infed

Just a suggestion.....

Can I please check - is this forum specifically for focused academic debate, or is there room to discuss issues surrounding being a practitioner in today's climate?

As someone who constantly finds the strategies behind much current work with young people concerning and problematic I would like to find somewhere to discuss tactics for managing this, and working sucessfully and ethically despite these constraints.

How can we challenge the status quo and not collude by uphloding beliefs that are ultimately damaging to people, for example, as youth workers do we not contribute to the demonisation of young people through our 'targeted' approaches? How can we assess our role, in terms of what we create, positively or negatively?

If this is way off tangent I do aologise!

thanks

S

Can I please check - is this forum specifically for focused academic debate, or is there room to discuss issues surrounding being a practitioner in today's climate?

As someone who constantly finds the strategies behind much current work with young people concerning and problematic I would like to find somewhere to discuss tactics for managing this, and working sucessfully and ethically despite these constraints.

How can we challenge the status quo and not collude by uphloding beliefs that are ultimately damaging to people, for example, as youth workers do we not contribute to the demonisation of young people through our 'targeted' approaches? How can we assess our role, in terms of what we create, positively or negatively?

If this is way off tangent I do aologise!

thanks

S


I agree, targeted approaches often implicitly say 'you need help' 'you need sorted' you are deviant'. I like the idea more that we should be saying implicitly 'you are so full of energy and hope and optimism' you are the future for all of us' 'you're just great fun' and i would like to see young people being treated with more respect and dignity. After all they are still learning to be adults - who are their roles models?

Give them a break is what is ay.

Hello,

I revisited this thread after reading an article today by Fred Milson, which, (although written at least thirty years ago) seems to cut through a lot of the crap, and presents a refreshingly simple but somehow touching analysis of what youth work and youth workers are really all about.

I found this section about the 'selfish' motivations particularly resonant, I think the last sentence is particularly powerful, and ties in with the points made by 'the devil' above:

"Healthy-mindedness demands that we happily acknowledge that our own needs are being met in the youth group as well as the young people's. Anything else would be intolerable since it would imply that we are superior creatures who have everything to give and nothing to receive: and would result in an attitude of patronage. In the sense that the puritanical purists mean, "absolute unselfishness" does not exist. It is natural and human that leaders and helpers should also gain at least an emotional income from the youth group: workers who enjoy what they are doing are far more likely to be successful in this sphere: and they will certainly endure longer. We are there to "share life" rather than "to do good". That we sincerely enjoy their company is one of the best messages we can flash to the rising generation. "

From: http://www.infed.org/archives/nayc/milson_why.htm

I wonder how often we 'flash' this message in our practice? Or what alternative messages we flash?

With respect, working with young unemployed or not in training, education or employment youths, from 16 to 25, i wonder if it might be more appropriate to ask how often the situations in which we practice have already constrained our ability to offer any message beyond 'you are failed and we are here to impose our structures on your life'. In which 'our' can be taken to mean 'the system that funds our being here at all' as mediated through a profit driven, or at least profit aware, organisation.