Neil Davenport wonders how changes to the English education system may have influenced the rioters’ attitudes:
Some young people, asked by journalists why they rioted, blamed their violence on the scrapping of the educational maintenance allowance (EMA), the hike in university tuition fees or rising youth unemployment. These apparently radical platitudes sound obviously rehearsed, designed to please liberal journalists. [. . .]
No doubt there was a hardcore of repeat delinquents smashing in windows. But many more of the rioters seemed like the normal, and likeable, teenagers that I have taught in schools in London over the past decade. In the capital, some 91 per cent of the riotous offenders were under 25, many of them aged between 16 and 18. As one commentator quickly observed, this means they were all educated under the New Labour government (1997 to 2010). It makes you wonder what they learnt at their New Labour-era hi-tech schools. Perhaps the real lesson they learnt is that nothing should be allowed to dent their self-esteem, and nobody should ever be allowed to ‘victimise’ or ‘bully’ them or prevent them from doing what they like.
In recent years, young people have internalised a corrosive sense of entitlement, where they really do believe that the world owes me, me, me a living. Since this retrograde outlook is far more institutionalised in London’s education system than elsewhere in Britain, it is not that surprising that a hardcore of rioting took place in the capital rather than in, say, Scottish cities. Their education system is largely separate from England’s.
‘New Labour kids’ have been more flattered, mollycoddled and freed of responsibilities than any generation before them. These days, as young people progress through the education system, they learn that there is a whole raft of medical reasons why they can’t write neatly or behave properly in class. They also know that if their exam grades are slightly disappointing, they can always blame the teachers. And New Labour’s social-inclusion charter also means that schools cannot automatically throw kids out, even in the sixth form, for not working hard enough or for their poor behaviour. Local education authorities can fight to ensure that a suspended child is reinstated and then attack the school for failing to provide ‘adequate support’ to address the pupil’s ‘psychological issues’.
