Children curbing crime?

The police in the North have apparently launched a "crime awareness" project for schools. It's interesting to see that the police have to be actually involved in the process of telling children that there is crime. I suppose it's good in the sense that it's also a step towards coherence and developing a framework for... well... sniches in schools:

Police media officer northern Constable Luke Rawalai said the ongoing program would foster a good relationship between the officers and students in their bid to control crime."Since last term we have been visiting schools and we are soon going to begin again this term as we strengthen our ties with the blue light ambassadors in each school."Children are a very useful source of information and the club we have set up in various schools in the north through our blue light program last year has been very useful."

Personally, the idea of getting children to tell on other children presents two things to consider: we are, in a way, destroying solidarity but, secondly, we are attemtping to create a sense of community monitoring.

Firstly, the solidarity of students, running to the police everytime they think they see something. I for one worry about the ideas developing that children aren't allowed to learn from little mistakes as well as I worry about the development of paranoia.

Consider the "don't touch the toaster" senario. A child isn't going to learn no to touch it unless they burn themselves. They are often at an age of being unable to understand things conceptually. We have also always had that one person in our class who'd tell the teacher every single time they think they see something. Consider that that behaviour is praised. It will spread and turn the next generation into a bunch of whiny babies... but I'm just being negative there.

There is the possibility that this might actually do some good. Schools often spend a lot of time telling children to do their mathematics and english  (and occasionally shove religion down their throats) that we might need someone else to tell our children what to do when bad things go down.

Time will tell of the effectiveness of the project, but one of my highschool experiences comes to mind; the police telling us about drugs. A police officer came to do a presentation about uprooting marijuana. I was concerned when they "burned" the plants to get rid of them and very little got sent back to Suva. Sure. "Burned". Slowly.

Lastly, I find it entertaining that FT has decided to let the "youths" disease develop into "managements".