Premier Gordon Brown (supported by Ed Miliband) has announced that he is going to fix the problem of errant British youth with a program of building new youth centres. This policy is supposed to take them off the streets, give them “facilities”, put an end to drug-taking and excessive drinking, and stop them knifing each other (or in the case of black kids, shooting each other). You would think that such a witless suggestion would have people raising their eyes to the sky! Apparently not. Guffaws from the Tory and LibDem parties have not been heard. Days gone by, kids left school at fourteen or so to join the adult world. For Jewish lads there was Bar Mitzvah. But the simple act of leaving school indicated a leaving behind of childhood and an entry into society at large: getting a job where you had to show you were worthy of your hire, getting on with a variety of people of all ages – most of them more important than you, but (unless you were unlucky) most of them also friendly, encouraging and supportive. There really wasn’t much of a “yoof” problem when kids left school at a sensible age. Now, schooldays seem endless, especially for those alienated either by boredom and/or by the daily reminder of unsuccess. Every extension of the school-leaving age, every increment in the size of sixth forms, every expansion of tertiary education has seen an increase in social dislocation through the failure to integrate young people into the rest of society. God! now there’s a big increase in people doing further degrees, and few of them of top notch academic calibre! (Students used to be a problem in times past – indicative of what happens when young adults keep company largely of their own age group – but they were few in number and largely from the social/economic elite. There were usually supportive families to get them back in line.) Days gone by, a couple of years or so after leaving school, you were old enough to go to the “local”; another milestone. The local was a place for people of all ages. It gave your elders a chance to sum you up. It gave you a chance to earn respect from people who had a lifetime’s experience of getting to know where respect was properly deserved. If you were flash, loud and fancied yourself, you got knocked down a peg or two. Nowadays, the young drink in places of their own, very often in the centre of town. Even among people who are “youngish” there is a stratification by age in selection of venue. If I go down to the High Street at night these days I feel like I have broken a curfew: the curfew that must have been imposed on folk over forty (let alone my sixty-odd years) being out after dark. And what is the witless Gordon Brown doing to do to about the problem of "yoof"? How is he going to integrate young people with the rest of society? He's going to create new youth centres! Please tell him he’s an idiot! Discuss please, before I edit the above in the light of incremental wisdom and send it to my MP! Thanks! River Ape Psychology Department, University College London (retired)
It keeps them out the job market though! Actually, I'm surprised the Daily Mail readers havn't had this idea- that you make leaving school at 16 compulsory, so that they can work at dead end jobs like fruit picking or cleaning for a few years, thus reducing the need for their favourite bugbear, illegal immigrants. Youth centres by themselves mean nothing, without good motivated intelligent staff to run them. Where are they going to come from?
Most people of my own generation left school before the age of sixteen. Most of them proved capable of doing useful jobs in society. Among my own circle, aside from those with good practical skills in engineering, etc, I can think, for example, of a qualified accountant. One of the brightest people I have known left school at fourteen to work in her father's shop -- an excellent education in economics. She is now worth several millions. Surely the idea that we must academicise every occupation, as if all knowledge must be dispensed to people of similar age sitting in classrooms or lecture halls, is profoundly misguided and socially divisive? I would estimate the proportion of the population suitable for university education at about 15%.
Your not actually disagreeing with me, you know. My point is complex, and not entirely evidence based, but to start with, consider how useful it is to have people in training for years, building up debt. OK, you don't think it is useful, but it suits the powers that be. Secondly, how, in a globalised fast moving post industrial economy do you as an employer judge people whom you have never seen before? When you were young, i.e. 40 years ago, and indeed as your example shows, you would often start working with and for people you knew, or who knew people who knew you. Nowadays, this is often not possible, especially given the fractured yet oddly centralised nature of the economy. Then there is the simple fact that many jobs have to be more professional, requiring greater book knowledge and training, eg being an electrician is not just about learning it as you go along. Also, as part of improvements in efficiency, people have to learn how to do things in particular ways, whether Lean manufacturing or risk assessment. But of course much of this can be done on the job, as it is with accountants.
I'm not entirely agreeing with you. I agree that Browns approach is simplistic and insufficient, but I disagree with exactly what else should be done. The economy has changed a lot since you started work, and it is unclear that the gvt or the education system has caught up with that. Mind you, I don't think they should have to in the first place.
Youth Centers are a good idea to control youth behavior.....at least in the minds of a bunch of wine-sippin', parlor sittin', trustfund douchebags who wouldn't know "the real world" if it bit 'em on the ass.
Obviously you know little about the UK. Youth clubs are more of a middle class thing, and our current dictator is middle class. Trust funds are upper class, as are parlours.
"British teenagers are more likely to get into fights, hang out with other teenagers, binge drink, take drugs and have underage and un-protected sex than teenagers is most other European countries." [url="http://www.ippr.org.uk/pressreleases/?id=2811" ]Institute of Public Policy Research report[/url]
Youth, that's the problem!! ...LOL! Inexperience in the ways of the world, even in the ways of the region or area or city. Inexperience in dealing with the real world around them ...basically just plain ol' ignorance. They "know" lots of stuff, but can't apply it yet to the realities of the world around them. They're mostly just too self-centered and/or idealistic. Baron Max
here in london we dont have any problem everyone is happy happy, the youth here are very well behaved, no drugs, no shootings, no drinking, we are little angels in london. and if you think otherwise i will pop a couple shots in your ass. peace.
That's pretty well it. Youth interacting with youth is not the way a healthy society works. Youth is not supposed to be a "segment of society" -- young people should learn by being integrated into society. A proper maturity comes from living among people of all ages.
That's a residential scheme, right? There's not much here in the way of residential education and training. There's plenty of schemes that will provide classroom education by the shovelful, but rather little high quality practical training of the sort likely to land you with a good job. (I am being very brief; this is a big area.)
