THOUGHT FOR THE DAY - 8th January 2007

The Rt Rev James Jones, Bishop of Liverpool

Any parents listening to this programme in the presence of young people can take a bow! According to the latest survey, there lurks beneath the moody silence of this breakfast hour, and deep in the heart of the nation’s young people, a huge admiration for their parents! A study called “Typical Young People” reveals that mothers and fathers provide the perfect role models for Britain’s teenagers.

In a survey of one thousand 13-18 year olds six times more named their mother as the adult they most admired than those who opted for either David Beckham or Kylie Minogue. Fathers were only three times more popular than the celebrities.

Bad news for Pete Doherty and Kate Moss and their advertising agents who were named by these teenagers as some of the worst role models.

This report by the Scout Association happily debunks the view that all young people are lay-abouts who don’t care about their communities. But surveys like statistics don’t tell you the whole story.

On Friday in Yorkshire I was listening to a plumber tell me how his mother was now critically ill. Just after Christmas she’d been nearly killed by three youths joy-riding their car into hers. When the Fire Brigade came to cut her free these young men and their friends pelted them with stones. That doesn’t tell you the whole story either, but neither is it an isolated incident.

Across the country there’s a caucus of young people unruly and out of control, small yet large enough to be menacing.

It’s the product of negligent parenting and consolidated poverty.

I visit our schools in some of the toughest areas of the region. I’ve also met with staff who run the Children’s Centre and the Sure Start Programmes into which the Government has poured millions of pounds of your money.

Everywhere the story’s the same; these excellent centres simply aren’t reaching the parents who really need them. And in the schools the teachers feel they’re losing the battle, trying to instil into the children values that are trashed on the other side of the school’s reinforced fence.

Yet every now and again a child triumphs over such adversity and begins to aspire to more than owning a satellite dish and a Pit Bull Terrier. The secret? Usually through being found by someone who believes in them. If not a parent, then a teacher.

But now with personalised learning plans I feel we may be asking too much of teachers, placing on them all the responsibility and the blame for our children’s nurture.

From the Torah to the Gospels, from the Koran to the Upanishads the God-given and primary duty to care for children lies not with the State nor with the school but with the parent, with the child’s author.

Until the State realises this, it’s interventions will always only be remedial.