imagine what it would be like for women in labour if they did! Imagine a midwife saying, 'Well done! That's the baby and the placenta delivered! Now I know you're tired; but just a few last pushes, and then you'll have given birth to the instruction manual.'"
They giggled. But the one who'd brought up the subject of parenting said, "At least they might end up with something helpful if that happened though. But you know what I mean. Actually, maybe the health visitors who check to make sure new parents are doing allright and that kind of thing, or other people like that, ought to give new parents instructions on things like coping with toddler tantrums, and what they can do if children won't do what they ask them to, and all kinds of things like that that they might have problems with when the children get older."
The other students thought that might be a good idea.
Then the one who'd brought up the subject of parenting classes said, "yeah. And if free parenting courses were just routinely taught to people, or if expectant and new parents were routinely given information about good parenting in another way, maybe the teachers or health visitors doing the courses or teaching in poor areas could give the parents or parents-to-be information about other free or affordable courses they could go on that could improve their lives too, like by improving their reading, writing and spelling skills if they needed it, or secretarial skills, and courses to help them develop good money management skills if they needed it, - you know, like if the courses brought home to some of them the importance of putting money by to save for unexpected bills, and budgeting well, and stuff like that, which could also include things like finding ways not to give into temptation to buy nice things they don't really need, like things that look flashy so they can impress people, for anyone who has urges to do that, so they could put the money aside to spend on things they really will need later.
"I actually heard part of a talk by a man who grew up in a poor neighbourhood in America who ended up in prison for years and years for taking part in a robbery where someone got killed, who said he hadn't been able to imagine any other life while he was growing up, and he said he'd got himself educated in prison, since he couldn't read and write when he went there, and he got enthusiastic to learn all about good lawful ways of making money there, and thought it would really help communities like the one he came from if they were to be taught about managing money well, so they'd be better at recognising the importance of budgeting for when bills were higher than they expected, and things like that, so they didn't get into so much financial difficulty.
"It would probably take a whole combination of things to help people get themselves out of poverty; but that's one thing that might help, although I suppose part of the problem is that, just like Hitler found in his early days, when you've got a bad quality of life, anything that'll cheer it up quickly will likely seem appealing, so you won't feel like resisting getting it so you can save the money to help improve life a bit in the weeks afterwards, and the more miserable your life is, the more desperate you'll likely be for things that give you some pleasure than people who are more contented will be.
"But these courses could at least try to teach people the importance of valuing money more than things that give short-term pleasure or make them look good, like fashionable clothes that might soon go out of date, maybe.
"I don't know how you'd teach people not to give into temptation well - I can't say I can resist temptation very well myself; but there probably is a way.
"Actually, I remember I did read a bit about it. One thing it's important to do is to stay out of the way of temptation when it's possible, although sometimes it's harder than at other times. Like, if someone who used to be addicted to drugs goes to prison, and somehow manages to get free of drugs in there, despite all the drugs being smuggled in, the easiest thing to do when they get out and need a home and want friends and family support will probably be to go back to the community they were living in before they went to prison; but that community will probably be one where drugs are easily available and they'll know just how to get them, and where their friends might be taking them and entice them to take them too, so they could really easily get back into drugs again; so one thing that'll help them stay off drugs is if they somehow manage to get a home in a different community, and somehow avoid talking much to their old drug-addicted friends who might make them think a lot about being on drugs again.
"It must be a really difficult thing to start a new life somewhere else though, especially since for a person coming out of prison, getting a job will likely be hard, because understandably, there won't be many employers willing to employ ex-convicts, - I mean, would you, knowing they might commit crime at your workplace, like stealing stuff, if they'd gone to prison for doing that? But it would probably help if there were organisations willing to give it a try. Actually, I think there are some. Maybe there ought to be more, that could help people who really do want to change make new lives for themselves, settling into new communities where they'll be more likely to be able to avoid temptation to go back to their old ways, like going back on drugs and stealing to pay for them.
"I read that another reason it can be hard to resist temptation is if you just want to do little things that you think can't have much effect, like if you're trying to lose weight, and you see something really tempting in a shop, and think it can't hurt much to eat it, since it's only a one-off, but there turn out to be lots of 'one-off's. The trouble is that enjoying one-off pleasure boosters can lead to wanting more and more of them, till you end up getting fatter instead of thinner, or the opposite of whatever it is you're trying to do; so if you can think about the fact that that's likely to happen over time, it might help you avoid getting into the habit of giving in to temptation, although I'm not sure how well it really works, since the more you discipline yourself not to have things even though you really want them, the more you can sometimes crave them, I think, because resentment about missing out on them and longing for them builds up, till you just want loads of them.
