Against Watching The Day After Tomorrow in Geography…

Michael Gove, our chirpy young education secretary, wants to extend school hours and cut holidays. I am only six years beyond compulsory education and, thus, have an irrational aversion to the idea. My thirteen-year-old self is feigning illness at the thought. Experience, though, prejudices me against the former idea on somewhat more reasonable grounds: it seems to me one problem in the education system is not the amount of hours that children spend in school on weekdays but the amount of those hours that are squandered.

At school, for example, we had a baffling period known as “tutor time”. Sometimes we performed team-building exercises, which was futile as few of us spent time with each other outside of the groups. Sometimes we watched comical health and safety videos, which made the old Green Cross Man adverts appear downright sophisticated. Sometimes we just doodled on the fronts of our textbooks. Our tutors, who had no particular knowledge of us, little idea of what to do and no enthusiasm for it, hung around and grumped.

At least some of the average day was doomed to irrelevance, then, and sections of the terms were also misused. As Christmas, Easter or summer holidays approached, teachers, without exams to prepare us for and with an aversion to planning lessons, would play videos and organise games of little or no relevance to our studies. We liked this, of course, because we got to watch Blackadder. Ultimately, though, there was no point in going to an institution that we disliked to do things that we did not profit from. I could have stuck a video on at home.

A third and more depressing means of squandering time was observing the struggles between teachers and unruly kids. A lot of the top and middle sets would have two or three boys who regularly disrupted the progress of the class and made us bemused witness to their and the teachers’ arguments, threats and periods of mutual sulking. It could seem amusing at the time, but in retrospect it wasted hours that we could have spent learning or, hell, enjoying ourselves elsewhere. Some of these playful pupils matured or dealt with the problems their behaviour had reflected, so I am not proposing that they be tossed onto the scrap heap, but it was unfair that they obstructed the education of so many other kids, and their continued presence was a great obstruction. I remember far more euphemisms for the erect penis than French adjectives or quadratic equations.

None of this is to suggest that schooldays should be ordered with regimented efficiency, with teachers reading to the tick of metronomes, or cameras eyeing the kids’ every movements. A little looseness offers minds space in which to function. I regret the hours we spent wasting our brain cells and those of our teachers, though, and I remain sure that efforts could be made to trim the fat off days before enlarging them. The non-partisan Education Endowment Foundation agrees, saying that, “Evidence suggests that it is likely to be cheaper and more efficient to focus on using existing school time more effectively before considering extending school time”. As our youths already spend more time in school than those of most developed countries, including nations with kids that seem to perform better, this makes sense to me.

Sorry, thirteen-year-old self. I know you like Blackadder, and it is entertaining when Sam enrages Miss. Yet if that time had been used effectively you might have learned those foreign languages or grasped those laws of science, and if you had grown more disciplined in using time you might have taken those guitar or martial arts lessons. Hey, why didn’t you do those things? Hello?

 

The Drug Conquest…

A few weeks ago I reported on the fact that tens of thousands of elderly Britons are being prescribed antipsychotics despite the fact that a governmental report has concluded that most patient derive no benefit from this and one in a hundred will die as a result of taking them. Others are liable to endure weight gain, diabetes, hyperlipidemia and cardiac dysfunction, as well as life amid the torpor of a chemical cosh.

Things seem to be even worse in the United States. According to Becky A. Briesacher and her colleagues from the University of Massachusetts, more than one in five of its nursing home residents have been prescribed them. It is known that many of them do not profit from and, indeed, are harmed by their drugs. One study on patients admitted to nursing homes after hip fractures found that their use of antipsychotics was associated only with adverse outcomes. One wonders if the doctors had been told “first, do no harm” and somehow failed to internalise the penultimate word.

Antipsychotic use is also extremely high among American children and adolescents. More young people than ever are taking such drugs, and most of them are being prescribed in response to conditions they have not been approved to treat, such as ADHD or post-traumatic stress. An investigative report into their use in juvenile prisons and residential programs found that they were being doled out to treat everything from anxiety to sleeplessness.

There has been some evidence that some antipsychotics reduce aggression and conduct problems in children diagnosed with disruptive behaviour disorders but recent studies have described it as “limited” and “incomplete”, and judged that off-label prescriptions are a “cause for concern”. This is because, as well as having questionable virtues, they are known to carry serious risks for children and adolescents, and have been linked to metabolic dysfunction, cardiovascular adverse events and abnormal involuntary movements. It is also eerily true that their long-term effects remain mysterious, and studies have suggested that prolonged use may worsen brain tissue loss.

