The letter below was sent into our local paper by a pupil at my daughter's school:
Sir - As children attending school we are constantly encouraged by our teachers and mentors to take a responsible and active role in our community. We try, we really do, but we make mistakes, probably because we are growing up and only learning how to live and act in your adult society.
You think chirdren should be mini adults and many people are quick to criticise us for makig errors and mistakes in our lives but that is sometimes how children learn.
You blame us for the litter on our streets but will not provide us with litter bins.
You blame us for hanging around on the street at night, but you close our schools at night for evening activities and let the minority of anti-social people smash our parks and amenities then blame us all because you do not have enough community police officers to deal with the incidents.
You spend thousands of pounds on speed cameras but you will not spend enough money on putting up cameras in Clifton park to catch the vandals and perverts that roam the area designed for us but through your inaction prevents us from using them.
You close three swimming pools and then say we do not do enough sport.
These are adult decisions in an adult world yet you make all children responsible in sharing the blame for a disruptive few. Why do you not apply the same rules in your adult world?
We ask 2010 Rotherham Ltd to take down the signs and deal with the culprits who play anti-socially and stop penalising all the children all the time enjoying recreational public green space.
What Rotherham Borough Councillors forget in their arrogance is that we children live in your adult world, the world you made and the world we have only known since we were born into it.
We live in these sad depressed areas that YOU created not us. They are your laws, adult laws that young people try to abide by.
We were not even born as you shaped our Rotherham. They are your broken down sports facilities, your dilapidated services, your potholed roads we have to cycle on.
Yet you blame, blame and blame children and young people. Look at yourselves please for a change and make yourselves accountable to the people you so bashfully represent.
You expect children to respect you as adults and then reply by disrespecting us as children. You have not consulted us or taken into account our views. Give us back our safety, our grass, our play areas, our public space.
The borough councillors would do well to remember you may well treat children with contempt today and get away with it, but one day, not so long in the future, today's leaders will be old and we will be the people in the positions of reponsibility you hold so dear.
You might well find the lessons you dish out now are the rules of the future we play by when it comes to addressing your concerns as pensioners. Remember the saying you so often teach children, you reap what you sow?
Katie Fulcher