"Perhaps it works best if you take pride in resisting the temptation to have them and think about what you're achieving by it, since then positive emotions like pride in resisting the temptation and hope for the future will be counteracting the regret at not giving in to temptation, so you'll feel better.
"And when it comes to losing weight, it can help to do things that make you feel more satisfied, like filling yourself up on healthy food, or eating bits of it every now and then throughout the day, like nuts or grapes, so unhealthy treats aren't as much of a temptation as they would be if you were hungry, or feeling lethargic because your blood sugar's low so you really want an energy boost.
"And when it comes to other kinds of temptation, another example is that sometimes, if people do whatever they can to improve their marriages, and it works, it can make them less likely to be tempted to start affairs with other people, which they can sometimes start because they're not very happy, and the affairs make them feel more alive, and boost their egos because they feel more attractive and appreciated.
"And one thing that can help with temptation in general is if people decide in advance about how they're going to deal with whatever kinds of temptation they know they're prone to when they come up, because it'll be easier to just do what you've already decided to do quickly than to try to make a decision about what to do while your emotions are making you feel really tempted to do something, because your emotions will likely get quite strong quickly, so the longer you have to think about them, the more likely you are to decide to give in to them.
"And I read that distracting yourself can help as well, so instead of thinking about how nice it would have been to have what you were tempted to have, you go away, if you can, and try to get absorbed in something else, like finding out about something you're curious about, or getting involved in a conversation with someone, or something else you like doing.
"And sometimes, if you know someone else who's trying to resist the same temptation as you, challenging them to a competition of resisting the temptation can help, like if you're both trying to lose weight, and you both decide to have a friendly competition to see who can lose the most.
"There's someone I know who tries to lose weight every year after Christmas, and she sets herself a goal for the amount of weight she wants to lose, and gives herself an incentive to do it by telling people that if she fails, she has to donate money to a cause or organisation she really disagrees with, such as the Tories or the IRA or something. I can't say I fancy that idea myself, but I suppose it must help her if she keeps doing it.
"And I read that if you tell someone else who's sympathetic to what you're trying to achieve that you're trying to resist the temptation to do something, and they're with you sometimes when it happens, it means they can remind you you've made a decision to try to resist it, so that might help too.
"And I think keeping a diary where you track your behaviour can help too, like if you write down in it every time you spend money on something you don't really need, and then you look back over it at the end of the day, and calculate how much money you've spent on all that stuff, since it can help bring it home to you just how much you've spent, so you can be more motivated to resist the urge to spend more money on stuff you don't need from then on.
"And then if you look over it, say, at the end of the week, it might help you work out just when you're more likely to be tempted to spend money, or whatever it is you're doing that you'd like to resist the urge to do; so, for instance, if it brings home to you that you've spent the most money when you've been past certain shops, you might decide to change where you shop, so you go to places that don't have so much tempting stuff, or things like that. ... Not that that would be easy, since all shops probably have tempting stuff; but that kind of thing might work sometimes. Or if the shops just happen to be on your route to work, you could maybe plan to go a different way to work that avoids all shops.
"And I read that people can get discouraged at first because they still find it hard to resist the temptation to do things so they still sometimes do them, but people can get better with practice.
"Mind you, I think that the more stressful or depressing your life is, the more likely you are to want a bit of a break from the usual, so the more likely you'll sometimes be to want to give into the temptation.
"Maybe one thing that would help is if schools would routinely give people training in how to handle stress better, and how to improve their mental health if they start feeling depressed or if they get anxiety problems, - although a lot of the reason why people get that kind of thing has to do with their life circumstances, which schools probably couldn't do much to change.
"But anyway, I think schools should teach people good money management skills, that include things like avoiding temptation, and the importance of valuing long-term financial security over short-term status boosts or whatever, and the way that can make people happier in the long run, because they don't have to worry so much about paying the bills. That's as well as schools getting better at teaching people who are struggling to learn to read and write. Something obviously isn't going right when some people are leaving school not being good at that stuff, at least in some areas of the country, although I know it isn't necessarily the fault of schools themselves, if the children are all disruptive in some schools and don't want to learn.
