The late Jade Goody
Brian Cowen is taking a beating in the polls because he is ‘telling it as it is’. But the ‘tell it as it is’ camp has a new champion: President Obama.
Speaking to the conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, he literally told African Americans to stop blaming others for their misfortunes.
The US president said: “No more excuses. No-one writes your destiny for you. Your destiny is in your hands and don’t forget that. That is why we have to teach our children – a new mindset, a new set of attitudes because one of the most durable and destructive legacies is how so many in our community have come to expect so little of ourselves.”
Oh, for an Obama at Stormont instead of the liberalising, nanny tosh from people who just won’t take responsibility or ask others to do so either.
Instead of putting pressure on parents to set an example to children and to take responsibility for their actions, we get a children’s commissioner trying to take more responsibility away from parents by preventing those that do care from chastising their own children for wrong doing.
Or the nonsense in our education debate over selection which actually diminishes the aspiration and much perspiration needed to succeed.
The least everyone wants are performing schools whether they be vocational, grammar or all-ability schools. But good schools need good, committed teachers and in some cases schools are being let down by teachers who are so not committed.
Under performing schools are also failed by uninterested parents. Parents who don’t see the value of education and who won’t take responsibility for the quality of lives they bring into this world. ‘Cop out’ parents, who are let off the hook of responsibility by well-meaning policy wonks.
President Obama threw down the gauntlet to ‘opt-out parents’, saying: “put away the Xbox, put your kids to bed at a reasonable hour, raise your children’s expectations by looking beyond the dreams of becoming a basketball player or rapper.”
His remarks could easily find targets here as testified by the thousands of parents whose aspiration goes no higher than pushing their children towards instant but fleeting fame in reality TV shows like The X Factor or Big Brother.
When we see recreational violence on the streets of north Belfast the question has to be asked: “Where are the parents?”
In a world where the late Jade Goody can be a role model we are in a sorry state. When Michael Parkinson said as much he was berated for snobbery. Parkinson, who was born in a council estate, whose father walked eight miles to a mine where he spent 10 hours to be paid 35p a shift.
When Parkinson’s father took him down a pit, Parky jnr remarked: “You would not get me down there for a 100 quid a shift”, to which his father replied: “That’s good but be warned that if you ever change your mind and I see you coming through those colliery gates I will kick your arse all the way home.”
Parkinson and my own father are of the same generation. The values instilled by their parents are ageless and classless.
Watching my father leave at 6am to go work 40 or 50 miles away as a joiner on building sites and coming home at 7pm, I did not need convincing when he said that “a pen is easier carried than a shovel”.
In our council estate many of the children I played with are now doctors, lawyers, teachers, civil servants and those that took the vocational route are equally successful as business people, garage owners, plumbers, joiners and hairdressers.
One family from our council estate now boasts two lawyers, a teacher, a doctor and an architect. Not bad for an area where we built our own ladders.
But as President Obama courageously said, “We have to say to our children yes, if you grow up in a poor neighbourhood you will face challenges that someone in a wealthy suburb does not. But that is not a reason to get bad grades or to cut class. That’s not a reason to give up on your education and drop out of schools”.
Some lessons are too easily forgotten.