Near 20 years ago, Jesper Juul, a Danish psychologist, wrote a book which electrified the world of social workers, teachers, and child advocates. It was called ‘Your Competent Child‘ – half a million copies winged their way around the world in 16 different languages, self seeding its revolutionary ideas in every sector of the liberal agenda. It identified a new underdog ‘victim’, a valuable commodity in that peculiarly middle class world of million pound Islington mansions that provide shelter for hand wringing chief executives that totter by night on shoes that each cost more than the minimum wage but consider themselves experts on poverty and deprivation.

It was a stroke of genius – for the world was running short of starving Africans, or oppressed communists, and there weren’t enough over-worked donkeys to justify so many generously paid executives – but children as the new oppressed class! – why the world was full of them, a never ending supply of ‘underdogs’, virtually the entire female race was engaged in pumping out fresh victims! Those that weren’t were to be helped along with IVF…..

Children were said to be the victims of the ‘destructive values’ of an ‘authoritarian hierarchy’ bent on ‘enforcing ideas of obedience and conformity’ – by brute force if necessary. Naturally the first step in their ‘rescue’ by ‘the enlightened’ was to outlaw the brute force – and Denmark became the first country to criminalise smacking. Other ‘enlightened’ countries rushed to follow suit.

Very soon, ‘what shall we eat tonight’ became ‘what does our precious child condescend to eat tonight’; does he want to go to school; where would he like to go on holiday? A new authoritarian hierarchy had been established; the pyramid reversed. Hard working executives no longer left their children with the grand-parents and took two weeks in the Seychelles to recover from their labours; they queued up for the fifteenth time for the magic mountain trail ride and dined on chicken nuggets, mopping the tears of their fledglings who were convinced that the tomato sauce provided was not exactly to their taste. It wasn’t their fault, they pleaded, Ryanair had taken the bottle of Heinz out of their hand luggage, next year they’d pay an extra £50 and bring an entire suitcase full of Heinz…it wouldn’t happen again.

Now the first batch of these ‘rescued children’ are of working age. The best part of a million of them are unemployed. They would have you believe that this is due to a couple of years of Tory government, and something the BBC refer to as ‘the cuts’. It isn’t.

For at the same time, it has been revealed today that 4.25 million, four times as many, young people born in ‘unenlightened countries’ to ‘cruel and authoritarian’ parents who made them do their maths home work, get where they were supposed to be on time, and accept ‘no’ as an answer sometimes, are now mopping up not just the carrot washing manual jobs, but the highly paid engineering and banking jobs as well, in the UK.

The media like to portray the 400,000 young French people now working in London as refugees from a terrible country – the truth is, they cannot believe their luck, the British are so desperate to employ youngsters who can add 2 and 2 and consistently come up with 4, who arrive in the morning looking fresh and eager, and do exactly what they are asked to do, that they will pay far more than any French employer who takes these things for granted. The same applies to the Asian youngsters.

Afternoon television is full of guilt inducing advertisements for endangered species; Siberian tigers, Syrian children, starving Somalians. £2 a week for each please! (£3 for Oxfam’s victims, something to do with the Chief Executive’s salary I suspect) but where are the appeals for help to save the home grown endangered species? £2 a week for Jason and Clint, languishing on their sofas, unwanted – I’m forgetting, of course that isn’t a voluntary contribution on your part….

How though, are they supposed to take their children to Florida Disneyland, and ferry them to school in Range Rovers? We are going to have to up our contributions if they are to bring forth a new generation of ‘enlightened parenting’. I read an article the other day regarding ‘fuel poverty’ where the writer was explaining that though she was now a well paid columnist she had ‘known hard times in the past’, in fact she had had to dress her baby in a restrictive fleece baby-grow and dressing gown so he could play when she couldn’t afford to heat her home to ‘nappy only’ temperatures – wow! Such deprivation.

If this new generation are unemployable, forced to live on benefits, they won’t be able to afford all the ‘carrots’ – and will just have to resort to the ‘stick’.

We should be OK in a generation or so…..just hang in there folks.