"But if schools found ways of coping with that, maybe another thing that would help is if kids were routinely given more help by schools staying open later into the evening, where they could stay longer, and there were people who could help them with homework, and they'd be in a place where they were learning things like discipline and decent behaviour, and where they'd be kept off the streets where they might otherwise be being influenced by people who were getting into criminal activity and drink and drugs. ... I know staying at school later wouldn't be a popular idea. ... Well, it certainly wouldn't have been one with me! But it might help kids in communities where their home life's chaotic, with people shouting abuse all the time so they're always getting into arguments, and where they're not encouraged to learn, and where there isn't a place where they can sit down quietly and concentrate on things like homework.
"I mean, some schools would probably have to be improved a lot before that could work. But it would be nice if the authorities really made improving them a priority, getting teams of experts together who really had good ideas. ... I don't know how much that kind of thing goes on now. But it seems there ought to be more of it."
One student joked, "You're beginning to sound like an old grandpa, complaining about the youth of today!"
Another one grinned and joked, "Imagine if all the kids in a poor community started being encouraged to get really enthusiastic about learning and trying to get good jobs when they were older, and they all managed it despite all the influence of criminals and people who weren't succeeding at life around them, so a whole new generation of people who were law-abiding and had good jobs grew up, and they all took on the attitude, 'Only the older generations get into crime, with their old-fashioned out-of-touch ideas! Crime's an old people's thing!'"
They laughed.
Then one said, "Talking of temptation, I'm often tempted to get into arguments on Internet forums. Not that I ever feel like resisting the temptation to do that. Mind you, there's often no reason why I should, because they're not serious arguments.
"There was one time just recently when I had a dispute with someone on a forum where my username's Flower Eater. I don't really eat flowers; I just chose it for fun.
"Anyway, someone started a thread there where I got into an argument with him, after he started insulting me in a way that seemed brainless to me and I got annoyed with him. He's got a friend on there who got upset with me after that, and accused me of thinking I was better than everyone else on the forum, saying I had an exaggerated sense of my own importance. She didn't explain how she'd got that impression, but it wasn't accurate. I did sometimes act like that for a laugh, like pretending to order people around.
"Anyway, when she accused me of thinking I was better than everyone else, I joked, 'Wow, what a great bit of fantasy! You know, if it wasn't for your 7382 hyperbolic and inaccurate statements, and the fact that an entire total of 53.5% of your sentences clearly indicate that you haven't actually been following things very carefully at all, I'd be able to take what you say seriously. But due to your careless inattention to detail and your 2071 hyperbolic phrases, I can't.
"'I will thus declare a competition open: Is Flower Eater the devil incarnate, destroyer of worlds, perverter of all that is good in the world, or is she the most beautiful, wonderful thing ever to have graced the face of the earth? On the one side, we have you and a few others claiming that she is a monster, a trampler of little children, a sabotager of good scientific projects, the one who causes droughts and storms, the one who made the dinosaurs go extinct. And on the other side, we have, ... um, well OK, perhaps not even the people who like me best on here would say I'm the best thing to have ever graced this earth. But there's always time for them to change their minds, or for other people to declare that about me.
"'So let's pit the Flower-Haters and the Flower-Admirers against each other, and see who wins. We'll see how many there are of each, and see which side can come up with the most impressive claims. If the Flower-Haters win, I make a solemn promise that I will actually attempt to live up to the claims they make, and start on a campaign of destroying other galaxies immediately, before turning my attention to the more mundane task of sabotaging this world so it turns into a barren desert where nothing can grow. If the Flower-Admirers win, ... um, well, I'll decide what to do if it happens.
"'I know your insult-spewing friend started this thread, but I command him to be quiet, although he is permitted, for the purposes of this competition, to join the Flower-Haters and claim all kinds of fantastical things about the heinous things I'm responsible for causing. Even back into the past, perhaps. Yep, the Flower-Haters are allowed to accuse me of all kinds of things, like starting the American Civil War, perhaps, causing the Black Death, orchestrating the fall of the Roman Empire, - all kinds of things.
