It's the brain, stupid

I once watched a boy pour a bottle of cola over his friend's head. This was on a bus travelling down a motorway in the middle of France. I couldn't move fast enough to stop him showering liquid over his mate and about 4 other people near them. We had to come off the road and lost a couple of hours of travelling time while he cleared up the mess and we dug out the friend's case from the boot so he could get a change of clothes. Even down on his knees wiping the floor, the boy was unrepentant. His friend had called him a rude name and deserved the cola shower. Placating the driver took even longer.

A few years later, I was fast enough to stop a student spraying a brand new school piano with the contents of a can of fizzy orange. The girl couldn't understand why the music teacher was upset - she'd waited years for new pianos for her department and they cost a mint. The girl also couldn't understand why I was upset. I was directing a school show. I'd picked her for a part. She'd interrupted the rehearsal. And she'd let me down in front of colleagues who had warned me she was 'flaky.' She was most put out that I had 'made everybody look at her.'

I asked both of them: What did you think I would do when I saw you doing that? I'm still waiting for the answer. The boy was, I think, 16. The girl was 15. Neither of them could think far enough ahead to see the consequences of their actions.

I've been reading about impulsivity. Impulse control is the part of the brain that stops you doing and saying what first comes to mind and lets you think out the consequences of your actions. Scientists are finding out a lot about this these days. It's the last part of the human brain to mature. It can take a long time to develop, sometimes into the mid-20s. One way to spot someone with ADHD is to check their impulse control.

The idea that a young person turns 16 and becomes legally responsible is just laughable to anyone who has worked with young people. Likewise the idea that 18 year olds can seriously be described as men and women. One of the reasons we send young people off to apprenticeships or to college and university is to give them time to mature. At one time, we sent the lads off to the army for a while for the same reason. They get to meet a whole cross-section of new people and have to learn to get on with them. They're exposed to new ideas, some of which they don't like and have to accept. They get to make mistakes too and can be reasonably sure they won't meet the people they make them with in later life. Of the two people I've mentioned above, the guy is now a tree-surgeon. I don't know what has happened to the girl. The very idea of this guy when he was 16 laying hands on a chainsaw is quite chilling, but he's in his 40s now and has presumably developed better impulse control.

The people I'm leading up to writing about are the two airheads now under arrest for trying to smuggle drugs with a street value of over one million pounds sterling into Venezuela. Heaven help them, they seem to be just like my students, a couple of years older (19 or 20 according to the press) but none the wiser. I can just hear the chat: they've met these guys in a bar in Spain, are offered a lot of money to take a parcel into Venezuela. They know this is wrong on so many levels, but think of the cash - and the adventure. They can handle this. It'll be a laugh. They won't get stopped. They'll look just like tourists but if they are stopped, they can tell a story about being threatened, and with guns - that's very dramatic. And everyone will believe them. And their parents will never find out.

A friend said to me last week (he's never worked with young people): But the Scottish girl at least had a good education. Sorry, this is not about education or about family background. Why would drug smugglers pick on these two dingbats to be their couriers? I'm sure there's a posh word for it, but my word for it is gullible. It's goes hand in hand with the immaturity of those who lack impulse control. As I said, heaven help them. I hope their education and family background have prepared them for the culture shock of a Venezuelan prison. They may be there some time - and I don't suppose immaturity is a defence in a court of law there, any more than it is here.