Chris Retro
November 10, 2013 at 12:32

Had to share this nugget from my Facebook newsfeed (Remembrance Sunday) – the chap who posted it is a happy-go-lucky guy, about 23, who often rants about stuff in the news etc and loves his tattoos. Bless him,

“So embarrassed! Sat in McDonald’s tending to Logan and I don’t realize the entire place has gone quiet. It’s only about 45 seconds into the minute silence that I’m made aware if it!! McDonald’s could’ve made an announcement or something! I’m so ashamed! “

rabbitaway
November 10, 2013 at 13:18

That was nice of him Chris. Has anyone ever stood amongst the crowds at the cenataph during the 2 min silence ? I was there in 2008 for the 90th anniversary of the start of WW1. A truly amazing experience, not a word uttered and the crowd is vast. Whilst we’re on the subject, here’s a lovely story about a man who fought in WW2 who had no friends or family to attend his funeral …. until … read on !

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-24879883

Chris Retro
November 10, 2013 at 13:28

My grandad used to take me to the local cenotaph every year when I was a lad to watch the parade and pay our respect – back when the City Centre was quiet on a Sunday and coffee-guzzling “fun people” weren’t feeding their offspring sugary poison in McDonalds.
Of course the tradition of watching these parades is now almost as buried as the casualties of those two wars – no matter how they try to force new ‘relevance’ by factoring in the casualties of the more recent Imperialist Wars….

rabbitaway
November 10, 2013 at 13:38

Funny how so many things are becoming obsolete : Halloween, no trick or treaters this year, Bonfire night – no back garden bonnies any more etc etc, maybe I’m just getting old – things ain’t as nice as they used to be !!!!

Orde Solomons
November 5, 2013 at 22:57

One thing that hacks me off is that too many of the museums I loved as a child have been badly affected by what I call ‘museum designer blight’. This was done to make them ‘more accessible’ and ‘child friendly’. Oh F O.

suspicious
November 5, 2013 at 11:24

Our leaders are good at making us think that it’s all OUR fault. It’s because we are lazy, good for nothing, it’s because of us Brits that we are in this mess. We Brits are bad news. Nothing to do with poor leadership then? Nothing to do with bad policies? Nothing to do with them of course. I look at the companies I’ve worked for over the years and the good ones had excellent managers who had their feet on the ground, who lead from the front, who took responsibility when things went wrong. Good training was in place and good supervision. The bad ones were slopey shouldered, good at looking good but had no substance, blamed others for their mistakes…sounds a bit like our politicians. They’ve recently voted themselves a £10k p.a wage rise. For what exactly? If it was performance related, they’d have been sacked long ago.

JimmyGiro
November 5, 2013 at 09:43

Unemployment is not the problem per se, it is ‘bad’ employment which is killing our culture. According to the Institute of Fiscal studies, the cost of the unemployed is less than 5% of the £200 bn yearly cost of benefits:

http://www.ifs.org.uk/bns/bn13.pdf

The problem is the burgeoning public sector, which I believe accounts for in excess of 40% of the working population. For example, the DWP alone costs £42 bn annually, compared to the JSA payments, which are less than £5 bn. Do we need those expensive civil servants as much as the ‘democratic’ State needs its indentured clientèle? And recall Parkinson’s Law, which infers that an increase of busybodies must generate a corresponding increase in ‘problems’ for them to deal with, real or invented.

The economy is the private sector; hence the cost of maintaining the 40% public sector is the obvious problem to solve. My solution: give the unemployed part-time work in the public sector, along with demoting all the civil servants to part-time and minimum wage. If the present civil servants complain, replace them on the spot with a trained ‘JobSeeker’; and in one stroke, reduce the number of unemployed, and the cost of the public sector.

And for those that knock parents, recall that parents are as varied a species as anybody, whilst teachers and social workers are all State trained and certified. It was not parents who beat the drum for ‘political correctness’, unless they were State sponsored single parent mums.