"'And the Flower-Admirers can claim I caused all kinds of nice things, like the invention of penicillin, the invention of the telephone, the Internet and computers themselves, and all kinds of other things like that.'
"Then a man there just responded with a little dollop of something that didn't make sense; and I joked, 'Stupid boy! Stick to the topic! Are you going to come down on the side of the Flower-Haters or the Flower-Admirers? If you're going to be a Flower-Hater, then for goodness' sake make yourself an impressive one! Perhaps you could accuse me of starting the Great Fire of London, or making Canada as cold as it is in winter! Or you could be a Flower-Admirer, and perhaps credit me with discovering electricity, causing fruit trees to come into being, or inventing trains. Something good, whatever it is.'
"He said he wasn't talking to me, and I joked that I'd declared it my thread, and everything had to be about me from then on. I said, 'This is MY thread, and I solemnly declare that if you can't come up with anything to accuse me of or credit me with, and yet you continue to say things, you will be officially designated by the entire forum membership as a mere leaf in the wind! A pebble tossed around by the waves of the sea! An insubstantial thing!'
"Then a moderator told me to behave or I'd face intergalactic discipline, and I said, 'Yikes! OK, I'll hand this thread immediately back to its rightful owner. And we won't have the competition after all. Get that, everyone? The competition's off! Oh well, that's just as well, because if the Flower-Haters had won, which they probably would have, it would have meant I'd be obligated to do as I'd promised and start destroying galaxies before turning this world into a barren desert where nothing can grow. And despite my superior powers, I'm really not sure I could have managed it. So I'd have been shown up as a dismal failure!'"
The students giggled. But then the conversation got serious again, as one said, "Getting back to the conversation we were having before though about improving the lives of children and getting them better-educated in schools so they're more likely to get decent jobs and less likely to get into crime when they grow up, the thing is that some parts of society might also need to change, since I think in some parts of the world, some groups who are minorities in those areas, like black people, still get discriminated against when it comes to getting jobs and things. I'm not sure what would change that. Hopefully it's getting better. ... Maybe one thing is that it would be better if black communities had a better image. I mean, I wonder if some employers think black people must all come from inner city communities where there's a lot of violence or something. I don't know. But I actually read something about the causes of prejudice.
"One's likely to be the way people are brought up, or things parents say that are automatically believed by children who haven't yet learned that their parents can sometimes say stupid ignorant things, so if the parents look down on certain groups of people, the children will be influenced to automatically do the same, so their parents' attitudes will immediately influence their thinking every time they meet someone from one of the groups or think of people who belong to them. And even if they come to believe their parents' attitudes are wrong, their brains might still automatically bring those attitudes to mind and make them feel the same feelings the way they used to.
"And things in the media might sometimes reinforce some people's attitudes, like if their parents go on about how many criminals are black, and then they see films where all the criminals are black, and see things in the papers about the latest crime stories that mention that the criminals who committed the crimes are black.
"I think that's one reason for prejudice anyway.
"And it can rise in times of hardship where there's more competition for jobs, so unemployed people can get resentful against other groups of people like immigrants that they think are taking jobs they could otherwise get, or if there's a shortage of council housing, and a lot of the people who are getting council houses ahead of lots of other people on the waiting list have foreign names.
"It seems that people who are prejudiced against certain groups of people don't think of most people in those groups as individuals, all with their own different personalities, dreams, goals in life, backgrounds, intelligence levels, attitudes, music tastes and so on; they just think of them as all being the same."
Another student said, "It seems that that doesn't just happen between different races or classes and genders and so on, but even between people living on different streets, when it comes to things like gang culture! I don't know why things get like that.
"But I heard an interview on the radio with a black man who used to be a bus driver, and he was a music producer for a while as well, who decided he wanted to do something about gang violence in the area where he grew up. He said it was so bad that teenagers living on one road were too scared to enroll in a nearby college, because it would mean travelling through another gang's territory to get to it, and they would risk getting attacked.
"He said it wasn't that bad at all when he was growing up, and he thought one reason for that was that the council used to arrange holidays once a year for quite a few of the kids in the area where they'd all do fun activities together, and make friends with kids from all around their borough, so they were less likely to develop bigotry towards people from the other neighbourhoods in it, because if there was a violent dispute between someone from their neighbourhood and someone from another one, they'd be more likely to think of it as a fight between individuals, instead of feeling angry with people from the other neighbourhood. But government cutbacks meant the scheme was stopped.
