We see Children as Pestilent

In a article (The Guardian) written by Tanya Byron, she discusses how children are now represented. We are currently living in a increasingly risk-averse culture, where children's behaviour is constrained. It is described to us that our community lives in fear of youth known as ephebiphobia. Byron argues that children are now becoming victims of our ephebiphobic culture even labelled as nursery hooligans. The young people are feared because if the actions of the minority population. 

Children in response are made to feel worthless and so they become destructive and therefore become incredibly vulnerable. Byron blames the education system for narrowing the definition of achievement, because it is built around targets and testing. She goes on further stating, by a society that discriminates against youth and so reduces the participation of upcoming generation in the development of social cultural landscape. Schools need to support and resources to individualise teaching again. Children labelled as failures in primary and secondary education have no hope of further education given the limited way we assess their abilities.

She publicises her University about their fast-track and fast-forward programmes enable 500 learners a year, of all ages, who do not have A-levels to realise their potential  without incurring any financial cost.

     
This BBC article backs up Byron, by blaming the media for the youths portrayal in the media. Stating the publicity of crime committed by young people is mostly talked about than positive things that youth have done and given back to the community.

The independent took the point of view of teenagers and their opinions of their coverage in the media. It mainly focuses on teenage boys, but the point of view is still relevant to Byrons article. They said that they felt they were been positively represented in popular reality TV shows such as X-factor and Britian's got talent, and that the main cause of this from the media. Surprisingly some teens are now afraid of other teens, because of what is said about them. Teenagers would change their appearance, friends groups and social activities to not be feared. The are trying to reverse the effect the media stories have had on them, so they feel more comfortable as who they are, but because of this fear they can't be themselves. They have to change!