Select Committee on Home Affairs Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 320 - 339)

TUESDAY 19 DECEMBER 2006

CURTIS BURK, CEAN JOHNSON AND ANDREW PORTER

  Q320  Mr Benyon: Curtis, at your age, 15, to get on in life you really need an education, do you not?

  Curtis: That is what I have got YIP for.

  Q321  Mr Benyon: You need skills.

  Curtis: Yeah, that is what I have got YIP for.

  Q322  Mr Benyon: That is not the ideal way, is it? The ideal way is go through school.

  Curtis: It is not my fault. School should not have expelled me. It is stupid anyway.

  Q323  Chairman: Obviously the YIP is giving you something you were not getting at school.

  Curtis: Yes.

  Q324  Chairman: And it has worked for both of you in one way or another. What is it that you are getting from the YIP that you were not getting at school, and if school had been different could they have given you the same thing?

  Curtis: Attention more, you know what I mean? More attention and more, like, when you need help, helping you up. That is why I started coming.

  Andrew: I am going to class at college now. I think school was better than the YIP but if I did go to the YIP I know more people in the YIP round my area and they will treat me like a young adult, but in school, like I said, they do not treat you with respect, so it will probably be YIP that they go to because they get treated with more respect. You say the teaching is more limited but you get more respect and you are more likely to focus on doing your work and succeeding in that environment.

  Q325  Ms Buck: If you have got a class of 25 of you, not you personally, is it possible to give you that attention that you want? Curtis, you are saying they should not have thrown you out. I do not know what you did and I am not particularly bothered, but you are sitting in a class, there are 25 of you. Maybe you are giving mouth and you are not listening or you are trading at the back of the class, you know, all the stuff that goes on. Is it reasonable to allow that to carry on happening?

  Curtis: No.

  Q326  Ms Buck: So what you are saying about the YIP and what it is giving you, which is great, is it possible to give you that in school? What could they have done differently in school?

  Curtis: More respect. Say, if you put your hand up to ask if you want help and then someone else puts their hand up, I have seen teachers go, "Ah, she was first", when I needed help, and then when I have picked up my work she will moan at me at the end of the lesson and give me a detention and say I have not finished my work, and I tried to say I was asking for help, and then they go and tell the headteacher, "Oh, yeah, you was answering back", this and that, and then that is when you start getting vexed and that is when you end up doing something that you wish you did not do because of that. They aggravate you and just push you—

  Andrew: In a class of 25 students you have really got two times to listen. You have got when everybody comes in and they do the register and then the teacher tells you what you need to do. That is when you listen and that is when you are with your friends until you start doing your work. You listen, you know what you are doing and then you do your work. If you did not listen and if you are chatting, then you put your hand up or you ask for help then she will give you help, but if you keep on, like, talking and disrupting the lesson and stuff like that then you get kicked out and you have screwed it, it is really your fault. When there is only one teacher with 25 they give you really two chances.

  Q327  Ms Buck: You were saying that part of the reason it did not work out for you was that you felt that you were not getting respect.

  Andrew: Yes.

  Q328  Ms Buck: We have heard what Curtis's sense of that was. What do you mean by that?

  Andrew: What I mean by respect, I mean, like, understanding my point of view, talking and reasoning and listening to my point of view than just talking and not listening to what I am trying to say, or I talk but it goes over your head and then you jump in about what you are trying to say. That is what I mean by they do not show you respect. Another way, when they think you are being rude, they jump in, they snap at you and they think you are being rude. You talk back to them just the way you have grown up, the way that you talk, your background, so you talk to them like you talk and they do not like it, so they think it is rude even though it is probably not rude. It is probably like I am doing now. I am using my hands really to talk and when I do that a lot of people think I am being rude, like aggressive.

  Q329  Ms Buck: Do you feel that in general the teachers get who you are, where you come from, the city, your lives? Do they get you as people?