"He said he doesn't really understand all the reasons why such a vicious gang culture developed, but gangs got together in two nearby roads and started attacking each other, and quite a few people were being killed.
"He thought of the idea of bringing members from both gangs together to create music together. He bought an old bus, and turned it into a music studio. He thought that would be better than setting a music studio up in one gang's territory so teenagers from other neighbourhoods wouldn't go there for fear of being attacked.
"He started out by taking the bus to one gang's territory, and inviting quite a few teenagers who were either in gangs or at risk of becoming gang members to have a go at making music in it. They were really keen. They got up specially in the morning to have a go.
"Then in the afternoon, he took the bus to the other gang's neighbourhood, and some teenagers from there had a go too. The ones who'd gone there in the morning had made some music backing, and he asked the others if they'd like to write lyrics to it, without telling them it had been made by teenagers in the other gang's territory. They did. Then they made some music of their own, and the next morning, he went to the other gang's territory and asked them if they'd like to put lyrics to that, without telling them who'd made the music.
"He carried on doing that kind of thing for a few days, and then told each group that the music they were using was made by people from the other neighbourhood, and asked them if they'd like to work with them so they could make music together. They were all fine with the idea, so that's what they started doing. They got on well. It even led to peace talks between the gangs, although I don't know what happened in the end.
"It hasn't been easy for the man who came up with that idea, because one night, vandals in another area set fire to his bus and everything was ruined. It took him quite a long time, but he managed to raise money to get a new one. But then a while later, thieves stole a lot of the musical equipment in it. Hopefully he'll get the project up-and-running again.
"But I wonder whether if books with a lot of stories like that in them were on the curriculum for children who, say, were nearing the end of primary school, it would inspire them not to get into gangs and start wanting to fight people in other neighbourhoods when they were a bit older."
Another student said, "I don't know about that. It might be worth a try; but people forget a lot of what they read, and the influence of things going on around them will probably be a lot stronger than things they read, like if they've got family members in gangs, and they hear them talking about friends who've been injured or killed by other gangs and how they want their gang to get revenge, or if there's a lot of violence around, and they want to join a gang for protection, because they're less likely to be picked on if they know that if someone attacks them, there are people who are going to go after them, - or their gang if they're in one, - and hurt them in return. I think there are a few different reasons why people join gangs. There might be things that would help to solve the problem though."
One student said, "I've heard of people trying to bring people together from communities that are normally hostile to each other, like people from Protestant and Catholic communities in Northern Ireland, or Israeli and Palestinian teenagers; I heard about one project where a group of teenagers in Israel was brought together from both sides to learn about and develop technology; and they also had discussions where they talked about ways it might be possible to improve relations between Israelis and Palestinians. It would probably be good if there were more projects like that, although I suppose it could be that only the teenagers who are most hopeful that the two sides will make peace and want it most would want to go to things like that in the first place. I suppose trying to educate teenagers from both sides together who were really bigoted against people on the other side from them might just cause problems, unless the teachers had some skilful ways of changing their minds."
One student joked, "Maybe the kids could have insult contests, where the winners would be the ones who could come up with the cleverest or most amusing ones. Maybe they could be like yo' momma jokes, where I think there are contests in some communities to see who can keep coming up with funny insults about the mothers of the ones they're insulting, but I think the rules say that anyone who loses their temper and gets aggressive in response to an insult automatically loses. I found some funny yo' momma jokes on the Internet. I'll tell you some of them:
"Yo momma's so fat and old, when God said, 'Let there be light', he asked your mother to move out of the way.
"Yo momma's so ugly, when she tried to join an ugly contest, they said, 'Sorry, no professionals.'
"Yo momma's so fat, her bellybutton gets home 15 minutes before she does.
"Yo momma's so fat she doesn't need the internet, because she's already world wide.
"Yo momma's so fat, when she goes camping, the bears hide their food.
"Yo momma's so fat, when she sits around the house, she SITS AROUND the house.
"Yo momma's so stupid, when they said, 'Order in the court', she asked for fries and a shake.
"Yo momma's so stupid, when I said, 'Drinks on the house', she got a ladder.
"Yo momma's so old, she was a waitress at the Last Supper.
"Yo momma's so fat, when she got hit by a bus she asked, 'Who threw that rock?'
