Tristan Donovan wrote an interesting Opinion piece that you can see here. His original question was
- Are we getting older sooner or staying young longer?
I thought it interesting anyway because I think maybe the answer is both. Often I’ve wondered whether children “grow up” too fast, I also sometimes question if youth work may even hasten this with so much emphasis on ‘empowering’ young people.
In the rest of Tristans article he discusses how proposed restrictions on under 18 year olds seemingly contradict the campaign for 16 year olds to be able to vote. I’d agree that it would…… that is if you agree with the premise that you should reach a magic age and then all the entitlements of adulthood are yours. On the otherhand you may argue there should be a gradual transition of responsibilities - in fact perhaps there already is if you look at this post showing the different ages at which young people gain legal responsibilities.
Although reading through that list doesn’t give the impression that it was planned to be a system to support young people to take on increasing responsibility until becoming a ‘full adult’ - instead it looks more like people randomly deciding ages they think may be suitable for certain things.
Arguably this is also whats happening right now - on the one hand theres the camp that argue young people should be able to vote at 16, and then there are those saying 18 year olds are not yet capable of drinking alcohol responsibly or purchasing knives etc. Nobody though seems to have taken an overall view and said what is the best process through which we can support young people to take on all of these responsibilities, and in what order or priority are they handed over to them?
I caught this on BBC the other morning:
“I think children act like adults at an alarmingly early age,” said Dame Jacqueline Wilson, who has sold more than 30 million books. Her remarks came as a poll by her publisher suggested that more than half of parents believe childhood is now over by 11.
Which is of course a clever bit of publicity to launch her book. But it’s an interesting topic and my first thought was that its true - childhood and something I’ve long had a problem with is the tendency for work done with young people to put them in positions of adult responsibility (rather than allowing them to participate as children/young people).
Once I got off my high horse though I thought back to the children we work with in Malawi - their education finishes at primary level and then they may have to fend for themselves or even support their siblings. Then I thought its not so long ago children in this country could have been in a similar situation - the school leaving age was younger, think of the workhouses and what about the age of Continue Reading »
A common reason given by for the need for Youth Participation work refers the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child - in case you’re not familiar with this heres a summary taken from the UNICEF website:
I had a discussion the other day about the ‘rights based approach’ to youth participation and the relationship between youth participation and engaging young people in democracy and it was presented to me that Continue Reading »
A lot of organisations contact us wanting advice or training to involve young people in meetings or adult committees. Generally this leads to an indepth conversation about how they should be looking to do a fair bit of preparatory work to get to this stage - however the reality is that many organisations still ‘involve young people’ by plonking a couple on a committee and hoping they’ll contribute ever so now and again (or at least not make too much mess!).
Cynicism aside even organisations with a genuine desire for young people to participate sometimes find themselves in the position of holding an ‘adult’ meeting with some young people who haven’t been well prepared. So what can you do when in this situation to make the meeting process more relevant Continue Reading »
