A reaction to “Young people: Do we need them?” by Andy Carling
Youth – the key player and the future of society. Today more often than ever before youth as a generation is being supported and started to form a very specific division of society somewhere between children and so-called adulthood. Sociologists have started to develop a new nomenclature in order to fit this growing part of the society into a definition. The trial to fit something that is constantly changing and evolving may be indeed very challanging.
As youth is usually being praised as the future of society, one voice has been raised saying that the constant talk about youth may be significantly exaggerrated. Andy Carling is defining this generation with very aggressive words as “a bunch of slobs trying to gibber their way towards the distant aim of coherence” and goes as far as suggesting to raise the raise the voting age to 25. Various EU programmes aiming to support youth seem to be a waste of the taxpayers money, as young people seem to be just an obstacle while getting on the tram.
As a young person I have indeed learned to grow up with the idea in our head that there will be a strong support coming from the governments and international institutions. We can hear concerns coming from decision makers about youth unemployment in Europe. New programmes are being created in order to foster the personal development and intercultural exchange of young people. Indeed it looks like young peolple are a group of society that requires special care. However when there is extraordinary attention and where the money is flowing, there must be also critical voices.
It seems to me that the ideas for Andy Carling’s article have developed during a tram ride in the rush hour, when the patience in the “tram micro-society” is reaching groud levels and the sensibility for young people making noise or taking much space might be extraordinarily raised. No surprise that such a general frustration about the behaviour of few people can be extended to an entire part of the society. Can all young people be indeed reduced to tram riding and fashion consuming oddities? Calling young people “the future” is really exaggerrated?
Over decades it have been always the young people that were striving for a change. In contrast to older generations, they have been driven not by the wish of improving their material life standards and working conditions, but simply by something that can be called idealism. Simply by the wish of wanting to change the society into something they have been believing in. In 1968 in Germany, it have been the young people pointing out existing post-fashist structures in unviersities, which lead to a deep change of the society. Even in very convenient social structures this idealism may lead to a will for change.
As the current year is carrying the name of the European Year of Volunteering the activism and volunteerism of young people should not remain unmentioned. Thousands of people are volunteering all over the world, working in difficult conditions for just a small subsistence or even no money in order to help someone else or simply to improve the society. The major part of NGOs work is based purely on volunteers. And as the name already indicates, they are doing it not for the purpose of obtaining profit, but solely out of the belief in the matter. Such a mentality still appears to be reserved for young people, as mainly this generation is willing and able to do sacrifices in the name of an idea.
Young people expect concrete actions from the decision makers and therefore prefer simply to take their wishes in their own hands. They are able to organise themselves and strive for alternative forms of education like non formal education that is not based on certificates or formal structures. They do not intend to simply complain about the lethargic society. While other people go protesting in order to enforce better services, young people often set-up such services on their own. Could we really consider to exclude such people from the participation in elections?
Even if not all young people may be idealists and activits. Most of them share the general concern about not only their future, but the future of an entire society or even civilisation. The clear indicator for this are the diverse forms of expression. May it be music, social or political activism. Young people do not stay in the tram complaining about other passangers, they sit in this tram developing ideas on how to change the society and the world.