"Yo momma's so ugly, people dress up as her for Halloween.
"Yo momma's so fat, she needs two watches for two different time zones.
"Yo momma's so chatty, she gave a eulogy at her own funeral.
"Yo momma's so old, when she was born, the Dead Sea was still just getting sick.
"Yo momma's so fat, she wakes up on both sides of the bed.
"Yo momma's so old, she walked into an antiques store, and they didn’t let her leave.
"Yo momma's so fat, she goes to the car wash to take showers.
"Yo momma's so old, her driver’s license has got hieroglyphics on it!
"Yo momma's so fat, she sat on a dollar, and when she got up there were four quarters.
"Yo momma's so fat, when she gets in a lift it HAS to go down!
"Yo momma's so fat, when she tripped over on 4th Avenue, part of her landed on 12th.
"Yo momma's so nasty, she went swimming in the sea and turned it into the Dead Sea. "Yo momma’s so old, she still owes Moses money.
"Yo momma’s so old, her first car was a chariot.
"Yo momma’s cooking's so bad, even the homeless send it back.
"Yo momma's so old, she pre-ordered the bible.
"The earth used to be flat, but that was up until they buried yo momma.
"Yo momma's so vegan and fat, she ate a meal and got arrested for deforestation."
The students giggled. But it wasn't long before they got serious again.
One said, "I read a book once by a black teacher who used to work in inner city schools in this country, who said that not that much learning got done, and she said she thought the reason for that was that there wasn't much discipline in the schools, so classes were often disrupted. She said that young female white teachers in particular would be timid about disciplining the pupils, because if they tried, the pupils would say things like, 'You're just picking on me because I'm black, aren't you', and the teachers were worried about people thinking they were racist, because they didn't have good comeback lines for it, so they didn't discipline them after all. She said a pupil accused her of just picking on him because he's black once, and she joked, 'Yes, it's because you're black', and the class burst out laughing, because she's black herself.
"I'm not saying I think it's never true that teachers pick on pupils for reasons like their skin colour; I've heard a few people's stories about how they were bullied by teachers with stupid racist attitudes. But I suppose it's just human nature that if someone knows they're more likely to get away with something they shouldn't be doing if they accuse the person trying to stop them of something they're worried about being accused of, chances are they'll do it.
"Anyway, this black teacher left the school she'd been working in in the end, and set up her own school where the discipline's really strict, and there are high expectations of all the pupils so they can't get away with lazing around or being disruptive and not doing the work; and it seems to have worked, because their exam results are much better than the national average. A lot of the pupils come from the same disadvantaged backgrounds as the ones she used to teach. So that proves it's possible to make a difference.
"I don't know how they deal with the most badly-behaved pupils; I suppose it's possible they don't accept some into the school if they already know they're badly behaved, since I think they're allowed to choose who goes, unlike ordinary state schools. And maybe the parents who try to get their kids into that school are ones who really want their children to learn, not ones who are giving their children the impression that education's a waste of time so their children don't feel like bothering with it and just want to mess around in class. I don't know. But it still sounds as if ordinary schools could learn something from this woman's school."
One of the others said, "My grandad used to be a teacher, but he thought it was really stressful, because it was getting worse over time, because I think the government closed down a lot of schools that used to be there specially for badly-behaved children, so they started going to ordinary schools; and he found they weren't interested in learning, but just wanted to wreck stuff, like setting fire extinguishers off for fun! That kind of thing can't do much for the concentration of anyone who actually wants to learn! ... That's if any child at all really does want to learn, which I'm not quite sure about! I don't think I did, particularly. I just did it because that was what we were expected to do, I think."
A student who'd been talking earlier said, "You've probably got a point there! Anyway, I was talking about reasons why some pupils find it hard to learn to read a while ago, wasn't I. I read that there are quite a few different reasons for that:
"One of them is that some children have slight sight or hearing difficulties that make it harder to learn, that might not have been picked up by anyone. Some children can't see what a teacher's writing on a board at the front of the class well, or see to read words in books they're given properly, so they end up not being able to work as well as a lot of the others; and some children who have slight hearing problems can't get the hang of what letters make what sounds, because some of them can sound the same to them, like S and F, so they can be unsure about what letter means what.