There are significant interests behind the growth of the market in antipsychotics, of course. It nets fourteen billion dollars per year for Big Pharma, and full 58% of which comes from Americans. As in the cases of other drugs, manufacturers have been sly in promoting their goods. In Florida prisons the investigative report exposed, for example, doctors who had been prescribing drugs were also accepting “huge speaker fees and other gifts from makers of antipsychotic pills”. This does not mean they need have been less objective than other doctors but it was a conflict of interest that it was significant enough that they could have been. Shahram Ahari, a one-time Big Pharma sales-rep who went rogue, revealed that drug companies rank physicians according to the rate at which they prescribe their products, and then offer gifts accordingly.

The behaviour of drug companies has been exposed in numerous lawsuits. Omnicore, which supplies drugs to nursing homes, paid out ninety-eight billion dollars after it was alleged that they had accepted kickbacks from the drug company Johnson & Johnson in exchange for recommending that elderly patients be prescribed one of their brands of antipsychotic. Johnson & Johnson later agreed to pay billions after being charged with marketing the same drug for unapproved uses. Pfizer, meanwhile, was fined after “maintain[ing] on its payroll an army of more than 250 child psychiatrists” to help promote an antipsychotic drug that had not been approved for children. This corruption is enough to give one a headache, though I would not recommend buying painkillers to deal with it.

I will not market myself as an expert on psychiatry or pharmaceuticals. It seems to generally accepted that antipsychotics are efficacious in treating certain conditions, and I can empathise with at least some of the people who recommend them to disorderly youths. This is not to say that it is the right thing to do but that I have been around kids with a great deal of energy and a great absence of respect and understand why people feel pacification is required.

Yet it seems bizarre that drugs with benefits that remain so unclear; long-term effects that are so mysterious and adverse consequences that are so evident and so obnoxious are used in such quantities. The forces behind them make the phenomenon seem more comprehensible yet also more sinister. It is tragic that old people are drugged into states of lethargy until their unassuming deaths but it is also frightening to think of the futures of the kids whose youths will bear the marks of psychological restraints, and whose growing brains may have been choked by their confinement. It seems so much more civilised than straitjackets, yet at least the old camisoles left inmates with their own minds, and at least we could be sure that their wounds would fade.

The irony is that there is another sedative that gives comfort to some of its users but has been linked to deleterious long-term results – though not, it must be said, adverse short-term effects or death among the aged. This drug has inspired Americans to spend billions of dollars, lock up thousands of their prisoners and keep their neighbouring nation mired in brutal violence. These drugs, though, it seems, are no big deal.

 

Vegetarianism and Mental Illness…

Hadley Freeman is offering advice to parents of young girls on Comment is Free. A grave threat they face, she seems to think, is vegetarianism…

Obviously not all vegetarians become anorexic and not all anorexics are vegetarian…But vegetarianism encourages people to divide foods between the good and the bad, and it then becomes a legitimate means of limiting one’s diet. Your daughter has a whole lifetime ahead of her to think of food as something other than a pleasurable physical necessity. Why let her start early?

I thought this was paranoid and patronising, and said as much on Twitter, but once my knee had finished jerking I did some research and found that she did have half a point. In a study of adolescents, Perry et al found that…

…vegetarians more often reported having been told by a physician that they had an eating disorder and were more likely to have contemplated and attempted suicide.

Indeed, vegetarians have higher rates of mental disorders across the board. Researchers at the University of Hildesheim found that they “displayed elevated prevalence rates for depressive disorders, anxiety disorders and somatoform disorders”. Wow. Was Troy McClure correct?

Well, don’t put the grill on yet. It must be remembered that correlation does not equal causation. Could it be that depressed and anxious people are more likely to become lentil-munchers? It makes sense to me. If you spend your life considering the death and suffering in the world, or fretting about the implications of your choices, it is natural that you are more likely to be troubled by the pain of animals and your responsibility for it. This does not mean you would be less miserable if you ate a pork chop.