The State controls or influences the MSM and, probably more worryingly, the departments of University ‘science’, and their copious, politically corrected, research; therefore it is fair to say that the State controls the minds of at least 80% of the populace [according to Pareto analysis] in some way, and 60% of the populace [according to Milgram analysis], in an absolute way. So when the State, via the MSM, tell people what to be concerned with, think outside the padded-cell.

suspicious
November 5, 2013 at 11:43

You Sir have your eyes open. I’m convinced our erstwhile leaders are shifting the blame from themselves onto us, in an attempt to cover up their bad policies such as immigration and open borders. The MSM, especially the BBC, seem to be in cahoots.

charlotte
November 4, 2013 at 23:30

For more than 20 years many parents have given their children anything, including copious amounts of money, just to save them the effort of disciplining them. Parents don’t want confrontation with their children, they just want a peaceful life with the sitting room empty from 8pm each evening and so pile the children’s bedrooms with as much technological entertainment as they can get their hands on. Parenting is a tough job as I, and many others replying here can vouch for; it’s not easy to say ‘NO, not on a school night.’ ‘NO you’re not going,’ ‘No, not until you do your homework and I want to see it.’ Even if the rod has become figurative not wielding it will spoil the child. I don’t believe that children do need to be beaten, because parents hold all of the cards and they can withdraw privileges at any time. There’s always something to look forward to, and so threats to remove a privilege should be carried out but often aren’t. As for me I took my dear old Mum’s advice which was to start off as you mean to carry on, because if you don’t make a child understand discipline before they are 3 years old you never will, and as usual she was right.

carol42
November 4, 2013 at 22:37

It often seems we are being ‘run’ for and by the children these days. Of course it suits our masters to stop or restrict everything they dislike, smoking , drinking etc. for the ‘children’. I don’t know how or when this happened, or even why? but heaven help us if we ever need to rely on a generation raised to think they are the most important people in the world and we are certainly not doing them any favours.

Ed P
November 4, 2013 at 20:02

It’s time to start a new business: long-term unemployed in one door and Soylent Green out the other.
Problem solved: this neatly converts burdens on society into useful nutrition. Simples!

JimmyGiro
November 5, 2013 at 08:56

And when the Soylent Green runs out, the process can just as easily be converted to Soylent Grey, or Soylent ‘have a different belief’.

Mizz Mildred
November 4, 2013 at 17:00

I recall some of those TV programmes that asked a family to live life as in the Victorian, Edwardian or, perish the thought, on rations and clothing coupons in the second world war. The children had faces like a yard of pump water. How dare adults get us into this terrible privation and suffering.Wear liberty bodices, green bloomers and knitted cozzies. Flippin eck! Knit a dishcloth, mend a hole in a sock. Make a pillow case out of an old sheet. Turn a shirt collar, use starch, feed the hens some ghastly stinky potato mash. Go to the coal house and use a hammer to smash lumps of coal for the fire and haul it into the house. I’ll ring Esther and complain….oops sorry not born yet perhaps. Much rather wallow on the DFS and gawp at my smart phone or ipad or a gargantuan telly than do anything else. How dare an adult ask a delicate blossom such as this child to do anything but eat and gawp and be endlessly carted about and expensively entertained. Sorry Anna so difficult to avoid the cosseted child syndrome these days….its called TOXIC CHILDHOOD and it is standard practice currently in many households.

Moor Larkin
November 4, 2013 at 18:56

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/oct/25/my-child-is-crying-greg-pembroke
It’s clear that Greg is enchanted by the powerful will of the toddler in general, not just his own, and fascinated that adults are often no match: “You leave hospital with this super-fragile, tiny, beautiful creature and you don’t know what to do! Is this allowed? How is it legal that I am in charge of this thing?”

Play your cards right and someone will come and take it off you………….

Duncan Disorderly
November 4, 2013 at 14:18

Many questions:
– Are there no deadbeats in France?
– Are there no French people who have been raised with ‘progressive’ parenting?
– Are deadbeat Britons the one’s who were raised in ‘progressive’ households, or in households where they get clouted on a whim?
– Why do French employers not value French people enough to employ them?

