What are the positives you can take from Sergeants discussion? Was it clearly written? Did it have a coherent structure? How was your understanding of the rioting of August 2011advanced?
Studying Social Policy ASSIGNMENT 1- Critical Review
Submission 28 October 2014
Harriet Sergeant When nothing matters -The nihilism of the riote rs has been fostered by the state The Spectator, 13 August 2011, p12-13 (The Spectator is a weekly publication, ideologically very close to the Conservative Party}.
In 350 words you are required to produce a critical review of the attached article a critical review implies a discussion of both strengths and weaknesses. A bullet
point format is acceptable providing that meaning is clear to the reader. What are the positives you can take from Sergeants discussion? Was it clearly written? Did it have a coherent structure? How was your understanding of the rioting of August 2011advanced?
What do you see as the flaws in her article? Inconsistencies? Contradictions? Lack of Clarity? Sweeping generalisations? Bias? An understanding of August 2011is not the centra l objective of this exercise rather it is developing you skills as a critical thinker and reader. Nevertheless, the
events of that month are a major concern for us as students of social policy.They exposed many issues at the core of our discipline: crime, schooling, the family,
equality, citizenship, poverty, class, gender, ethnicity, social cohesion, alienation ¦¦. all notions which will be visited and revisited throughout your degree
programme.
mw2014
¢Whn nothing matters The nihilism of the rioters has been fostered by the state HARRIET SERGEANT
n the third day of the Lon don riots, I spoke to Mash, a member of a Brixton gang whom I befriended three years ago, He was standing out side an electronics shop in Clap ham, watching the looting. Icould hear shouts, glass breaking but
no pol.ice sirens. I urged .him to go home.Harri man, he remonstrat ed down the telephone, his voice hoarse, You dont get to do this every day. You do your
ting, and you dont get arrested. Its wild and .exciting. These few days, its our time. The i::-iots engulfing areas of London and other cities this week are not about poverty or race. They are about young men like Mash who are bare ly literate, unemployed, with no future and nothing to iosB. For them, this is a
dream suddenly come true. Their fafourite video games have become areality.They have got what they never had before:power, a sense of achievement and lots of
goodies. Most of us want the same things.The differeace is that we can get them without setting Lon don ablaze. I met Mash while interviewing black Caribbean and white working-class boys around the country for a think-tank report. The young mf:.u Iinterviewed had very
obvi ously failed to make the¢transition to manÂ
our cities, look, t a.$et of figures on literacy rates that came out a week before the riots began. Teaching a child to read and wri te is not difficult or expensive. Much poorer countries manag,:to do it. The statistics in the UK are stagg::: ip.g. A full 63
per cent of white working-class¢boys andjust overhalf of black Caribbean boys at the age of 14 have a reading ageof sven or below.How does that translate into the
criminality on our str.eets? Humiliated in lessons, by 14, the young men I These 1101.1.ngm.en came of age during the Byears of Labour rule. They are Blairs children
to work. They do not investi gate or make use of the evidence that shows what children actu ally need to thrive: discipline, structure, plenty of exercise and
something in which to identify and take pride (many find this oii.ly in gangs).Faced with a child who is incapable of directing his own learning, teachers will ask
what is wrong with the child or blame his background not their teaching. Over and over again,the pre vious government put the inter ests of teaching unions above those of pupils. Even with our dis:nal educational results for our poorest children -only one in sixwhite boys onfree school meals hav mastered the three Rs -just 12 teachers out of a work force of 450,000 have been
suspended for incompetence in the past nine years. The second key factor is the change in Britainsjob market.Forty years ago, ayoung man could leaveschool at 16 with few,if any, qualifications, get a job ina
factory and, at 19, support a wife and child. Now there are far fewer such jobs. This leaves working class black and white boys particularly vul nerable to the
other major change in the job market: immigration.According to the ONS, of the 1.8 million rise in employment over the Labour years,99 per cent went to
hood and successful adult life.Their failure reaves them.¢diseiigaged from society and its values. The majority find themselves trapped in an extended, semi-
criminal ado lbscence well into their twenties and thir ties. The former Mayor of London, Ken LivÂ
interviewed had either dropped out or were   immigrants. Since David Cameron came to excri.Ided.They then spent their timehanging   power, the figure has
dropp
ed, but only to around on the streets, turning up to school   82 per cent.This leaves the native poor with 1 only to sell drugs or stolen goods.   little or no
chance of finding employment I Studies showthat about half of theprison   and doing something goodwith their lives. population has a reading age below that of      This
invidious situation is made worse i an 11-year-old. Of one south London gang   still by the effect of benefits.Far from lift-
ingstone, has been quick to blame thiS sud den explosion of violence on Conservative tax cuts. He has  nerve. These young men came of age during the 13 years of Labour rule. Tuey are Blairs children and the lefts creation. It is not deprivation that has stunt ed their lives but the policie of
the previous government inthree key areas:school,work and home. To begin to understand the mayhem in .
