Jackie Ashley wrote an article in the paper yesterday entitled “This public nervousness lets young people down”.
She explains within this that young people are now “gadget rich but they are space-poor”; an excellent summary of young people whether they are from the richest of boroughs to the poorest places amongst our towns and cities.
There is nowhere for them to go.
One comment, in fact the opening comment that wonderfully enables the public to have their say, stated that they had heard this discussion for the last fifty years – there’s not enough for young people to do, there’s nowhere for them to go, they are bored and unimaginative, they are intimidating when they gather together, etcetera.
My response would be twofold for starters. Firstly, yes we probably have been saying the same thing for decades and decades but that does not mean that the problem has gone away. Just because it is a constant topic of conversation does not mean that it has been resolved.
Our young people still have nothing to do. Secondly, I do think it is slightly different these days. As Ashley says, they have plenty of things to do but not anywhere to do it together.
There really is nowhere for them to go.
Yesterday, I spoke to my seventeen year old, intelligent young person and asked him what he had done with his Bank Holiday. He had wanted to meet friends, he said, but there was nowhere to go. They eventually went to the park, which they enjoy and could do so because it was a relatively decent day, but they don’t really want to be hanging around in the park for three hours in the middle of November when it is pissing it down with rain do they?
So what is their alternative? They could go to someone’s house and they are more than welcome at mine, but this is hardly giving them the freedom that they deserve. Friends of young people, at the mere sight of their peers’ parents, either turn into Perry from Harry Enfield and become uber compliant “Yes Mrs Patterson, lovely Mrs Patterson” or they turn into pillars of stone unable to say a word. It hardly puts them at ease to enjoy themselves and BE themselves.
And that is really the only alternative that they have.
Okay, I exaggerate slightly, because they could join some sort of organisation and DO something collectively. And that is fine for those who want to do something, assuming that a group of friends all want to do exactly the same thing (which I would find alarming in the first place). And that is also fine if they want to be under the constant guard of an adult, organising things for them but there is still nowhere for them to be themselves with this solution; just talking and being and developing their various relationships, together.
My young person has told me in the past that that they have been approached by the police in the park for intimidating smaller children and their families by gathering near the play area. They are asked to split into smaller groups or go to another park a mile and a half away where they are politely informed that they will not be pestered by the Boys in Blue. So why is this appropriate?
If they dare to venture into the local shopping area, they are immediately pounced upon and asked to split into twos and threes maximum. As my brother said to me yesterday, it would be interesting if one of the young people asked the copper or the security guard precisely what law they are breaking by gathering together in groups of seven or eight. And in our non-police state, the response could be that they are not breaking the law right up to the point when they used their democratic right to ask this very question, which could be interpreted as breaching the peace or inciting a public argument, in which case, they can be given their little piece of paper to say that they are in danger of committing a crime, and then the move-on and break-up is allegedly justified.
It simply isn’t fair.
These young people just want to be left to converse with one another, to learn about how they interact with one another without having an adult there to contrive and direct every single thing that they do. There are places that they can join, of course, but why should they have to participate in some grand activity all of the time, when all they want to do is chill out, discuss the state of the world and flop down on a sofa to relax at the end of a day when they have been pressurised and forced to do a string of work that they are probably mightily disinterested in?
When I was a young lass (teenagers please don’t switch off just yet), when I was younger things were different. By the time I was my child’s age, I had been drinking in the local pub for nearly eighteen months. Admittedly, I did not drink alcohol but there was one instance when the local Bobbies came in and asked me my age. I replied that I was seventeen. They went straight to the barmaid and asked her if she knew that I was underage to which she politely replied that she did know, that I had never consumed alcohol in her pub and that of course she knew how old I was and who I was because I had been drinking there for at least a year.
At that age, we didn’t want to be surrounded and mollycoddled by adults either. We didn’t want to play table tennis at the local youth club and we didn’t necessarily want to have weekly meetings at the local swimming club. We simply wanted to sit down together and talk, just as our young people want to do now.
And they are interested in the world around them. They do want to discuss what is happening in Libya, they do want to discuss local, national and international injustices, they do want to formulate their ideas and their thoughts that sometimes can only be done in informal discussions.
Recently, I went to a local youth club that has been generally praised for the way it operates. Polly Toynbee wrote an article just over a year ago about the Salmon Youth Centre in Bermondsey and how it was providing an essential service for the young people within the borough. She then went on to say that substantial local authority cuts was jeopardising the vital work that these youth workers were doing.
On arriving at the club, I witnessed all the activities that were laid out for the young people to do, and an impressive list they were too. But what did some of them want to do? They just wanted to lounge around and talk in the comfort and security of a place that they felt at ease in. They didn’t necessarily want to play table football or have an adult-led discussion on teenage pregnancy. Although there were art and crafts for them to do, they didn’t really feel like doing that, and yet, they had to be gainfully employed in something, otherwise they were cajoled and coerced into doing something that they may not have chosen to do.
I am not criticising such clubs. They are vital but they are not the solution as far as young people having a place to be, a place to go and simply organise themselves.
What is the solution? Well, as Ashley points out in her article, there are plenty of places that are not used twenty four hours of the day. There are offices that remain closed with all the lights on well into the night, there are schools that are full of redundant classrooms for 160 days of the year. There are open spaces that could accommodate some parkland for older children without too much investment, and yet we still do not see these as viable options because we have been brainwashed into thinking that more than three young people gathered together constitutes a potential riot or criminal activity.
It is just plain wrong.
Yes, they have their Facebooks and instant messaging but it is hardly the same thing as the personal touch of social interaction within the same room. And of course, those who complain about teenagers spending so much time talking to friends on Facebook are sometimes the same ones who have the resources and the room to enable young people to meet together face to face.
People quite rightly complain about Facebook and how it is turning our young people into sedentary beings but what else are we offering them? At least they do now have a mode of communication open to them that does not cost the earth but it is never ever a substitute for a real interaction with one another.
Where can these young people go?
Well, they can go to the cinema, cry the clever ones. And precisely how much conversing can you do in a cinema, and precisely how often can young people attend a cinema which costs £10 for a round trip of travel, film and a can of coke?
It is a small solution but is certainly not the answer to these peoples’ needs.
Children are merely mini-me’s and they are not mini-me’s. They have minds of their own that are dying to explore the realities and complexities of the world. They are our future leaders, they are our future philosophers. They need to share their ideas before they turn into the insular nobodies that they Facebook fearers fear they are becoming. We cannot sit back and let this happen. They need a place to be and they need it now.
And we adults should stop feeling intimidated by these young people and start listening to their needs in a way that engages them in the decisions made and invites them to participate in this world of ours that interests them so much. They need to be equipped to become the fully intelligent people that we now know they are capable of being, and in order for this to happen, they cannot be left alone in their bedrooms with a computer for company.
That will not do.
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