Growing up too quickly
From Mr John Prust Sir: The rap music phenomenon ('Your children are rap victims', 30 December) is an illustration of the proverb, 'Clergymen's sons always turn out badly.'
Tim Westwood is a clergyman's son, in fact. The white, middle-class teenage rap listeners are clergymen's sons in spirit: brought up to be mature before their time, subjected to endless propaganda on drugs and sex and gender roles, and, fatally, living with grown-ups who act like their friends.
Once children were to be 'seen and not heard', boys were expected to be 'boys', it was realised that 'wanton kittens make sober cats' and that 'young saints' become 'old devils'. Boys lived in a boys' world
when young and joined the adult world when ready. Now, they live in an adult world when young and, when they reach 13 or so and grow restless, they have nowhere (nowhere civilised) to go.
John Pritst
Reading. Berkshire
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