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 friendsnot
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,
butand 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 themit 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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