'It is upto you' - On teenagers and their parents

 

Shamima Begum has a right to British citizenship, whether you like it or not

Sajid Javid makes Britain look weak by refusing to take back a groomed teenager – nationality doesn’t depend on whim writes Gary Younge in The Guardian

 

When I was 16 I stopped off in Holland, during a camping holiday with a friend. We bought as much marijuana as we could and smoked it all in an afternoon. Sat behind a housing estate in the border town of Nijmegen, we giggled, rambled and lay around until the local police came. They took us back to the campsite (we found the fact that they spoke Dutch hilarious), where we were asked for our passports and train tickets. They already had our number: a couple of idiots out of their minds and out of their depth. They told us to get on the next train in the direction of the port. We’d stopped laughing by then. We went home.

Adolescents do stupid things. Often they know they are stupid at the time. But what’s stupid is often also exhilarating, particularly when the consequences are either not known or have not even been fully considered.

Shamima Begum, from Bethnal Green in London’s East End, did something extraordinarily stupid and extremely dangerous when she was 15. She, and two girl friends from school, told their parents they were going out for the day, and went to Turkey and joined Islamic State instead. Shamima lived in Raqqa, married a Dutch convert, had two children, both of whom died, and got pregnant with a third. She left Raqqa when it fell, saw her husband surrender to Syrian fighters and now sits in a refugee camp with her newborn son. Still only 19, Begum says she wants to come home to Britain. The home secretary, Sajid Javid, has revoked her citizenship. He has said she cannot come home because she is no longer British and that she should instead go to Bangladesh, where her parents are from. She has never been there; Bangladesh says it won’t take her.

A couple of weeks earlier Javid successfully deported several people to a country many did not know, according to David Lammy MP. A plane to Jamaica chartered by the Home Office left with 29 people on it. Of the more than 50 originally scheduled to go, 13 came to Britain as children, 11 had indefinite leave to remain and one had a British passport. Between them they would leave 36 children behind. Javid claims they had all committed serious crimes. One, who came to Britain when he was 14, had been convicted for dangerous driving. Among several to receive a last-minute reprieve was an ex-soldier; another had applied to remain under the Windrush scheme.

While the issue of Begum’s return, the Windrush scandal and the plight of these Jamaican deportees appear quite different, they in fact centre on the same two questions: what does it mean to be a citizen of this country? And how easily can the rights of citizenship be withheld? Evidently, the weight of the response and the burden of proof fall more heavily on those who are black and brown, whether we were born here or not.

Equal access to justice, regardless of race, has always been an issue when it comes to British citizens. But the right of British citizens to actually exist here, regardless of their race, has never felt more contingent. For those of us whose parents hail from elsewhere, our right to be here seems to depend on anything from what we think to whether and how we transgress. We must prove good character not to get here but to stay here.

Javid’s claim that allowing Begum to return might compromise public safety is not completely baseless. In August an 18-year-old woman was convicted of plotting to bomb the British Museum, along with her mum, sister and a friend.

Begum does not seem particularly remorseful. She said she knew what Isis did, including beheadings, and wasn’t troubled by it. “From what I heard, Islamically that is all allowed, so I was OK with it.” 

In another interview she said: “When I saw my first severed head in a bin it didn’t faze me at all. It was from a captured fighter seized on the battlefield, an enemy of Islam.” It appears she doesn’t want to return because she now thinks joining Isis was wrong, but because Isis has, for now, been defeated and she wants her baby to survive. But the home secretary’s case is hardly watertight either. Begum has expressed regret. She said: “I was hoping Britain would understand I made a mistake, a very big mistake, because I was young and naive.” Of Isis-controlled Raqqa, she has remarked: “There was so much oppression and corruption that I don’t think they deserved victory.” We don’t know if she fought, but given that she had three children in four years it’s reasonable to guess she didn’t. She now says all she wants is a “quiet life with her baby”.

The risks are as much a test for us as they are for her. The notion that Britain could not handle her, could not show her a better future, could not try her, convict her, reorient her or support her, is worse than pathetic. Far from making Javid look strong, it manages to make Britain look both callous and weak. A government that thinks it can take on the world with Brexit can’t take back a bereaved teenaged mother with fundamentalist delusions.

Moreover, the risk does not obviate two crucial facts in this case. First and foremost, she is a citizen. That means something. Or at least it should. Citizenship is not about character. It is not about risk or regret. It is about rights and responsibilities. That’s as true for Stephen Lawrence’s killers as it is for Begum or the victims of the ongoing Windrush scandal. It applies to everyone who qualifies or it does not apply. It is not a status to be trifled with in cavalier fashion for the momentary advance of a political career. Whatever the prime minister feels about “citizens of the world”, the state should not be actively in the business of creating citizens of nowhere. A home secretary should know this, not least because last year his own department produced a report that presaged almost precisely Begum’s situation. Imagining the government response if a British woman flees Isis-held territory with a newborn baby, the Home Office report suggests “a police investigation”, assistance “reintegrating into society”, “sessions with a specially trained deradicalisation mentor” and “appropriate measures” to “safeguard the child’s welfare”. Nowhere does it mention stripping her of her citizenship.

