‘Sin bins’ not the answer for Britons behaving badly

---

‘Sin bins’ not the answer for Britons behaving badly Posted: 06 Aug 2009 03:13 PM PDT For the past few years, some families in the UK have been living in “sin bins.” In sports, a sin bin is a penalty box, but in the UK, it’s sort of like a fishbowl. Through the Family Intervention Project, the British government subjected about 2,000 of its “worst” families to round-the-clock monitoring, making sure children in the families went to school on time, to sleep at decent hours and ate nutritious meals. Security guards carried out home checks, and parents with drug and alcohol problems received help to fight their addictions. The purpose of Family Intervention Projects, according to the British government is to quell to swell of anti-social behavior in Britain. The thought behind the program is that a stable home life leads to future societal stability. According to initial reports, the program has been successful thus far. Ed Balls, the UK’s Children’s Secretary even laid out a plan to integrate 20,000 more problem families into the program over the next two years at a cost of £5,000 to £20,000 per family. “This is pretty tough and non-negotiable support for families to get to the root of the problem,” said Balls. “There should be Family Intervention Projects in every local authority area because every area has families that need support.” Critics of the project, such as Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling say the project is too little too late, and try to blame the current ruling party for problems. “This government has been in power for more than a decade during which time anti-social behavior, family breakdown and problems like alcohol abuse and truancy have just got worse and worse.” However, I don’t think that’s being fair to the Labour Party. Societal ills can’t be pinned on one ruling party. I’m sure the same things went on when the Conservative Party was in charge. The real reason there has been a rise in truancy and delinquency in the UK is the moral breakdown of British society. Though most people settle into their beliefs as they age, they learn their core beliefs or morals from their parents. Usually that morality sticks with a person, unless there is a concerted effort to rid oneself of it. Where does morality come from? Depending on who you ask, morality can come from society via an unwritten social contract, be inherent in each person or it can come from that which is transcendent. In the UK’s case, as British society was influenced by Christianity until the 19th century, I think it’s okay to go with the latter. As in the United States, British society was so heavily influenced by Christian thought that Christianity ended up in the social conscience of the masses. Since the UK has rejected Christianity as the philosophy du jour, other often-competing worldviews are trying to fill the vacuum. At the same time, however, people are living with a hazy remembrance …a “shadow” of their former Christian-influenced morality. Since British people have rejected the basis for their morality, people are confused; they don’t really know how they should live. Confusion begets the breakdown of the family unit, which leads to hooliganism and anti-social behavior. The British government, seeing the end result of this confusion, has tried to pick up the pieces, which is laudable. However, instead of dealing with or even acknowledging the real root of the problem—the decline in morality– the government is planning to spend gobs of money on hand-holding. The problem with this is that it’ll never work. Unless people know why what they are doing is wrong, they’ll continue to do the wrong thing. Why should children go to bed on time? Why should they eat nutritious meals? Why is substance abuse wrong? Why is anti-social behavior wrong? If the British government, having taken on the role of supreme parent, is not answering these philosophical questions, it is really just telling its “children,” “Because I said so.” That never flies with children, and it’s not going to fly with this social experiment.

You are subscribed to email updates from The Underground To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610

Posted via email from The Underground-- Not Your Average Christian Mag