This  insight also applies to the question of vegetarianism and eating disorders. It is worth commenting on the nature of the vegetarians that Perry studied. 53% of them reported eating chicken, which is reflective of the fact that over half of them were vegetarians not for ethical reasons but because of weight control and health. Most of those who went veggie because of their size were among the “semivegetarians”, and it was in this class of people that evidence of eating disorders was most common. A paper by Robinson-O’Brien et al lends credence to the idea that vegetarianism can be a symptom rather than a cause of disordered eating. They observe that teenagers might “experiment with vegetarianism as an acceptable form of restriction and method of concealing disordered eating behaviors from their parents”.

A young person turning to vegetarianism, then, is not a trivial matter and their parents should discuss their motivations. If they have already showed signs of trouble, be it skipping meals, losing weight unnecessarily or passing irrational or obsessive judgements on themselves, it would be plausible evidence of a descent towards poor mental and physical health. If it is for no reason other than weight loss and they hadn’t shown these signs it might be cause for caution. Some kids have to lose weight, yes, but I suspect a positive approach that emphasises the pleasures as well as efficiency of whole foods and exercise would be better than mere restriction.

If it is for sincerely held ethical reasons, though, I see no grounds for opposition. It remains possible that there is a causative risk associated with the choice but if so it is a small one. They should be encouraged to approach it healthily: not just by making sure they get protein, B12 and omega-3s but by growing enthusiastic about the aesthetic and ethical attributes of their lifestyle. They will probably end up being healthier for it.

With all that out of the way I can observe how strange it is that Freeman thinks one should or can “let” a teenager go veggie. It is a fine example of liberal paternalism. First, of course, there is the strangeness of imagining that it would be at all appropriate to strive to compel them to partake of an action that offends their conscience. Second, there is the strangeness of imagining that this will make the fiery souls agree. Then again, this was a column that advised parents to “ration [their] daughter’s diet of romcoms and musicals or she will have unrealistic expectations of human relations”. God forbid! Don’t want ‘em thinking that the world is nice.

 

Parental Advisory…

Madeleine Schwartz has written on single motherhood at The New Inquiry. “There is nothing wrong with teenage or single motherhood,” she informs us…

There is nothing wrong with teenage or single motherhood. The things children need: economic livelihood, emotional support and an education, are not dependent on a nuclear family structure. Poverty is poverty whether it’s endured by two people or four. A couple cannot raise a child better than one can.

“The potential diffusion of the family” is, indeed, “one of the most exciting things to happen to the American social pattern since sexual liberation”. Exciting? Really? It’s hard to imagine someone doing fist pumps as they read the latest statistics on fatherless families but whatever floats their boats.

Ms. Schwartz’s enthusiasm reminded me of a piece on Slate by Katie Roiphe, in which the author and journalist told us…

In the middle class the family is breaking down, there is a steep rise in single mother households and women supporting their families, but the judgmental tone is outdated and wrong. The anxious need to assert that the traditional two-parent family is better has outlived its usefulness.

It is true, of course, that many single parents can raise children as well or better than many traditional couples. There is a great deal of evidence, however, that suggests that single parent households tend to be less optimal environments for kids than that that give them a mother and father. These children are, it seems, more liable to face poverty, ill-health, emotional problems and, indeed, once they’re a little older, teenage pregnancy.

I would have been intrigued by an argument against this view. Unfortunately, though, neither of these commentators have made arguments. Schwartz does not acknowledge that such an argument might be required; merely asserting, as if letting a child know that the sky is blue or fire is hot, that there is no difference in quality between single parent families and traditional units. Roiphe implicitly admits that there might be a case to say that this opinion is misguided yet claims it is not “useful”. Useful? What does that even mean? It feels equivalent to some who’s losing a chess game insisting that it be called a draw, except, of course, that there are real consequences here.

It is not these peoples’ opinions that annoy me so much as the carelessness with which they have been formulated. The quality of single parent families will have a massive impact upon the lives of millions of children in schools, at breasts and yet to be conceived but these writers have declared their assurance in the outcome on the basis of their prejudices and some anecdotes. It is at least somewhat like a scientist proclaiming that a drug to combat morning sickness is safe to use because, well, it sounds good and they’ve heard of a woman who took it and seemed okay afterwards.

This is further evidence of the liberal allergy towards discrimination. It is almost funny. To be “discriminating” is commendable yet to practice discrimination is abhorrent. No one should deny, of course, that people can discriminate on irrational and immoral grounds yet it is sometimes reasonable and necessary. Nature will discriminate regardless of our preferences and acting in accordance with its habits is the best means that we have of avoiding its worst consequences.