Second, when Begum went to Syria she was a child. She must take personal responsibility for what she did. But our society understands that we have collective responsibility for children – it’s why we have child services and youth courts. We, as a society, should in some way be held accountable for how a 15-year-old girl went from watching Keeping Up With the Kardashians to joining a terrorist cult in a war zone. Begum was 15 when she did a reprehensible thing; Javid is 49. What’s his excuse?

Saturday jobs ‘can damage exam grades for teenagers’

Tracy McVeigh in The Guardian

There was widespread praise for millionaire parents David and Victoria Beckham when it was revealed that they had sent their eldest son, Brooklyn, to do a few weekend shifts in a west London coffee shop. And Jamie Oliver won approval for insisting that he’ll be keeping his eldest two daughters “real” by encouraging them to work in his new pub on Saturdays.

However, new research suggests that teenagers who take on a Saturday job could be damaging their GCSE grades – an effect especially noticeable in girls – even while they earn extra cash they might spend on risky behaviours like drinking or smoking.

Taking a part-time job – gaining work skills and pocket money for those teenage essentials – while studying for exams has an impact on the end results, according to the study, from the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex.

In December the Conservative minister for business, Matthew Hancock, urged employers to create more Saturday jobs and said teenagers were missing out, after figures from the Office for National Statistics showed that the numbers of schoolchildren with part-time jobs had fallen to a record low.

The proportion of 16- and 17-year-olds working in shops, waiting on tables or having a paper round had fallen from 30% in 2000 to 15.5% in 2014. “A paid job while you’re in school can go a long way with a prospective employer and makes it easier to get a foot on the career ladder,” Hancock said.

But this latest study, Youth Employment and Academic Performance: Production Function and Policy Effects, written by Dr Angus Holford, has cast doubt on the wisdom of working and studying. It used the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England, which followed a cohort of teenagers aged 13 to 14 in 2004. Holford looked at the hours they spent working and the impact this had on the time they spent doing other things – including risky behaviour and sport – as well as their study time and subsequent exam grades at GCSE.

“Around a quarter of all 13- to 16-year-olds in England take some formal paid employment during school term time,” said Holford. “This can be a good thing – they earn their own money and can pick up useful skills, which might help them find full-time work in the future. However, they may spend that hard-earned money on less than useful things, or fall in with a different group of people. We did find that schoolchildren who worked became more likely to drink alcohol regularly, smoke or consume cannabis.”

However, the biggest impact of part-time work was on the school grades of girls. For teenage girls, an additional hour of paid employment per week in school year 10 reduced their final GCSE performance a year later by approximately one grade in one subject. This was in part caused by the girls spending less time studying outside lessons.

Holford said he suspected another factor influencing their grades could be explained by girls in employment becoming less motivated by school and less interested in the work they did in their lessons.

Girls who have a job at the age of 15 work on average six hours a week, which means their part-time work is likely to reduce their results considerably – a grade lower in six subjects.

“The long-term effect of this would be particularly bad for borderline students at risk of not achieving the target for progression in education, of five A*-C grades – including English and maths. Given that academic results at 16 have such a significant influence over our future life outcomes, these findings should worry policymakers and parents who want young people to achieve their potential at this crucial point,” said Holford.

“It’s inevitable that having a job gives teenagers less time to study. That alone might be a small price to pay given the potential benefits of having a part-time job for all-round development. What concerns me instead is how it causes teenagers to lose sight of the importance of their education for their longer-term opportunities.”

Only a teenage virgin could be so certain about sex

Those of more mature years know that the heart is a fickle organ and that desire does not necessarily recede with the gums

Rowan Pelling in The Telegraph

It takes a brave 18-year-old boy not just to admit he’s a virgin, but to broadcast the fact to his entire school. Wellington College sixth-former Phin Lyman took a stand against casual sex in the school magazine, writing: “Once you have had sex with someone, you’re connected to them emotionally and physically. If you tear that bond, the rip leaves open scars where the glue once was.”

I applaud young Lyman’s idealism, while feeling nostalgic for his depth of certainty. Will any of us ever see the world so sharply, so well defined in black and white, as we did when we were teenagers? At that age there are few worse crimes than getting off with your best friend’s ex, and you would happily jail half the parents you know for their pathetic, unoriginal transgressions.

I remember peddling much the same line as Lyman when I was 18. No gormless teen boy was going to pluck my virginity in a bout of teen fumbling: I wanted my first time to be beautiful and meaningful. It didn’t occur to me then that the two scenarios weren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. And obviously I wasn’t going to admit that fear of my own ineptitude was a stronger prophylactic than moral certainty.

