Teach them how to be a good citizen

From the archive, first published Tuesday 31st Jan 2006.

HERE'S a question for the parents of Worcester. Can you say, with any certainty, where your children are at a given time of the day or night?

If the answer is yes, then what follows doesn't apply. But if the answer is no, then we suggest you take a long, hard look at your parenting skills.

There is nothing new about the latest outbreak of vandalism at Tolladine Golf Club. The wanton destruction of other people's property is reported in our columns with a depressing regularity.

Youths have always been prone to destruction. But the big difference these days is the sheer scale and proliferation of such acts.

The problem is that young people are not being instilled with any sense of right or wrong. Once, a fearsome combination of corporal punishment and religious education acted as a deterrent to the tearaway. Starting a job upon leaving school also made work for what otherwise might be idle hands. No longer. The type of youngster likely to commit such mindless acts invariably exists on a diet of TV dinners, with absentee or indifferent parents. They are the new latchkey kids.

We cannot expect the police to necessarily prevent these criminal acts, neither can we take it for granted that the various support agencies should act as surrogate carers and always be there to literally pick up the pieces.

Parents must start to bring up their children properly. It's a case of knowing right from wrong - and yes, it really is as simple as that.

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