This goes some way towards explaining why such commentators do not acquaint themselves with the epistemic machinery that helps one to form speculations into truths. It might slice pretty theories into unpleasant pieces. More than this, however, I’m not sure that commentators have grasped that they often require tools of data and statistical analysis to fashion valid arguments. These cannot tell us how the world should look but they are often our best means of telling what it is and what it is liable to be. It can, perhaps, be somewhat demeaning to learn how one’s their thoughts are on other peoples’ data but, hey, there are lots of bit parts in the grand drama of life and very few starring roles.

Everybody laughed when Conservatives spent weeks telling Nate Silver that people are “not…easily number-crunched” before his predictions were shown to have been almost on the money. They are not laughing now but, then, in fairness, it’s not funny.

 

University Challenges…

If there’s one part of the university experience that I’m glad I missed it’s student politics. Jumped-up representatives of Labour and the Tories are obnoxious enough but there also are student radicals. These have generally been of the Left but that’s not always the case. Student Rights draws my attention to a little band of youths who call themselves the National Culturists. In a speech to the Alliance of European National Movements, a group whose members include Jobbik and the Tricolour Flame, its leader said that that he’d thought, “If we can utilise a word like [culturism]…we can get young people involved with movements like the BNP”.

This is a front group for fascists. If they’re averse to that description they could explain why their Director of Communication’s Facebook page publicly advertises his “liking” of Gabriele D’Annunzio, Arthur Kemp and Metapedia; why his cover photo was an image from a BUF rally or, indeed, why his introductory post unironically proclaimed, “Tomorrow belong to us!” Some communicator!

(A note on Facebook: I don’t tend to mooch about on peoples’ pages but if someone has or seeks influence and leaves information exposed I’ll judge whether it’s relevant and, if it is, make use of it.)

These far rightists face vehement opposition. There are, however, different and more numerous men who’ve stalked campuses, preaching the virtues of homogenous cultures. These men have been far more open about the bleakness of the utopia they envisage. They’ve been addressing Islamic Societies.

Haitham al-Haddad is a man who yearns for Islamic law to be made “dominant in the world” and promotes its brutal prescriptions for apostates, girls with intact labias and so on. He’s been invited to address ISOCs at Roehampton, the LSE and Queen Mary universities, as well as to the Federation of Student Islamic Societies. Assim al-Hakeem is a cleric who’s defended sex slavery, child marriage and slaughter and opposed free mixing, music and women in politics. He’s been invited to speak to ISOCs at Sheffield Hallam, Queen Mary and Hertfordshire. These men are part of a circuit of Salafi preachers. Their ambitions are forbidding even by the standards of Islamic jurisprudence and their tireless schedules expose them to thousands of new recruits.

It might be held that there’s no sinister intent here; that these are just young guys inviting clerics they’ve happened across. Some groups, though, have been more overtly political. The Global Ideas Society at Westminster University are forthright promoters of Hizb ut-Tahrir: inviting their speakers to address them; promoting their events and parroting their views. The ISOC of London South Bank University, when it’s not being addressed by theocrats like Abdur Raheem Green and Murtaza Khan, has flirted with even creepier figures. Its representative uploaded videos of the sermons of Anwar al-Awlaki nine times in a three month period between this year and the last.

Islamic Societies are represented on a national level by Federation of Student Islamic Societies. This organisation has been described as “anything but radical” but as their relationship with al-Haddad suggests this is untrue. They’ve also had close links with iERA – the Islamic Education and Research Academy – which, as I’ve written, is a group of theocrats with appalling doctrinaire opinions and good PR skills. Its London Chair is a bloke who surreptitiously attends extremist conferences; seeks the guidance of totalitarians like Bilal Philips and has promoted the words of Muhammad Al-Munajjid: a man who tells Muslims to “wage jihad against the kuffaar”. FOSIS is not a monolithic group but much of its officialdom clearly falls within sensible definitions of “extreme”. It’s not a solution to the problem, then, but part of it.

The work of Student Rights in exposing this phenomenon has prompted some universities to bar unpleasant speakers. It’s a shame this task had to be left to an offshoot of the Henry Jackson Society. They’re fairly extreme themselves, if in a very different sense. Someone had to do it, though, as nobody in higher education had the wit or stomach. Malcolm Grant, Provost and President of UCL, insisted that campus extremism is a “non-issue”; something that “doesn’t exist”. Student bodies, meanwhile, are more liable to be found denouncing offensive atheists than theocratic Muslims. Were there to be branches of the National Culturists cropping up on campuses I doubt they’d be so mild.

