A man was stabbed to death in front of his 3 year old child!
He was on his way to see his newborn child.
It doesn't get much worse than that!
This one really got to me. I have a 2 year old little boy who I love more than I could ever put into words. The thought of any child having to watch their father get attacked, & then die in front of them is beyond the pale. A grieving wife is now lying in a hospital bed, with a newborn who will never get to feel his dad hold him. My heart is absolutely aching for them!
I'm angry as well. We had a meeting at the parliament with A4E on Wednesday. A4E are a company that are heavily involved with providing training to offenders, so they can get into a decent job & break the cycle of offending. We were discussing various issues, & basically seeing how we could work together on the issue of violence reduction & knife crime. One thing that came up was the education establishment in Scotland, & how education departments in Scotland just won't work with external trainers. I've had this problem for some time now. I've offered anti-bullying workshops to the education dept of our local authority. Guess what, they're not interested. I've done the workshops for some teachers & they LOVE what we do. The teachers comment that they have had NO TRAINING on how to deal effectively with bullying & that they learn as much from our workshops as the kids do. But the folks at the top say there is no bullying problem & that 'there are effective measures in place'. What a crock of rubbish! I asked a class of P7's recently who amongst them had experienced bullying at school, & out of around 30 of them 98% of them put their hands up! I have nearly 200 kids who train in my martial arts classes in Angus, & 90% of them have experienced bullying. Many of them have been brought to us specifically because of bullying! I have offered our Stranger=Danger programme, where we teach valuable personal safety skills to primary age children. No martial arts, no self defence, just how to stay safe & avoid adult predators. Guess what, not interested. Now, guess what, the powers that be who run education at a national level are not wanting anti knife crime education programmes to be offered in schools. I know several people who work in the Scottish Parliament, so I hear a great deal that goes on & is said there. The justice side of things wants schools to offer pupils anti knife crime education, the education side of things doesn't want this.
Here's the skinny from someone on the coal face. If education departments don't realise that they need to loosen up & use people who have expertise in specialist areas then they are going to be very sorry in the long run. If we want to effectively get to children then we need to get them when they are a captive audience, so we get to as many of them as possible. Doing them as 'community education' projects is useless, as generally the people you need to get there aren't going to be there- simple as that! Bullying, knife crime, anti social behaviour are all part of the same problem. For the sake of our children we need to provide them with training that will enhance their lives. Remember, these kids are going to be adults some day. The guy who stabbed the father to death was a child once. We need to look long term, & try to stop as many kids as possible from turning into an adult like the 22 year old who robbed two children of their father.
So, here's my message to the Education Minister & all those in positions of authority. Its time to stop messing around. Its time for you to stop refusing anti bullying programmes simply because you're scared that providing them is an admission of a bullying problem. Its time to stop trying to cover your own backsides because you have some illogical concern that speaking about knife crime in schools will cause everyone to start carrying knives. Its time for us to start working together, because the longer we don't....the longer we don't effectively tackle the problems we face using effective measures; the larger the potential bodycount is going to be. Everytime another young person loses their life in a seconds stupidity I hope you stop & think to yourself that your dithering in some part allows these tragedys to happen, & that you have the ability to possibly stop it happening again.
My heart goes out to the mother & her children in their grief!