But what can you know about sex when you’ve never had it? It’s akin to posing as a sommelier when you haven’t ever tasted alcohol. Furthermore, the ingénue who sips sweet lambrusco may grow to like pinot noir. Eighteen years on from when I took up the editor’s chair at the Erotic Review, I laugh at the naive conviction of my earliest articles. Did I really once declare that spanking was not a turn-on? What about the millions of women who lapped up 50 Shades of Grey, let alone the grown-up schoolboys who have fond memories of matron’s chastisements? No wonder the late great Auberon Waugh leant over the table at a contributors’ lunch and told me kindly: “No one knows anything about sex until they’re 40.”

Just as good store managers believe “the customer is always right”, so the wisest sex writers know desire brooks few arguments. You can’t discount other people’s proclivities, just because you don’t share them. I may still feel sex without love is an empty experience, but I bear in mind Woody Allen’s retort in Love and Death: “But as empty experiences go, it’s one of the best.” 

The fact is some people flee from strong emotion, preferring fleeting encounters to the perils of overwhelming intimacy, with its attendant fear of loss. Consider 96-year-old Diana Athill’s account of her acute distress after her pilot fiancé jilted her. She wrote that for many years afterwards, “I could only be at ease in a relationship which I knew to be trivial. If I fell in love it was with a fatalistic expectation of disaster, and disaster followed.”

But then only the elderly have earned the right to be wise about love and sex. They know the heart is a fickle organ and that desire does not necessarily recede with the gums. I recently heard – via an eminent gynaecologist – of a 90-something woman who was embroiled with a “toyboy” in his eighties. She wouldn’t let him move in, as it would “spoil the mystery”. I’m not sure whether this counts as casual sex, or loving sex, but who would begrudge them their pleasure?

Meanwhile, I’ll follow Phin Lyman’s progress with interest and all the more so for being married to an old Wellingtonian. Indeed, the first time I glimpsed my husband was when he appeared on a BBC Everyman documentary about celibacy, where he declared himself happy to take extended breaks from relationships. Now there’s nothing most women like more than a challenge, and as I watched the programme I thought: “I’ll break that man.” I bet scores of schoolgirls are having similar thoughts about the handsome sixth-former.

Understanding Risk - Risk explained to a sixteen year old

By Girish Menon

Risk is the consequence one has to suffer when the outcome of an event is not what you expected or have invested in.

For e.g. as a GCSE student you have invested in getting the grades required by the sixth form college that you wish to go to.

The GCSE exam therefore is the event.

From an individual's point of view this event has only two possible outcome viz. you get the grades or you don't.

Your investment is time, money and effort in order to get the desired outcome.

The risk is what you will have lost when despite all your investment you did not get the desired grades and hence you are not able to do what you had wanted to do.

From a mathematical point of view since there are only two possible outcomes one could say that the probability of either outcome is 0.5.

Your investment with spending time studying, taking tuitions, buying books.... are to lower the probability to failure to as low a figure as possible.

Can you lower the probability of failure to 0? Yes, by invoking the ceteris paribus assumption. If all 'other factors' that affect a student's ability to take an exam are constant, then a student who has studied all the topics and solved past papers will not fail.

Else, some or all the 'other factors' may conspire to bring about a result that the student may not desire. It is impossible to list all the 'other factors' and hence one is unable to control them. Hence, the exam performance of even a hitherto good student remains uncertain.

If the above example, with only two possible outcomes, shows the uncertainty and unpredictability  in the exam results of a diligent student then one shudders to think about other events where all the outcomes possible cannot be identified.

Let's move to study the English Premier League. Here, each team plays 38 matches and each match can have only three outcomes. When one considers picking a winner  of the league one could look at the teams, the manager etc. But, 'other factors' such as injury to key players, the referee...... may scupper the best laid plans.

When one looks at investing in the shares of a company one may study its books of accounts. Assuming that these books are accurate, this information may be inadequate because it is information from the past and the firm which made a huge killing last season may now be facing turbulent conditions of which you an outside investor maybe unaware of. The 'other factors' that may impinge on a firm's performance will include the behaviour of the staff inside the firm, behaviour of other firms, the government's policies and even global events.

Yet, as a risk underwriter one has to take into account all of these factors, quantify each factor based on its importance and likelihood of happening and then estimate the risk of failure. The key thing to remember is that the quantitative value that you have given each factor is at best only a rough estimate and could be wrong. Which is why every risk underwriter follows Keynes' dictum, 'When the facts change, I change my mind'. George Soros, the celebrated investor, has been rumoured to say no to an investment decision that he may have approved only a few hours ago.

Even if Keynes and Soros may have changed their minds on receipt of new information I am willing to bet that their investment record will show many wrong decisions.

So if the risk in investment decisions itself cannot be accurately predicted imagine the dilemma a politician makes when he decides to take his nation to war.

Hence the best way sportsmen, businessmen and politicians overcome the uncertainty of decision making is by posturing. Pretending that you are the best and everything is within your control. They hope that this will scare away the challengers and doubters and victory becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Alas! It unfortunately does not work every time either. 

(The author is a lecturer in economics.)