It’s sad. It really is. An optimistic view of higher education would suppose that it allows the young to be exposed to new ideas and to acquire tools with which to challenge the dogma they’re faced with. These men and their young sympathisers are doing utmost their utmost to ensure that people actually leave it more intolerant and unreasonable. This is a darn shame for them and dangerous for us.

 

On the Need to Grow Up…

An interesting point in ITV’s exposé of the apparent child abuse conducted by Jimmy Savile came when two men who’d known him in the 1960s claimed they’d witnessed him with underage girls. From their manner they hadn’t been especially troubled. It’s an interesting fact that while sexual morality has become looser attitudes towards sleeping with the young have hardened considerably. The Rolling Stones, whose bassist started dating Mandy Smith when she just 13, sang of sleeping with a 15-year-old groupie on Stray Cat Blues. Jimmy Page hooked up with Lori Maddox when she was 14. Playing these fellows’ music was John Peel, who, at the time, was hitched to an American he’d married when she was 15.

Such liasons would, of course, be far more controversial now but in some quarters there’s still a residual feeling that if someone wants to have it off with young teenagers that’s their business, and that such behaviour is little more than harmless fun. Stephen Fry’s play Latin! or Tobacco and Boys includes a teacher who’s conducting a sexual affair with a 13-year-old pupil. The relationship is treated with no more seriousness than a custard pie to the face and the two live happily ever after. When Jonathan King, the pop impresario, was convicted of sexual offences against a string of pubescent boys, Howard Jacobson asserted that he’d done no wrong…

…if a woman the same age as King, let us say of comparable standing and let us even say of comparable looks, had shown similar interest…? I’d have reeled off my top ten and had her hand down my pants before she’d opened the door of the Roller. And the emotional damage? She’d have got over it.

Jacobson continued by informing us that King’s wrongdoing was merely aesthetic…

Having shared gym changing rooms with thiry naked sewer-brained teenage boys at a time I will go to the grave not seeing the appeal. If that were the charge – inexplicable bad taste in sexual matters – then I’d happily see Jonathan King in jail for life. Ditto inexplicable bad taste in music.

It’s true that bedding a 15-year-old is far removed from abusing a pre-pubescent, and that sleeping with a 15-year-old who’s assented to it is a different thing than forcing oneself on a youth that hasn’t, but that doesn’t make it right. Yes, there are plenty of underage people who’d enjoy a sexual liason with an older man or woman and think fondly of it for the rest of their existence. I sat among them whenever certain female teachers were around. Yet others would not desire it, and others could entertain the notion that they did before coming to lament it. If all adolescent boys had their passing whims fulfilled they’d be dead before they’d had the chance to legally drink.

“Consent” can be idealised in our liberal culture. It needn’t confer desirability upon a deed, either in objective terms or on the part of the consenter. If I agreed to have my hair shaved off while drunk, say, I’d still wake up the next morning and smash the nearest mirror. One might, then, consent to acts without acknowledging their implications; implications that may lead one to regret the deed. That’s liable to be true for the emotionally and cognitively immature. Thus, society doesn’t merely judge that acts can be unfit for people of certain ages but that they’re in no position to judge for themselves. Sex is one of these.

One thing that makes adults sleeping with young teens so vile is that they’re well-placed to convince youths that it’s in their interests. They’re figures of authority, whose age might lead the young to trust that all is well, and tend to have arrived at the peak of their cerebral sophistication and can talk less mature people into acquiescing to their wants. If they are high-status individuals, like those above, they can exploit the aspirations of idealistic youths for their sexual gratification. If Jacobson can’t grasp that it might be distressing to realise that childish enthusiasm was exploited to serve an ageing libido he’s short of the empathy that I’d imagine novelists require.

One might also consent to an act one dislikes; if, say, one is led to believe that “no” isn’t an option. Kids have to agree with grown-ups whether they’d like to or not and this ubiquitous element of child-rearing can be exploited by abusers. A girls who charged Savile with crimes, for example, says she went along with him as she thought it was expected of her. She didn’t say no but you can bet that every part of her internal self was screaming it.

Adults have a duty not to exploit the trust that’s placed in them by younger people, as, indeed, high status people have a duty not to exploit feeling of their admirers. What’s disgusting about these adults is their denial and, indeed, misuse of their responsibilities. (It’s no surprise, I guess, that so many of them were rock stars.)