Anna Raccoon
November 4, 2013 at 14:25

Q1. Definitely are some deadbeats – tend to be in cities though. In a country where everybody inherits something from their parents, those in rural areas are either still living with parents/living in parents old house and growing their own veg/or had a part share in parents old house and have bought themselves something smaller.
Q2 I’m told there are some Parisians raised in this manner. Rural areas stick to the old ways – you see kids fall over and hurt themselves – and one steely glance from a parent stops the tears – they are still hurting, and get cuddled, but they know better than to scream the place down in public.
Q3. NO idea.
Q4. They do, but they don’t pay a premium for obedience, discipline, or common sense – they take that for granted as a prerequisite of getting a job in the first place. Admittedly, the French don’t often employ foreigners, which is becoming a problem in a global economy.

Duncan Disorderly
November 4, 2013 at 17:45

Your main assertion – that Britons employ foreigners because Britons aren’t good enough – is lacking in evidence, then. I recall many French youths showed initiative and discipline in the field of setting cars ablaze a few years ago, just as our youth showed the same in looting shops a couple of years ago.

“Admittedly, the French don’t often employ foreigners, which is becoming a problem in a global economy.”
If they started employing foreigners in large numbers, would that prove the French youth weren’t good enough? If not, then why does the fact British firms employ foreigners in large numbers show that Britons are not good enough?

Fat Steve
November 5, 2013 at 09:26

Presumably Anna of the 16 languages into which the Competent Child was translated French was not one of them. I attempt to jest in manner of a certain Racoon I have watched in recent months though suspect I lack ability.

Duncan Disorderly
November 5, 2013 at 11:26

As you will see below, your theory has been refuted! Amazingly, of the 16 languages the book has been printed in, the publishers elected to translate the book into French in favour of Tagalog, Basque, or Cornish. So, compared with Britons, how many French people were led astray by this book?
http://www.amazon.fr/Regarde-ton-enfant-est-comp%C3%A9tent/dp/2850089060/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1383646292&sr=8-1&keywords=votre+enfant+comp%C3%A9tent

By the way, I see the author has also written a book entitled ‘No!: The Art of Saying No! with a Clear Conscience’.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/No-The-Saying-Clear-Conscience/dp/1468579304/ref=pd_sim_b_2

Moor Larkin
November 5, 2013 at 13:19

Isn’t there an element of tax avoidance going on with being a “foreign worker”?
Isn’t this why Brits swan off to work in Dubai or wherever?
If a Pole can take his pay gross, will he not therefore be willing to work for less than a Brit who has to pay his PAYE?
The biggest objection to foreign workers is surely not that they take the jobs of the locals but rather that they force down the wages via that old-fashioned supply & demand thingummy that Socialists like to pretend they can legislate out of reality.

Surreptitious Evil
November 6, 2013 at 08:57

Unless you are employing on the grey market (in which case, why would you pay a Brit PAYE?), then your Polish worker gets PAYE deducted just the same as the local-born.

Dubai, of course, is different.

Moor Larkin
November 6, 2013 at 17:52

What is it about the UK that attracts Europeans then, I wonder. It cannot be the shadow economy, as you say.
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2013/04-2/20130506_shadow1.jpg

Moor Larkin
November 4, 2013 at 13:53

One has to larf……………

“Parents living in fear of their abusive and violent teenagers are being left without support because of a lack of understanding of adolescent violence directed at parents, according to the first academic study into the issue.

Data from the Metropolitan police revealed that there were 1,892 reported cases of 13- to 19-year-olds committing violence against their own parents in Greater London alone over a 12-month period from 2009-10.

Dr Rachel Condry, lead researcher at the University of Oxford, which carried out the study, said there was little support for parents in such circumstances from police, youth justice teams or other agencies.

“The problem has, until now, gone largely unrecognised, which can mean that parents can find it very difficult to get help,” she said.

“The parents we spoke to said they were stigmatised and felt ashamed – they were experiencing patterns of controlling behaviour that were similar to domestic violence. One woman told us she would get up in the middle of the night to make her teenager dinner because she feared the consequences if she didn’t; others talked about walking on eggshells.”

