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Did every generation look at the young generation in the same way.

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  Posted by Grumpyfred (U2228930) on Friday, 21st January 2011

  Yesterday my wife and I took part in a question and answer session with boys from the local school. It was about how the older generation saw the younger one. I suggested that every generation has looked at the younger with a feeling of... Well not fear. My parents saw the Mads and Rockers as the youth of the day. With my Grandparents it was the Teddyboys. Us, it is the Hoody's. So what about those before the war. I suggested the school try and find a copy of "These dangerous years", which summed up the feelings of the postwar youth.

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  Posted by Vizzer aka U_numbers (U2011621) on Saturday, 22nd January 2011

  Isn't the concept of adolescence (or teenagehood) a twentieth century one? It really only got going (in the UK) during the 'long boom' from c.1950-1970. This meant that there was much more disposable income around including for (or especially) young people.
  
  In the US the concept of a distinct youth culture seems to have originated even earlier. During the Second World War there were the 'zoot suiters' (mainly Mexican immigrants and often exempt from the draft) who benefitted from the pentiful supply of jobs available as a result of the war effort. In 1943 there were even riots in US cities sparked by friction between off-duty US service personnel and zoot suiters.
  
  Even before then (on both sides of the Atlantic) there was the notion of the 'flappers' who emerged during the boom of the 1920s. The flappers, however, tended to be female and in their twenties (so not quite teenagers). The idea was probably the same though.

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  Posted by Grumpyfred (U2228930) on Saturday, 22nd January 2011

  I enjoyed the session, and the boys seemed to do so as well. They asked interesting questions and one was what did we think of todays youth. The answer was that every older generation looked at the younger and shook their head. We, (The older gen.) have always had it harder than the younger one (If you believe it.) I left school at 15. My father at 14. Before the Great War, it was even earlier with children (According to the Edwardian Farm) as young as 11 leaving school. They were interested in my past life, thought it was funny that I crashed a glider as a young man, stood on the police line during two riots and when I gave them a quick history lesson thought it was funny that their history teacher did not know what I was talking about. (The Congress of Vienna) Hopefuly they will ask us to go back.
  
  GF

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  Posted by Vizzer aka U_numbers (U2011621) on Saturday, 22nd January 2011

  Glad to hear that you enjoyed the session Fred. When I was at school I always found visitors from the 'real world' i.e. not regular teachers infinitely more interesting. The fact that a UK teacher of the Blairite generation should know nothing about diplomatic history and the development of international law (e.g. the Congress of Vienna), just speaks volumes. But maybe it's not that surprising.
  
  Thinking about it - much of what I have learned about history has tended to be despite the UK education system and not because of it. So I have plenty of faith in the next generation. In the end those that want to learn things for themselves and better their understanding will always find the means to do so.

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  Posted by Grumpyfred (U2228930) on Saturday, 22nd January 2011

  Vis I found the same to be true. Mostly dry dates. I learned more of the history of Africa from reading the works of fiction by W Smith than I did at school. The same with likes of India.

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  Posted by raundsgirl (U2992430) on Saturday, 22nd January 2011

  A quick read throgh the Old Testament reveals that they were grumbling about 'the youth of today' even then, as were Roman Authors and the Ancient Egyptians. It must be human nature.

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  Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Saturday, 22nd January 2011

  Actually going back a few centuries certainly in the towns and cities of Western Europe the teenage groups were based upon work not leisure because young people- especially boys were already within "the system"..
  
  London for example was in particular something of a mecca for apprentice boys, and the various companies and guilds made sure that there were festivals and feasts at which their apprentice boys could prove themselves against others in the various martial arts that were part of their civic responsibility.
  
  The older apprentices were an important part of civil defence- as in the English Civil War when they held up the King's advance on London around Newbury, and in the Revolutionary War in Ireland in 1689-90 when the Derry/Londonderry "prentice boys" took the actions that are connected with the problematic annual marches that still go on.
  
  So it seems that such youths can be heroes or villains, and perhaps the latter feature becomes prominent in unpredictable and uncertain times like the Evil May Day riots early in the reign of Henry VIII- initially a teenage King himself- at a time when relations with France were deteriorating..
  
  One year the May Day celebrations got out of hand with boys/youths drinking too much and starting to physically assault foreigners in London streets. Things got out of control , as in recent student fees demonstrations, and the youths defied a curfew..
  
  Sir Thomas More mediated and quietened things down.. But Henry VIII, angry at the damage to the English economy through the outrages upon these foreigners, whose safety was a special responsibility of the King, insisted on having several of the apprentices hanged.
  