  Andrew: Not the majority but some of them. You get, like, one or two of the teachers who understand, treat you like a young adult as well. I get the ones where they talk to me on a level that says I am one of their friends—not one of their friends but they talk to me like—

  Curtis: They just come over to talk to you.

  Andrew: Just talk to you, not like all the time they talk to you they are shouting at you, but, like they talk to me and I am chatting and all that stuff, "Have you seen this on the TV?", meaning even though I am chatting to you I am doing my work. But the other times most of the teachers talk to me is when they are telling me to do my work or to stop talking or telling me to just stop doing what I am doing.

  Q330  Mr Benyon: We have had evidence from black communities who have said that some of the lyrics in rap and hip-hop encourage young black people to go down the path of crime. They glorify carrying knives, they glorify some of the bad things that go on. Do you go along with that?

  Andrew: That is stupid as well. The people who say that only say that because they cannot speak their mind. They do not think they can express what they really want to say, so they say what you want to hear. I used to do a lot of stuff. People talking about killing. You do not see me going around killing people because I listen to 50 Cent, Eminem and all that. I listen to it, yeah, but I do not go out actually—

  Q331  Mr Benyon: Do you think some people do?

  Andrew: Yeah, probably some people who take it more deeply.

  Q332  Mr Benyon: Ten-year olds getting a message that it is all right to be disrespectful.

  Andrew: Yes, actually, in a way, yeah. Say, like Jayme now is like, "Shut your mouth" and stuff like that. When you talk to kids, in a way, you say that because they think it is good, because they think it is hip, yeah, but in another way you do not get ten-year olds listening to tunes and going round and just threatening and doing stuff. I do not think that when you listen to music it makes you go out and want to hurt someone.

  Curtis: It is whatever you want to do.

  Andrew: Yeah, it is what you want to, but sometimes it probably does influence you because your friends are saying and everybody is saying to you stuff like that, and if you listen to whatever you want and then you know about that song but your friend don't. It is not going to make you go out and do that. Probably you will not, or even if you do it but your friend does not.

  Curtis: You can choose to do it or choose not to do it.

  Q333  Ms Buck: Have you been victims of crime, or your mates, when you were younger?

  Curtis: I have been a victim twice now.

  Q334  Ms Buck: What kind of thing?

  Curtis: One geezer tried to fight me, just started over. I beat him up, basically. Not basically, but—and then next time I was walking from my school in Meadows with my brother and seven or eight lads come up to me, two of them pulled out knives when I had my PSP and they just took it.

  Q335  Ms Buck: What did you feel about that, having knives pulled on you?

  Curtis: Nothing I could do, is it? It is not like I am going to grab one of the teachers to control it. You are just going to get shanked for that. It is just if I see them on their own that is when you get them back. I have not seen them since and that was a year ago.

  Cean: I have not really been a victim.

  Andrew: I can still feel what other people are feeling when they are a victim.

  Q336  Ms Buck: Cean, have you?

  Cean: No.

  Q337  Ms Buck: All the statistics show that young people are the victims of crime.

  Andrew: Yeah, probably some of my mates have, but not recently. It was way back.

  Cean: I have had friends that have been attacked and robbed and things like that, but it has never actually happened to me.

  Q338  Ms Buck: Has it distressed them? Has it upset them or has it made them—it is bound to in a way, but has it upset them or made them think, "Well, next time I have got to be tougher"?

  Curtis: Next time you got to carry a knife. That is what some people start thinking. Some people start thinking, "Next time I have got to carry a knife", or, "I have got to carry this or that. If I have to defend myself I have got something to protect me". That is what some people think, but if they come for me then I just use my fists.

  Cean: Or you just go out and look for revenge.

  Curtis: Yeah, or that, which is worse.

  Q339  Ms Buck: Have you ever, maybe through YIP, I do not know, been exposed to people who have been victims, not young people but other people who have been victims of crime? Is that something you have ever experienced?

  Cean: No.


 
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