How to deal with unprovoked attacks.

On Granada TV this evening (22nd July) is an article about a man in Failsworth who was attacked by a number of youths. It was a serious attack and the man lost his eye and he also lost his confidence. Only one of the youths could be linked to the offence and because of lack of evidence and because of his age he received a punishment of 150 hours unpaid work. If you can't prove that someone did something then you can't find them guilty but it must be hard for the man who knew his attackers. The irony is that the offender had pleaded guilty. I wonder what he said he was guilty of in order to get such a lenient sentence.

This puts the blog from two days ago and the offence of dropping litter into perspective. We want a tidy country but more importantly we want to eradicate violent attacks. How do we do this? Well this gentleman blamed the parents and the education system. If he is right and parent are to blame then should we put parents on trial, bearing in mind that the offender was 15 years old? As for education, he blamed discipline in schools but supported teachers becasue they had little power to discipline pupils. So if this is the case and we can't blame teachers where do we lay the blame? Do teachers have enough power? The perception is that they don't, but I know there are many schools with very good discipline.

When I was young and something went wrong then the teacher was right and the pupil was wrong and that is the way that parents saw it. The reverse is true nowadays. Children 'know' their rights and generally have the support of their parents. However there is good discipline in many schools. Regardless of the quality of the school we need to change attitudes and get parents to support teachers.

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