  Such episodes, like other kinds of storms and disasters, are not constant or regular within the state of society, and are usually symptoms of a malaise when the energy, enthusiasm of youth is left as an unrequired by-product, like the permanent flames that used to burn up the unused gas at oil refineries..
  
  The second article that I had published some years ago was entitled "Should Education be Useless?"... What he have seen recently in Tunisia, by all reports, indicates what can happen when that proves to be the case.
  
  The problem of the last 30+ years has been "What is there for boys and youths to achieve now?"... In the mid-Seventies we as teachers started to make real inroads in persuading girls to change their existing educational profile which was to progress until 14-15, at which they left school and focussed on trying to achieve conventional ambitions of being engaged, married and a mother by 21. Since then the challenge of female advance has been a great feature of education at all levels.
  
  But this means, by definition, that the boys have declined relatively, and the "feminisation" of education and work has made both boring and unattractive to boys. For them there is no positive challenge of the Way Ahead merely a long and continuing process of decline and marginalisation.
  
  
  Cass

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  Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Saturday, 22nd January 2011

  I know that is the perceived wisdom, Cass, but I don't know if it actually true for many boys, who manage just fine under a 'feminisation' of learning/teaching. Here in NZ we have changed from a purely examination way of judging students (I never really understand why we need to judge them) to a certificate of achievement based on their work overall and whether they have met a standard. Lots and lots of little credits given.
  
  The same boys who failed exams fail this, by and large. But boys still do perfectly well overall. Just sometimes they are beaten by girls. Doesn't mean they have nothing to achieve or no expectations to meet or no ambitions to aim for.
  
  I think the age at which people moan about younger people has changed - it is now down to about 14, but it seems a constant that they always did. And even in those times where work was all-embracing for many young people, even children, there were wealthy young men with too much time on their hands who created mayhem and got their kicks from violence and debauchery.
  
  The book I am reading at the moment (Imagined London by Anna Quindlen) talks of Soames Forsyth (in the Forsyth Saga by John Galsworthy, which I might say in passing was one of the most readable books I have ever read - I stayed awake till 5am reading it when I was 17) being appalled by modern democratic England. 'Dishevelled, hurried, noisy and seemingly without an apex.' She then quotes Wordsworth bemoaning the state of England:
  
  'Milton! Thou shoul'st be living at this hour
  England hath need of thee: she is a fen
  Of stagnant water...'
  
  These are less about young people per se but still show that it is a very human idea that things are going downhill (surely animals don't have this feeling).
  
  And eveyone knows the Greeks complained about their young people. They talk of a lack of respect from younger to elder and similar.
  
  Cheers, Caro.

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  Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Saturday, 22nd January 2011

  Caro
  
  While you may be right, the two cases that you mention - in Wordsworth and Galsworthy- were both writing in very major turning points in English, British, European and World history.. Full of uncertainty and the build up to virtual and actual world war.
  
  As the present age with all of its uncertainties may yet be.
  
  And in general terms men and women I think have traditionally lived in different scales and time scales. The French word "regle" indicates an expectation that a adult females life is often closely regulated by a monthy cycle and all that the fertility involved in that fact of life produces.
  
  The phone has just wrung and our daughter is on the phone for the second time today. Fortunately for us both my wife was out when she phoned earlier,and we could have a really good father-daughter chat, which is usually not possible because- like I suspect many husbands- I realise that mothers just have to talk to their children, and find out whether they have slept, ate, gone to the loo, had sex, have any pains, taken their medicinc if appropriate, travelled successfully without getting almost killed etc..
  
  As a father I take it for granted that our 33 year old daughter, who has travelled on her own more adventuorously than either of us- [a couple of years ago going out on her own to join a 10 day treck in Nepal], is intelligent capable and autonomous: and if she needs my help she will ask for it.
  
  I took the opportunity to catch up on other things.. e.g..The fact that she was in Paris last week-end rehearsing for a concert, with the brilliant young oboist who was in the ensemble more than ten years ago when it started up and with whom, as the flautist, there was a very special interweaving of flute and oboe. Also matters about our will that we as parents have been discussing, and whether she is going to run the London marathon again this year.
  
  When I updated my wife when she returned from her shopping, she was not interested and was furious that I had not asked our daughter when she could come and have a family meeting over a lunch.
  