Britain’s incoming director of public prosecutions, Alison Saunders, warned last month that teenage violence in the home was a hidden aspect of domestic violence: “There is a lack of respect and a lack of regard for authority. When I was growing up the thought of striking a parent was beyond the pale. Is that peers? Is that TV? Is that the general environment in the house? You are not born to commit domestic violence.”
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/nov/03/parents-fear-violent-teenagers-support

Edna Fletcher
November 4, 2013 at 13:07

Dartinngton Hall School in the 1920′s was actually rather more progressive in the child- adult relationship, giving children the ‘right’ to not do what they chose not to do i.e. go to classes. Well what child would choose to be indoctrinated by someone so uninspiring as an inner city school teacher (few of mine were inspiring)!.

I met a few of the Dartington schooled pupils in the 1980′s and most certainly they were ‘nicer’ than the variety one sees in the average state or public school. They also tended to be more sensitive, less agressive and not necessarily ambitious- artistic often.

Many ‘alternative, progressive, schools were ‘non authoritarian’ and allowed children to ‘flower’ naturally and develop their own internal moral compass. Not many of these children, surprisingly, ended up like the cosseted young of today unemployed / uninspired. I have known a few. Why? because the choices they made in the envorinments they were educated somehow managed also to create a sense of personal responsibility for those choices. That is what has gone wrong over time, from my generation onwards, in the ‘normal’ social settings of much of British Society. Give me being different anyday if it makes for a free and thinking individual. That is why Asian and French youngsters differ- they somehow are educated and socialised in a manner that creates an eager approach to life- to get on and do things and develop. Self motivation is what a lot of the alternative schools were about.

Anna Raccoon
November 4, 2013 at 14:18

Edna,
Just as a matter of record – I attended a sister school to Dartington Hall in the 60s – St Christopher’s in Letchworth.
It was where I acquired my Quaker faith.
It was progressive in many ways – no uniform, which was exceptional in those days though doesn’t sound much of a rebellion in these times! Trust me, unless you owned a pair of ‘bath-shrunk’ Levi’s and a charcoal grey Marks and Spencer v-necked jumper, you were a dead duck socially. I only had my ‘mufti’ brown velvet dress with lace collar, left over from a previous school’s idea of fashionable wear for the 12 year old. Let’s just say I didn’t fit in with the fashionable ‘no-uniform’ look. Kids eh?
It was vegetarian – very avant garde back then. Unless you had the pocket money to go down to the tuck shop/post office on the corner and buy supplies of ‘Spam’ – to be eaten at midnight with a teaspoon, if you wanted to be part of the majority ‘in crowd’ – you died. Nobody thought to provide me with pocket money, it had never been needed at previous schools.
Lessons weren’t mandatory – and interestingly, that solved the problem of kids acting up at the back of class, for no one was there who didn’t want to be there. You could at least attend whatever ‘grade’ of classes you wished – so if your Mother was French, you were probably happier in 6th grade French than bored to tears with your own age group.
I, and another girl, who interestingly ended up in Duncroft with me (now deceased, so I won’t mention her name)solved a number of our ‘social problems’ by helping the huge fund raising exercise that was going on at that time to build the school a swimming pool. Kids were encouraged to do whatever, in bob a job style, to raise money in the town. A and I took to it with a vengeance, cleaning cars, washing windows, anything people would let us do for them. We knocked on doors with a gusto, ever eager to work.
Like you say, kids develop their own moral code – we stuck rigidly to ours – ‘Bob a Job’, actually more like sixpence to the fund and sixpence to us….
Even so, we were ‘top’ fund-raisers, ‘cos we brought in so many sixpences…. and the school has its swimming pool to this day.
And we got to eat Spam with the best of them – and A brought back two precious Marks and Spencer’s jumpers from her home leave. I have a strong memory of a particular occasion when I was still wearing that prized jumper some five years later – it was mine, I earned it.
Long time ago now…..

Edna Fletcher
November 4, 2013 at 14:32

Anna- I know of St Christopher’s but not anyone who went there until you mentioned your stay today.

Such environments are not perfect and vegetarianism rather common as often the founders philosophy comes from the East.