 

Morals, Mental Health And Martial Arts…

When I wrote a piece on whether mixed martial arts could be a harmless and, indeed, worthwhile hobby for a kid I hadn’t thought that philosophers might have reflected on the question. They have, of course. The mad bastards consider everything. Dr Damon Young, co-author of Martial Arts and Philosophy, touches on it in his interesting essay on the role of combat practices in reducing aggression…

Research on children and adults shows that the so-called ”traditional” fighting crafts, such as judo and karate, leave students less aggressive.

It’s not simply that pacifists choose Asian courtesy over swinging fists – this isn’t just selection bias. The longer students train, the more pro-social they become. Other studies have demonstrated links between martial arts and increased confidence and school grades, alongside the more obvious improvements in health and fitness.

The substantive research that links fighting crafts to reduced aggression (that of Nosanchuk and MacNiel, for example) emphasises that this is thought to be true of traditional forms of combat. If I had a kid who took an interest in combat sports I’d be inclined towards them towards jiu-jitsu or karate. If they fancied entering the Octagon when they were older they’d be well-placed to: whether it’s Silva’s Muay Thai; Fedor’s Sambo or St. Pierre’s Kyokushin karate, all the greats have built on something they’ve specialised in. I suspect, moreover, their age-old ethics of respect and self-control are more liable to make for safer, healthier conditions for the immature.

Given the rise of the UFC, however, it’s nigh-on inevitable that mixed martial arts training will be attractive to kids and teens in years to come. It’s worth studying traditional methods to see if their valuable features can be adopted. A guy named Brad Binder studied the literature relating to martial arts and psychology and offered some insights as to what these might be…

One possibility is that the sensei or coach acts as a role-model and “leads by example”. Regets (1990) reported a positive correlation between an instructor’s aggressiveness and his/her student’s aggressiveness. Conversely, a negative correlation between an instructor’s traditional characteristics and his/her student’s aggressiveness was observed.

Binder stresses that the more reflective, even cerebral aspects of fighting crafts seem to be valuable. He reports on a study of juvenile delinquents…

The first group received traditional tae kwon do training (involving meditation, warm-up exercises, brief lecture about tae kwon do, and the physical techniques of tae kwon do); the second group received modern tae kwon do training (only the physical techniques were taught)…[Both] groups were taught by the same instructor for the same amount of time and in the same room. At the end of six months, the students in the traditional tae kwon do group showed a decrease in aggressiveness and anxiety and an increase in self-esteem. In contrast, the modern tae kwon do group showed an increased tendency towards delinquency and an increase in aggressiveness.

If there is to be a valuable form of “kids MMA”, then, there doesn’t just have to be a coherent scheme of physical training but, it seems, some form of moral instruction and conditions promotive of healthy thinking. This sounds wanky but, then, if the alternative is angry, amped-up kids being taught triangle chokes that might be worth enduring.

As for the traditional forms of martial arts that seem to be of especial value – perhaps it could be worth promoting them more widely among the nation’s youth. They’ve got to be better at encouraging decent behaviour than, say, football.

 

Violent Youths…

Should kids be allowed to take mixed martial arts training? That’s the question Nate Wilcox asks at Bloody Elbow.

The first thing to note is that they couldn’t fight as if they’re miniature UFC combatants. As much as I’d dispute the “human cockfighting” stereotypes that have tarnished the sport one can’t avoid the fact that its contestants’ ultimate goal is to pulverise whoever they’re facing to the point where they’re unable to continue or inflict such pain on them that they’re forced to submit. For obvious reasons these aren’t things you’d want a kid to be doing or, more importantly, be having done to them. Competitive fighting, then, isn’t on the cards.

It’d have to be a limited, specialised form of mixed martial arts: one that focused on the different elements of the sport until its students reached such physically and cerebral maturity that they could bring it all together. And, of course, the sensitivity of young brains and young bones would mean that appropriate headgear would have to be used if and when striking was involved, as well as great care with any type of throw or hold. There would still be injuries, of course, and journalists would seize on them like prospectors on golden nuggets, but I doubt they’d be extraordinary in scale. What pursuit has lead to 27,000 serious injuries among America’s youth? Something frenetic and violent? Boxing? Fencing? Rodeo? It’s actually gymnastics.