"I think a lot of children with problems like that could be easily helped; for instance, a lot of children with minor sight problems could benefit from glasses. A lot of them probably are given them. I don't know why some aren't.
"Another reason some children don't learn to read well is if they come from families where English isn't spoken at home, and some family members don't even know it, so it's a less familiar language to them and they might not be as good at speaking it as other children of their age, so it'll be harder for them to understand what they're reading in it.
"And people who start off with reading difficulties but then get better at it can still find themselves behind lots of other children in their class for some time, not just in reading, but in all kinds of subjects, because people need reading for them all, and other kids can be moving ahead in them while the people struggling are still trying to learn the basics of reading.
"Dyslexia's another problem that can stop children learning to read well. I heard that in the past, a lot of children with dyslexia or other kinds of reading difficulties were often insulted by teachers who called them stupid, so some of them gave up on even trying to learn to read, and just started skipping school and things. It's no wonder children lose interest in education or get frustrated and start messing around in class or playing truant if they feel like a failure all the time. I mean, I'm sure there are quite a few other reasons why some kids play truant; but that's probably the reason some do.
"I think there's a lot more help for dyslexic children nowadays than there used to be.
"I read that another problem is that some children aren't practising reading enough at home. It's best if they can do that as well as learning at school, because what I read said that schools can be under a lot of pressure to get through the curriculum, and class sizes are big so each child doesn't get much individual attention, so the ones who get on best might be the ones whose parents encourage them to read at home, and listen to them and help them when they make mistakes or stumble over words, such as by getting them to make the sounds of each syllable if they can, so they can put them together and work out what a word they get stuck on is themselves.
"What I read said that even practising reading for ten minutes a day, whenever parents have got a bit of spare time to help their children, can help. And it can help if the children are practising with books they're actually interested in reading too, so they're more enthusiastic about sticking at it.
"And it can help if there's a quiet place they can read in, so they can concentrate better.
"What I read said that another problem that makes it harder for some children to learn to read is if the reading books they're given are too hard for them or too easy for them. If they're too hard, they'll likely get discouraged and give up; but if they're too easy, they'll likely get bored and distracted, so they won't finish them and move on to harder ones as quickly as some of the others will.
"And the article I read said that sometimes it can be good if parents bring up problems like that with the teachers who've given the children those reading books, since they might have misguidedly thought it would be good for them to have the challenge of reading difficult ones, or that it would build up their confidence if they read easy ones they can be really good at.
"And some children can read all the words in a book, but can't understand the meaning of it well because they don't know the meanings of a lot of the words in it. So it can help if parents read with them and encourage them to ask if they don't know the meaning of a word, as well as talking to them a lot so they get familiar with some bigger words.
"Another reason why some children find it hard to learn to read is if they have to spend a lot of time away from school because of serious illness.
"And literacy rates could never reach 100 per cent in a country, because some people are too learning-disabled to ever be able to learn to read.
"And there are other reasons why some kids have reading problems too, and some can last for years and years, And some people who can't get a job because of theirs can be more likely to get into crime, because they want to make money, or they're disillusioned with life and stop caring about other people, or for some other reason.
"But I heard that when prisoners who can't read and write are taught to do it well, far fewer of them commit more crimes and get sent back to prison after they're released than normally do when prisoners are released without being able to read and write properly. I read that about three quarters of prisoners who are released will go on to commit more crimes, but the percentage is way way less for people who've been given an education in prison. ... Well, I think the three quarters figure is the number who've committed more crimes within five years of them being released; but after one year, it's a bit less than half.
"So it seems it would be good for society if all prisoners who can't read that well got taught to. ... Well, it would be nice for them as well, of course. Mind you, I don't know what percentage of prisoners who can't read that well actually want to.
"Anyway, hopefully their reading courses are better than some of their other courses seem to be."
One of the group said for fun, "Just think about what people in prison who can't read and write are missing out on, like putting the reading and writing skills they could have into arguing on Internet forums. Mind you, their arguments might not be very nice if they could do that. I was reading a mean-spirited bicker-fest on a forum not long ago where a few of the people there said they'd been arrested for crimes. Not that the arguing style of the people who didn't say they had criminal records was any better than theirs.
"But I actually heard that crime goes down for a little while when new video games that sound exciting get released, because a lot of people who'd otherwise be out committing crime are getting a buzz by playing them instead. I can't remember how big the effect is.
