My heart goes out to James’ parents who will probably have to spend the rest of their lives wondering why their much loved and cared for son who seemingly had everything going for him, took it into his head to drink a whole bottle of vodka. No matter how many people reassure them I suspect they will always feel they were somehow at fault.

The proverb that Hillary Clinton once used  “it takes a village to raise a child” it has become almost clichéd. Perhaps it took on because it resonated deeply with so many people who have struggled or are struggling to raise children in our bright and burnished technologically advanced world where tribes and villages have disappeared.

Some years ago when I was teaching I unsuccessfully opposed a move by the Bus Company to provide special buses especially for school children. It was an attractive proposition; it was efficient; it eliminated the need to change buses on the journey.

I opposed it because the main reason put forward by the bus company was that there were so many complaints from adults about the behaviour of school children on buses. Forcing them all into their own bus would eliminate the inconvenience - out of sight out of mind.

Ever since then special school buses have come for me a symbol of society itself.  In a village there is always a mixture of people ranging from the very old to the very young.  That is the way it is meant to be.

Villages were not paradise; they had their own problem.  And we are never going to go back to living in little villages, but how do we bring the riches of village life into out cities?

May I have the grace to smile at the next surly teenager a I encounter

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1 Comment

Cecily mcNeill
May 17, 2010 7:05