Youth and Society

Abstract

Our society does not like young people. In comparison with our continental partners Britain shows little of the warmth and tolerance which extends to young people in public places or on communal occasions (AMA 1995). Politicians and commentators may offer occasional and sentimental obeisance to the notion that our future, too, lies in their hands. Yet the practical recognition of young people as an asset which requires investment and development is one which, at the level of policy or public attitudes, is strikingly absent from the dominant discourse. As Jeffs and Smith (1996) put it, ‘a widespread belief is circulating in America and Britain that young people are in some way turning feral’.