"But imagine if some people got out of prison and didn't get into crime again because they'd found a new hobby they were really enthusiastic about, and that was arguing with people on forums.
"I've had some fun doing that. Well, often it isn't fun; but it can be.
"There was one time when I started a thread and it turned into an argument, and there's someone there whose username's Monkey Goblin, and he said something insulting to me, and I replied, 'I suppose for a monkey goblin, what you just said was impressive. You must be very talented to write like a human.'
"Then someone else, who really doesn't like him, made a gross joke about him really being a urinal who keeps wondering why the lemonade tastes funny. Then someone else jokingly asked if the argument was a 'pissing contest'.
"I joked, 'No, you can't have a contest with a urinal; they don't engage in contests. ... That's unless they perhaps come to life in the middle of the night when no one's watching and have a secret recreational life of their own.'
"He asked me if I'd ever played the 'urinal game' - whatever that is; and I said, 'If that question was addressed to me, then don't be daft. Girls don't do that kind of thing. I prefer games involving chasing monkey goblins, while making sure they don't breathe on me, so as not to catch goblinpox, a contagious disease goblins sometimes carry.'
"There was a twerp on the board who I'll just call Twerp, who used to like insulting me for whatever reason, and one day he'd got all high-and-mighty, after he and a few other people were talking drivel in a thread, and I made some joke he thought was irrelevant to the silly topic, and he declared that I was breaking the rules by being off-topic, and that was spamming, and from then on, he'd swear at me and tell me to shut up whenever I said something that annoyed him or that he thought wasn't relevant to the conversation. He did that after I said that thing about goblinpox. I said,
"'Right, Twerp! You said in another thread that you'd respond to me this way if I was being "obstructing" or irritating. So am I to believe you care about the fact that I'm "obstructing" a conversation about urinals? Yes, what a travesty of forum etiquette I'm guilty of here! Yep, talking about urinals is So important that it's an outrage to redirect the thread away from the topic, even if it means it's closer to the topic it was actually about before - Monkey Goblin, - and it's my thread so I should be free to do what I want with it. These little burps of insult you come out with are just going to provide fodder for me to have fun with.'
"Twerp had actually gone on a rant not long before about how the forum moderators ought to let people say what they wanted to more, after another member who was always insulting people got banned. Someone stood up for me and said to Twerp, 'So much for your free speech rant.'
"I said, 'Perhaps his liking for free speech depends to a large extent on whether or not He's the one doing the speaking.'
"Twerp said something else, and I joked, 'Be quiet, Twerp! It's time you were deported to the colonies! I must have a quiet word with the transport police about that! ... Oh yeah, we stopped doing that, didn't we. Pity.'
"After a while, I found Twerp so irritating I put him on my ignore list, and told him he was on it. One day he said something to me anyway, and I joked, 'Oh, it's Twerp, the man who forgot he's on my ignore list. I can tell what he said though. He's recently been in the mood to confide in the forum members about his personality and habits. I haven't read anything he's said, but I just spookily know. So I'm sure he's done the same thing here. In fact, I can tell you just what he said, by pointing a special cursor to his post, whereupon it'll generate a word-for-word rendition of what he said, based on a strictly accurate measurement of the electrical pulses his post generates and a reading of the positions of the stars at the exact time he posted, by which the technology can generate a psychic translation. So here's what his post says: ...
"'Oh no! What's happened to my psychic post-generation machine! It must have broken! Twerp's post can't possibly have finished just there! Not right in the middle of a sentence! I'll just give the machine a quick whack. ... No, it still doesn't work. Oh well, never mind.'
"Then he said something else to me, and I joked, 'Hey wonderful! Another of Twerp's posts for my psychic post-generation machine to translate with its special divination cursor tool! I think it's mended now. So here goes:
"'"I, Twerp, prime minister of the UK, do solemnly declare the following:
"'"From midnight tonight, all school dinners are to consist solely of dandelion leaves, with a sprinkling of sugar on Fridays. The teachers are to devote several hours a day to picking dandelion leaves when they're in season, so many can be frozen, so the children can eat them all year round. School will henceforth be held seven days a week, with the timetable consisting entirely of instruction in methods of preparing dandelion leaves, so the children will know how to carry on eating this healthy diet after they leave."'"
The students laughed.
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