Notes from the margins: fighting someone else's battle

Asking young people to ‘fight their own battles’ is both hopeful and naive. While some young people can and even do. For example, young people, writing through the Internet, have developed plausible youth policy and submitted it to government. Government assumed the writers were adults… However, at the same time – youth are only young for a short time…and just when they get used to fighting their own battles and start to get good and it – it becomes someone else’s battle…

Although I have 25 years of experience working in the community welfare sector and most of that in direct line youth work - now I'm just an old guy as far as most younger people are concerned.  All I'm "good for" is policy...  but at the same time, some young people are now so good at writing policy that I'm not really needed!  So long as the Government don't realise this great policy information is actually coming from young people themselves, they really take it on board.

That's why the Internet is so important, that's why we need to teach our little children about it and get people of all ages connected.  I heard someone quoted (I think it might have been Bill Gates) as saying, "Chance favours the connected mind."  Young people need to be connected to each other - and that synergy will develop plausible youth policy!

Notes from the margins were taken from notes I made while reading the book “Rethinking Youth”. Johanna Wyn and Rob White. Rethinking Youth. St Leonards, NSW. Allen and Unwin. 1997.

Posted by Peter Hotchkin