I was going to reply something along the line of ''Glice, exceptions are one thing, the norm is another thing altogether'' to his post and then I realised that probably he is thinking that himself anyway.

Kids are born with the potential of being smart and intelligent, if the enviroment they inhabit takes away all their possibilities for development at that young an age, it's not like you can simply put the blame on them. They are kids, not adults.

After all these discussions, there's still no concrete explanation as to why it occurs so frequently on British soil.
Maybe the real reason is because the British media brings it to light more often than the rest of the world does.
Look at how long the list of pedophiles is in Britain. Surely, there are just as many pervs elsewhere?

haha. jesus. i was wondering. i thought i was pretty obvious.

Yes, everyone is born with potential, a threshold.
Their environment includes the culture itself and socioeconomic conditions that influence their-day-to-day lives and behavior. Many pertinent factors have been discussed in this thread. Out of all of them, i believe that !@#$%!'s point resounds the most:

maybe i phrased it badly but my suggestion to outlaw stabbing was a joke too.

i got you.... i think you were the only one who got me (other than cantank... and rob)

i think they should ban oranges with razors stuck inside them. because if oranges with razors stuck inside them are are illegal, no one will ever get an orange with a razor stuck inside it thrown at them.

I agree more with your post than his, in a way, even though you're both very close to what I was trying to say.

You are born into a family nucleus but you belong to society and you do most of your growing up within its enviroment. Unless you end up being locked up into your room all the time, there comes a time when you'll have to deal with all the external factors that you have listed, people in general to start with.

That's another very good point.

Reading books in the company of yourself is one thing. Reading them and making sense of it all because of the fact that what you've just read can be put into practice or is connected somehow to what's around you is another thing that you can be assured most kids (and adults, obviously) find more stimulating than being imposed abstract theories that hang in the air and that's it.

Good, because a prohibition on stabbing would be a preposterous infringement on the rights of otherwise law abiding citizens, and why should we be made to suffer because of the indiscretions of some unruly urchins?

Education does have to play a more socially responsible role, yes, but the main responsibility concerns their parenting.

Again, economics is a huge factor. School systems despite all the funding they do get cannot feasibly maintain proper instructor-to-student ratios due to financial limitations. And, in far too many cases, simple microeconomics is rather obviously why both parents are working and too absent from the lives and minds of their offspring.

Well, you say, that's why there are private schools. True, but I'll liken private schools to the parents that overcompensate by mollycoddling their children, and, ironically, tend to rarely really communicate providing yet another impetus for young people to tend to act out their aggressions.

I got hit by a grapefruit sized snowball thrown from a car once. It knocked me on my arse and winded me so hard I thought I was going to die. I didn't.

But, I think they should make snow illegal cos if snow was illegal then there wouldn't be any snow, and if there wasn't any snow then people wouldn't be able to make illegal, grapefruit sized snowballs, and if they couldn't make grapefruit sized snowballs then they wouldn't be able to throw them at passersby from speeding cars.

Whilst they're at it they might as well make throwing illegal as well, that way there wouldn't be any throwing, and the people that threw the grapefruit sized snowball at me wouldn't have been able to throw it at me, because that would have been illegal.

The economic squeeze is tightening on most. We need humor, Florya, thanks.

I was hit by a banana thrown from passengers riding in a truck bed. Think it was a landscaping truck. A little taken aback because, as is known, when you're shot you get hit before you even hear the sound, so for a second there I was in fight or flight.

Riding in a car with a neighbor and his mother when I was young, the car was egged by other youngsters.
What's crazy is the ringleader of the kids that did it was subsequently hit a couple of weeks later and sent to the hospital by my neighbor's mom, who would drink and drive. I wasn't riding with them on that particular occasion.

And my then-girlfriend and I had some kids throw a brick at our car once.

Throwing - It's the root of all evil.

fixed.

True enough, and entirely agreed. If we replace 'stabbed' with 'being violent', that pretty much describes any school. Kids have a tendancy towards being vicious, unpleasant fuckers, whatever their background

I'm always stuck on the quandary between determinism and individualism. On one hand, people always are who they are 'Tigers can't change their spots'; on the other hand, no-one has to be a violently anti-social cunt. However, the kids that don't go around stabbing people can still, inadvertantly (to a point) give those around them massive complexes. Having said that, there's an absolute cunt at work who was clearly bullied by the sporty types when he was young, and harbours massive, generalised grudges against all sport, and most people, as a result. He may have had a troubled childhood, but he's the product of his parents more than he is his school. There comes a point in adulthood where you simply have to say 'I don't have to be bitter the whole of my life', and he's never going to find that point, which makes him the bigger cunt than whoever abused him at school.

I wouldn't say I or anyone else was exceptional, for, y'know, boring reasons. I think what I'm trying to say is that the brutality of poor schooling in this country (which I've experienced to a far lesser degree than a lot of these kids stabbing/ shooting each other) is more a manifestation of society in general than it is causal. Like I say, not everyone in London is a cunt. There are, however, a lot of ruthlessly selfish and belligerently dickheadish people about, and this is by no means exclusive to those 'under-priveleged' sorts. The manifestation of being a prick when you're a city-based prick in a suit is to walk past someone being stamped to death (as happened at Highbury and Islington a few years ago at rush hour). The manifestation for this (very, very small minority) of kids who carry skeng is to stab someone for 'disrespecting' them. School is not causal, it's a microcosm of society at large.

I think there's some core nucleus of agreement between me and the three I've quoted here. It's all terrifically complicated and quite worrying.

Incidentally, I'm disappointed that no-one thus far has thought to make the pun 'drive-by fruiting'.

there was almost no violence at my school, which isn't to say there wasn't any bullying, just not the physical kind.

Yeah, you posh cunts don't like getting your manicured hands dirty except to fist each other after Polo, do you?

same here. i went to richy mcrich rich private school. and let me tell ya... sometimes the nonviolent bullying was so brutal that i'm sure people would rather have just been punched in the face.