  But my wife tells me angrily that I waste my time trying to work out the conundrums of world history and current affairs, and how to create the life-time framework that will support not only our children , but with any luck eventually grandchildren through a better world. And hope to play some active role in forging that future instead of just being carried along for the ride. The terrible result is that I have done what she has allocated as my increment of weekly vacuum cleaning two days late. The dust waited to no ill effect.
  
  Re education:
  
  As you say it is accepted that boys and men like to have a challenge.. But putting boys in for exams is not a challenge unless they have "picked up the gauntlet".. In my last State comprehensive school, going back to all boys once more, the boys regularly dismissed the significance of their exam results because they knew that the result was not a reflection of their potential.. They walked out of the room saying, "I could have done that if I had bothered to revise"
  
  But in many cases they had never been given the opportunity to acquire examination technique, and there has to be some positive incentive/goal that will come about through success..
  
  As I wrote in that article in the 1980's, the point of the 16+ examination system in the UK was to determine who was in the top 30 % and then the next 20%.. The rest were tested really just to confirm that they were in the lower half: because examinations traditionally are not really measures of true competence and ability, but a tool to discriminate between those who are able to succeed "within the system" and those who find that hard.
  
  For many years I worked summers in the O Level exam schools and know that generally the exam results were tweaked to make sure that the same % got the same grades as previous years.. If marks were generally higher the paper was looked at and some questions were found to have been easier than anticipated.
  
  
  Generally because of a more regulated childhood training by their mothers for adult roles that are vital for the survival of the species, girls and women are much more capable of working within a system than most men.. And whatever system of assessment is used- as long as it can be anticipated and planned for girls are almost certain to outperform boys now that their ambitions have been re-programmed into careers and away from home and family. Amonst other things they are probably biologically programmed to nine month projects, and that is just about perfect for an academic year.
  
  But in ages like those of Wordsworth and Galsworthy when chaos is looming over the world men tend to gird up their loans and summon up their blood to confront the infinity and formlessness of chaos, and do their bit for species survival.. as that 13 year old Australian "hero" did last week.
  
  I was thinking of this today when I went to war on the heavy winter digging required by my allotment, conscious that my brother died two years younger than my present age just at this time of year when he had gone out for a long cycle ride to get fit. and died instantly from a heart attack when he came home..
  
  I discussed this too with our daughter. The challenge of pushing hard enough to get back to being "fit to survive", and able to acieve goals, but not so much as to kill yourself.. Because a man has got to express and channel his explosive physicality to mould the or his world, or lose it and lose his life.
  
  But the modern world does not want male power. We think that we can waste the males of the species and do it all by machines and mechanisms.
  
  Cass
  
  

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  Posted by Mike Alexander (U1706714) on Monday, 24th January 2011

  In Tudor times it was apprentices who were feared. They were young boisterous men with a little spare money and often a liking for drink. They hung round on street corners and were perceived as a constant potential threat to public order.
  
  I guess the root of all this is that young men without wives and children, or much status in society, have very little to lose - few responsibilities, and a surfeit of testosterone. Add alcohol, religious strife, political strife or a combination of all three, and there's always going to be a scrap!

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  Posted by Grumpyfred (U2228930) on Monday, 24th January 2011

  I can see it back in the stone age with the old man saying to the yought. Well in our day we had to do without fire.

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  Posted by thelastminority (U14702061) on Tuesday, 25th January 2011

  
  
  Thought i might add this neat paragraph to the discussions......??!
  
  By the 1970s enough time had passed for the immediate post-war years to be subject to historical enquiry - that emphasised the new beginnings for farming, forestry and that third force in the countryside, outdoor recreation and the protection of amenity and wildlife. Without doubting the novelty of what had been achieved, it was pertinent to show the extent to which those post-war advances had drawn on advocacy and debate of the interwar years. It was an exciting time for historical writing. The Cabinet and departmental files for the 1920s and 1930s had just been released under the Public Records Act 1969. A modest venture was 'Rural Conservation in InterWar Britain' (Oxford University Press substituted the word 'conservation' with the authors choice of 'protection', so as to give the book wider appeal). Blaise Gillie, an official of the statutory planning division of the Ministry of Health in the 1930s, had kindly read the manuscript. He criticised it for giving a false sense of coherence to the extraordinary array of inititives recounted, many of which he had first learnt of only by reading the book ! The manuscript was adjusted to give a better sense of the piecemeal, uncoordinated endeavour of these years. A distinguished reviewer later admonished the author for failing to bring out sufficiently the evolving connectivity of all that was occuring at that time.Β 
  
  
  

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