I met three ¢years ago, all were bright but   ing these young men out of poverty,it bolts 1 semi-lj.terate. Three are now in prison. Bigs,   down the hatch. Again and again, I have ! the former leader of one of Bructon s most   found myself in court speaking on behalf I notorious gangs,received his first prison sen-   of young men who have tried to get jobs, tence at is.Other people go from school to   only to find they were
better off sticking , University, he told me. We go from school   with benefits. One young man I spoke to 1 to prison.   was offered a job only to be told by his Job Our educational establishment puts its   Centre adviser not to take it.After the loss cherished beliefs first and the child a very   of his rent, council tax and utility payments, 1 distant second.They emphasise what ought   he would have been £30 worse off.   ! . ¢ . ¢Â   THE SPECTATOR Ir3AuGUST 20Il Iwww. PECTATOR.CO.UK ;
Tueyoung men now roaming our streets frighte.n us because they b.ave such total disregard for our values. But then they have disengaged from society for a
reason. .T   hey see nothing in it for them. And in this ¢Â   they are quite right. The overwhelming atti tude of all the young menIencountered was despair at the prospect of a life on ben efits.
he third area in which government intervention has been disastrous is in the home. Politicians are now appearing on TV demanding that parents keep theii; chil dren under curfew. wonder what planet they are living on. Certainly not
the same bne as the boysIknow, for whom grown¢Â  ups are absent or ineffectual.Tue children do not even get fed properly. A recent sur vey found that 49 per cent
of British parents did not know wheretheir children were, or whom they were with, in the evenings.Some 45 per cent of 15-year-old boys spent four or more
evenings a week hanging about with friends, compared with Just 17 per cent in France. Tuggy Tug, a gang leader, said of his . friends,I get more from them than I ever did from my family. His recent spell in jail was his first experience of speading time with adult males.   ¢ Nearly .every one of the young men I interviewed had ayoung singlemother.Brit ainhas the highest rate of teenage pregnan¢¢ cy in Europe. Despite the huge
amount of evidence of the harm this causes children, the Labour government made singh:moth erhood an attractive proposition. Since 1997, a single mother of
two children has seen her benefits increase by a staggering 85 per cent. To accuse these young girls of being feckless is unjust. .They are responding to the economics of the situation.They are as much victims of the crisis in our
schools and theperverse influence of benefits as teenage boys.Tuey have grasped 6e consequenc- es of our dysfunctional education system: : boys take to crime, girls get pregnant. The government has put young girls in a posi tion where the only career open
to them is to have children whether they want to or not, whether they will be good mothers or not.The state has taken over the role of both husband and father and has failed
at both. We have seen the effects of that fail ure this week. On the othr end of the telephone, Mash gave me the latest. Usually confined to one ¢ small area, he was relishing the freedom of being able to move around
London without being attacked by other gangs; Only peo ple to worry about is the feds, he saic.But the feds are scared, Harri.We can see it in their eyes. They are scared 100per cent. We should be scared, too.
SCHOOL OF NURSING,MIDWIFERY, SOCIAL WORK AND SOCIAL SCIENCES Studying Social Policy Assignment 2 Key Concepts
Researching,and using your own words, construct a definition of the followi.ng concepts:- ¢Â   equality ¢Â   social policy ¢Â   community care
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