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Back Page: Hound - Between the lines in the past week's media

2 mins read
- Plenty of reminders last week of how hostile some people are to children 's rights. There were personal attacks on Shabina Begum, the 16-year-old who had dared to use the law to challenge her school's imposition of a dress code. The Daily Telegraph called her "bloody-minded" and a "spouter" of "a good deal of nonsense".

"Children can't be trusted" was the title of an article by Rod Liddle in this week's Spectator. Remember, as you read, that this man was until relatively recently an editor of the Today programme, arguably the most politically influential of all radio programmes. He declared that we have created "a nation of yobbish illiterates who consider themselves victims and immune to chastisement". He knows why: "Most of the problems in our schools stem directly from the terrible misapprehension that children are capable of deciding for themselves what constitutes correct behaviour."

And at the back of this, naturally, is the dreadful bugbear of children's rights. Liddle, in full demagogue mode, invites readers to assent to his imaginary world vision in which the "greatest crime" is to "infringe a child's rights". Though there is not a scrap of evidence for this, some people are doing their best to turn it into a modern urban myth.

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