Here Dr Stuart Newton, head teacher at Selsdon High School in Croydon, urges us not to write off the troubled youth of today after the murder of Damilola Taylor.

A LITTLE body is lying in a mortuary. A family is devastated. The many decent people in his London community are shell-shocked.

Damilola's family will exist, regretting the day they ever thought of coming to the UK. Because in helping their daughter to obtain medical treatment, they lost a son.

The reports suggest a small group of children were involved in the murder of Damilola. Perhaps they did not mean to kill him but they did.

Life on the Peckham estate will soon get back to normal. The drug traffickers will continue with their obscene trade.

The rest of us will apply blame to parents, teachers, police, the media, politicians, religious leaders and social workers. That blame will be vociferously rejected.

When we have blamed everyone but ourselves, we will be ready to celebrate a festival which has something to do with the birth of a baby boy in squalid circumstances and we shall forget the tragedy of a terrified little boy, dying alone in equally squalid circumstances.

In other words, Damilola's death will have been in vain.

The reality, of course, is that we have collectively lost the plot.

There is no point in wringing our hands about the death of this boy if we do not ask ourselves why it happened. And there is no point in asking ourselves why it happened if we do not ask ourselves how things can be changed.

Those youngsters who killed him started life just like our sons and daughters. If our own children had been brought upon a soulless and deprived housing estate, would they have been strong enough to stand against the tide?

The most honest answer is "perhaps". Which is why those of us who can afford not to live on such estates do not do so.

But just because we do not experience the deprivation and squalor, it does not mean they are not there. "Nothing to do with me, mate" is neither an honest nor an acceptable response to Damilola's death. It has everything to do with all of us, so let's stop blaming everyone else and face some difficult facts.

Our society no longer encourages responsibility for actions, or for each other.

In recent years we have gone overboard on human rights as the key to happiness. We now have a Human Rights Act.

That would be fine if we had an equally strong sense of the importance of human responsibilities. Many young people do not have a clear idea of the connection between rights and responsibilities.

It is, however, entirely reasonable to expect adults to understand the link - we are supposed to have reached maturity by the time we have children. It is part of our duty as parents to teach young people the connection.

As long as we ignore the idea of personal and collective responsibility for what goes on in society, we should not be surprised when things deteriorate.

Schools provide children with codes of values, though lessons on religious belief and citizenship.

Those values may be the ones which are, in theory, approved by society. But the messages provided in the classroom are often not reinforced its the real world outside.

The culture portrayed on film, by music and on the streets can be very different. It is also likely to be presented in a far more glamorous and exciting way than is possible in lessons in RE and citizenship.

We have serious social problems, of which the death of Damilola is a symptom.

We owe it to his memory to tackle some of these underlying problems by co-operation, communication, understanding and action.