A more abstract question, though, is why children would feel inclined to take up the sport. Mixed martial arts, for all the skill involved, has always been driven by the urge to see who’s the toughest fighter walking – the “baddest man on the planet”. This is not the healthiest of aspirations for a child – and it’s perhaps the unhealthiest ambition that a parent can have for their child. There are great values associated with it, too – dedication, self-sacrifice, restraint, endurance – but if it’s going to be a worthwhile activity these might have to be promoted as a coherent ethic to obstruct the meathead tendency. There’s a reason you don’t hear of people karate kicking eachother in the streets.

 

There May Be Important Factors But…

The question before the jury is whether the disproportionate representation of Asian men in Britain – and particularly, according to different sources, Muslims of Pakistani origins – among known offenders in cases of child grooming can be at least in part explained by their religious and otherwise cultural backgrounds. This, it seems to me, is quite stonkingly plausible. It fits the data; it’s consistent with the bigoted abuse they’re known to sling at victims (“white bitch” and so on); it’s consistent with the views of those victims and it’s the opinion of activists, commentators and investigators who’ve researched the issue. The sane thing to do, as far as I can tell, would be to establish a thorough investigation of the issue that would collate all the available data; investigate the men, their victims and their associates to find the extent and so on to judge the extent of the problem; analyse its form and give us a better idea of how to detect and assist real and potential victims and locate and deal with their tormentors.

Yet what’s been happening in the liberal press – typically so inspired by the abuse of women and the failings of social care? Denial and equivocation. Libby Brooks wrote an entire column that dismissed all claims that ethnicity was a possible factor as “simply not true”.  UCL researchers have given us nearly 1000 words of which literally 15 discuss the fact that, yes, it seems to be at least somewhat true and of which hundreds are devoted to throat clearing. Elsewhere, Sunny Hundal compares the phenomenon to Catholic priests – irrelevant as there’s no evidence that they’re more inclined to abuse kids that any other men – the sex trade in Asia – which I’d propose has a lot to do with Western sleazebags’ cultural outlook – and basically anything else that might – but doesn’t – mean the question is insignificant.

I understand the fear, of course. The notion of malevolent foreigners comin’ over ‘ere and takin’ our women is one of the most infamous propaganda tactics in history, and more this issue is discussed the more it’s likely that innocent bystanders will face collective punishment from homegrown bigots. These are reasons to be honest and assiduous in our considerations but not to skirt around the issue. It strikes me that another of the most notorious historical stereotypes is the cruel and greedy Jew, and this fact rarely stops people from criticising the actions of the state of Israel or the activism of its lobbyists. And I sometimes get the feeling that bigotry is predominant among some peoples’ fears; the threat above all others. This is simply untrue. If aspects of this problem are neglected, and prove to be significant, we risk failing to stop vulnerable children being subjected to appalling physical and mental torments of the sort that dozens of young girls in Rochdale endured. That would and should weigh heavier on our consciences than almost any other plausible result of our behaviour.

Besides – critical as I am of multiculturalism and elements of Islamic practices I don’t think this issue need pit communities against eachother. The conviction that the rape of children is abhorrent isn’t the loftiest of standards to hold people to but I feel it’s one that just about all who live on these isles, regardless of colour and creed, would be found to meet.

 

Teenage Kicks…

Perhaps it’s morbid to say this but it’s been interesting to watch the reaction to the death of Adam Yauch. The Beasties can’t have been fashionable when I discovered music and, somehow, I never dug up Paul’s Boutique or Licensed to Ill as I mined the back catalogues of musical history. I’ve watched the responses to his death as something of an outsider, then, and they’ve been touching in their sadness and gratitude.

At the risk of earning myself a blow to the jaw, the mourners tend to be a little older than myself – old enough that they might have been enduring mucky adolescence as the Boys rose to fame. It’s hard to understate the importance of the music that’s a companion in one’s teenage years (well, no – it’s not – I could say “the music of one’s teenage years is more important than a cure for cancer” and I’d have overstated it with ease but you get my point). It’s the first time you find voices that address you as an equal, and seem to echo the frustrations and desires you silently nurture up to the point that their expression seems legitimate. That, I guess, is why they can evoke the sort of feeling you’d expect to be inspired by friends. But it’s also reason think that while one should never go the full Paul Morley and speak of music as if it’s the great intellectual struggle of our time, still less reduce everything aesthetic to politics, pop culture is important. Because if it means so much to so many impressionable people ugly, insincere sentiments and idle craftsmanship isn’t just poor songwriting – it’s something near to an abuse of trust.