Feral youth, a bit like credit crunch, has become a phrase that falls trippingly off the tongue.
Politicians have grown fond of bewailing the antics of feral youth. Councillors conveniently blame vandalism on feral youth.
Teachers cite feral youth as the cause of our teenagers’ poor reading and writing skills. Indeed, the phrase feral youth has been used so frequently and lavishly by callers to my radio show in the past couple of years, I often felt moved to question them.
“Hang on just a second, you’re describing children as wild creatures, savages, untamed and untrained. Is this really your experience of young people today?”
When challenged, some callers back-tracked: “Not exactly, no. They’re rude and aggressive but not actually animal-like.”
Others were adamant that feral, which derives from the Latin fera, meaning ferocious beast, is exactly the word they want.
Now children’s charity Barnardo’s has commissioned a poll which shows that intolerance of young people has escalated to the point where more than half of all adults think British children are beginning to behave like animals.
More than a third of us agree that our streets are “infested with children”. Fling the word vermin, now commonly used to describe children, into the mix and we are faced with a perception – which Barnardo’s is obviously keen to change – that today’s young people are sub-human, uncivilised and barely house-trained.
Never in this country’s history have our “yoof” been so feared and so demonised by adults. Yesterday morning, armed with the information: “People overestimate, by a factor of four, crime committed by children”, I set out to
ask my audience whether feral is truly accurate description of youngsters based on our own experience or simply a catchphrase designed to whip up animosity and mistrust.
Calls poured in from teachers, social workers, youth workers, parents and grandparents, many asking to have their names withheld because they feared reprisals from children in their areas.
Horrifying stories of spitting, snarling children urinating on cars, braying and shrieking into the small hours, shinning up drainpipes and swearing at the elderly followed.
There were some still, small voices calling for calm, clemency and compassion. A handful of people did ring to point out that children are just young human beings who need to be nurtured and cared for. Those calls were drowned by the deluge from people terrorised and disgusted by children they encounter on buses, in the street and in a professional capacity.
An elderly lady told me of the gangs of children who congregate outside her block of flats, yowling and cursing all night. When she leans out at 3am and asks them to please keep the noise down, she’s told to “**** off”. One night a girl was brutally raped just a few feet from the flat.
She cried out in fear and pain, but no one even noticed.
The noise level was so high her screams didn’t register. A youth worker described caring for and amusing 11-year-olds until nine in the evening. When her job was done and the club’s doors closed, she knew these children would be roaming the streets, unchecked and unprotected until 11pm.
Their parents had warned them not to dare try coming home before then. What did she think the parents were up to behind closed doors?
She told me that she couldn’t bear even to think about it.
Several home-owners described snatches of verbal abuse hurled at neighbouring children, overheard through party walls: “Get to your bed you ****ing ****, or I’ll beat your ****ing head in!”
Others told of unwashed, undernourished-looking children climbing out of windows after their parents had left them home alone.
“You can tell the feral children, Vanessa. They’ve got a peaky, sly look about them.”
Barnardo’s is to be commended for generating this debate. There’s no doubt that demonising children makes them the villains and absolves us of the responsibility for doing anything about it.
If, however, it seeks to prove that feral youth doesn’t exist as anything more than a mere political/media invention, I fear it will have its work cut out.
NO ARGUMENT.
07.12.08, 12:28pm
The number of feral kids is increasing every year, spurred on by the very ambience of a growing yob culture of thick, crude parents living on benefits and cash in hand work, the lack of anything in our country to respect, due in many ways to the most stupid and ignorant government in our history. Beaten into second place only by Mugabe. Feminism and "political correctness" has taken away any form of discipline from our society. We are like a tarted-up bunch of phonies. We wallow in mediocrity. Our kids have no chance. The only time I come across real values is when dealing with "the old school" - remember the phrase? And they are now dying out.
Video 
NO ARGUMENT.
07.12.08, 12:28pm
The number of feral kids is increasing every year, spurred on by the very ambience of a growing yob culture of thick, crude parents living on benefits and cash in hand work, the lack of anything in our country to respect, due in many ways to the most stupid and ignorant government in our history. Beaten into second place only by Mugabe. Feminism and "political correctness" has taken away any form of discipline from our society. We are like a tarted-up bunch of phonies. We wallow in mediocrity. Our kids have no chance. The only time I come across real values is when dealing with "the old school" - remember the phrase? And they are now dying out.
• Posted by: bluenote • Report Comment
To view all 'Have Your Say' comments, click this button...