Some consider these schools ‘elite’ because of the kinds of often relatively ‘well off’ homes many of the borders come from. For many of them free community life/ school can be the making of them. So well done on all those sixpences- you decided to do something and the result clearly went down well. It mus have made you feel good- just what all children need to feel from their own achievements.

Anna Raccoon
November 4, 2013 at 14:44

My uncle was a Barclays Bank manager, Barclays was a Quaker bank – not at all sure of the details, but the funding came from somewhere through those connections.
About the only thing I could ‘excel’ at was cross country running – those long legs beat boys several years my senior – and stood me in good stead in my later travails!!!! We had to run round the block first thing in the morning before we were allowed breakfast, a distance that from memory was quite substantial, probably a mile. The advantage of being in the front runners was that the ever present ‘muesli’ still had some fruit and nuts in it…those who stayed in bed til the last minute and ‘walked’ the route, effectively got uncooked porridge oats moistened with a little water…
Actually I was wondering if my ‘confession’ was unwise – do they do ‘historic obtaining money by misrepresetnation’ convictions???

Anna Raccoon
November 4, 2013 at 14:47

I was also there the year they closed down Somerleyton – and all the pupils came to St Chris. Now they really were ‘wild child’!!! They’d been used to some sort of system where the pupils had a ‘democratic meeting’ to decide whether a teacher could discipline one of the kids over some infraction – that had led to such chaos, they’d had to close the school down.

Anna Raccoon
November 4, 2013 at 14:58

Sorry, I meant Summerhills which to my surprise is still going. There must have been some hiatus with the educational authorities back in the 60s which was resolved.
http://www.summerhillschool.co.uk/

Edna Fletcher
November 4, 2013 at 16:39

I knew of A.S Neils’s school too- I was very interested in the notion of communities / schools where residents, pupils and teachers were ‘equal’ and there was an atmosphere designed to avoid the imposition of external authoritarian behaviours. Some of these schools, unlike St Christopher’s, were not specifically focussed on academic attainment. They wanted to produce ‘free’ human beings who can live happily without an external authority. Now in the much more materialisic and MSM / social media times I think we have produced ‘misfit’ children unable to be emotionally and morally strong- in the main- or challenge authority in a positive way. So we get kid beating up other kids or parents.

charlotte
November 4, 2013 at 23:09

As you said Edna the children at this school were given choices but along with choice comes responsibility. I can well remember my son, when only 6 saying he would stay up very, very late ‘from now on’. I didn’t object but said he would still have to get out of bed at 7.15 each morning for school. He lasted 2 days. I told him it was a good experiment but that it had worn me out as well! No one lost face.

Mark
November 4, 2013 at 12:30

Nah, we’ll be buying the carrots, same as ever.

macheath
November 4, 2013 at 12:02

I wish I shared your optimism. You’ve summed it up admirably, at least from my years spent in the classroom with the product of this culture – examples are many, but I’ll single out the boy whose mother demanded that I apologise to him after I made him say ‘sorry’ to another pupil injured through his carelessness; “You shouldn’t have made him do it; Jamie never apologises; it’s not his way”.

It’s far more likely that the Jamies of this world will simply abandon their parental responsibilities altogether – too much like hard work – and a generation of smothering over-indulgence will be succeeded by one of neglect and indifference. Those who succeed from such a background will indeed have the toughness bred of self-sufficiency but I suspect the casualties will outnumber them in disastrous proportions.

GildasTheMonk
November 4, 2013 at 11:33

Vintage Anna

Moor Larkin
November 4, 2013 at 10:52

@ if the shit hits the fan, we are doomed unless the invader is wearing unfashionable trainers and listening on their iPods to bad music. @

i-Pod People? Be afraid. Watch the skies!!…..
“I’ve seen how people have allowed their humanity to drain away. Only it happened slowly instead of all at once. They didn’t seem to mind… All of us – a little bit – we harden our hearts, grow callous. Only when we have to fight to stay human do we realize how precious it is to us, how dear.”
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049366/quotes

Watcher
November 4, 2013 at 10:13