From Miss snuffleupagus @ To Miss with Love
It is assumed by most people that bad kids are bad and good kids are good. What I mean to say is that somehow they were born that way. Or they were made that way in their early years by an alcoholic mother and nothing but massive intervention strategies will get them back on the straight and narrow. Schools, teachers, parents, social workers, and police officers have to help these kids to become good. We set up systems like nurture groups (from a few posts ago), pastoral support plans, mentoring facilities, support groups, smaller classes and so on and so on. And these systems have some effect. If they didn’t, we wouldn’t set them up. We may be blind, but we’re not that blind.
What I find interesting is that over the years, I have noticed that the number one thing to help black children get on the straight and narrow is to ‘send them back to Africa’. The same happens if the parent chooses to ‘send them back to the Caribbean’ of course. As long as you catch them young enough. Do it before the age of 14, and a miracle is in store for you.
The most unruly, most deranged black boys, who know nothing of discipline and respect get shipped off to Ghana and within weeks, they are transformed. Suddenly they respect their teachers, do their homework, speak politely and obey every command.
The question is why?
Because suddenly they find themselves in an environment which does not tolerate dissonance. There are no support groups, only the whip. There are no mentoring sessions, only expulsion. And the other children all sing to the tune of the school. In such an environment, no child would dare to upset the apple cart. And after a few weeks, one’s child is transformed.
I always find myself feeling sorry for the white working class as they do not have this option. Some of the black British parents don’t have this option either of course. But those poor white Scottish children in Dispatches cannot be wheeled off to a haven of discipline and order in another country. Unfortunately for them, they have to depend on their own country which lets them down at every turn.
There was a television programme recently which I wrote about where badly behaved white kids were sent to Jamaica and India and other places. For the first time, white British children were able to benefit from the discipline in the developing world. If only the change were permanent. The sad thing is that if the child returns to the disorder of the West, they return to their ‘bad kid’ status. Their only hope is to remain in ‘Africa’. But to remain in ‘Africa’ is to have fewer opportunities, less access to university, fewer advantages overall. So you can see the dilemma for the black parents who crave the order of the developing world but also value the opportunities of the western world. Send them back to Africa, I say.
It is better to be a well-mannered, well-educated store manager in Nigeria, than a terrorising gunman in Brixton any day.