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If you choose to go into further education through going to a university, top-up fees mean that you’re faced with bills of up to £3000 a year.
With the media circus rounding on young people, telling anyone who’ll listen that they’re anti-social drinking, drug-taking idiots who do nothing but destroy community harmony, and commit crime, what is all this achieving? An increase in class division, huge amounts of stress and society looking down on young people from all sides. (And it’s proven that young people are more likely to be victims or crime, rather that the perpetrators.)
Young people have nowhere to go, hanging around shops because it’s light, and safer. People see this as intimidating behaviour, and the young people are often moved on somewhere else, potentially more dangerous, they suffer from much higher levels of discrimination than any other ‘category’ of people, and it must be stopped. Banning young people from streets, not allowing them in certain places based on clothes they’re wearing (my 11-month brother wears a hoody, how long until he’s thrown out of a shopping centre?) The apparent media ‘hunger’ towards offending young people, the list goes on.
One of the best quotes I’ve heard on the issue of youth discrimination is; “We have to treat young people with respect, they’re the ones who will be paying our pension.”
It’s true, we probably will, but that not why I appreciate the comment. I appreciate it, because it hits the bull’s-eye. Young people, in the future, will be the people in charge. The people sustaining communities. The people paying the last generations’ pension. The people guiding ‘our’ youngsters. The people putting forward our views of a “sustainable future.” The people vying for YOUR Vote. Surely the best way of sustaining communities, and therefore, the nation as a whole, is to create a positive future. Invest in the future now, rather than discriminate against it, simple as that.
The Government has taken the wrong steps in allowing young people to stand for parliament at 18, but refusing to give 16 year olds the vote. Young people don’t command enough respect from society to be elected to parliament. Even if a young person did get elected to parliament at 18, chances are that other MP’s won’t take them seriously, and the media pressure would probably make him/her a failure, in the sense that as the worlds youngest MP, everything they say and do will be scrutinized, and the first slip up made would end their political career ‘moments’ after it had started. This is doomed to be potentially fatal to young people’s democracy.
Many projects have highlighted the fact that young people, given the chance, would vote based on an informed decision. Many do already anyway, through votes of parents that are choosing not to vote, so why not make it official?
Discrimination, stereotyping, social exclusion, criticism, stress, and victimization; these are just a few words, which say what society offers to young people. Which one would you choose?
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Writer Profile
Callum McKayle
What can i say? I like the odd grumble, and i love writing articles!
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Comments
What is a sustainable community? Odimegwu Onwumere | Jun 28th, 2005
I read and it was therapeutic to my soul, albeit I was shedding tears. Our politicians all over the world look despotic.Why!!!!!
Sustainabilty is communities Henry Ekwuruke | Jan 4th, 2006
It is good that you write this article for us to read and talk back. I am overwhelmed by this. I believe you have made your point and raise the awareness.
Good!
Sustainable Community... Jerry | Nov 9th, 2006
A sustainable community is a community that can provide for itself, financially, morally, socially and all wise. It is being sustained by its own produce. It solely depends on its own produce. It is able with no intervention from outside quotas to comfortably fend for itself.
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