This was originally written for a UK audience in an academic setting. If you’d like the bibliographical information, please get in touch.
The negative attitudes towards and stereotyping of young people seen today date as far back as Egypt 2000BC in which a priest identified the imminent “end of the world” because “children no longer [listened] to their parents.” (Sallah 2008:26)
Youth is often perceived in one of two ways, either the young “are trouble or [are] in trouble.” (Roche and Tucker 2004 in Sallah 2008:27)
I do not believe that youth work originally stemmed from either of these ethos.
Instead I’ve noticed, using Christian principles as a guide, the original ‘youth workers’ identified needs and sought to educate the oppressed and disadvantaged. Unfortunately, this idea of freedom for young people has been corrupted and is now a method for social behavioural control (are trouble) and prevention of future risk to the greater society and economy (in trouble).
Mark Smith identifies youth work’s beginnings in church Sunday Schools in the late 1700’s. They were designed for “teaching Bible reading and basic skills on a Sunday” (Smith 2000) but the work of the church soon changed to include “a range of activities including team sports and day trips.” (Smith 2002)
I believe Hannah More had the best and truest sense of youth work as we understand it today, which had elements of ‘moral philosophising” (Young 1999:3), “conversation and community” (Smith 2000:1) and “things to do and places to go.” (HM Government 2005:30) She worked in a way which “allied faith, hope and charity to national purpose.” (Prochaska 1988:22 in Smith 2002)
More also took into account different young people’s needs and “programmes had to be planned and suited to the level of the students” (Smith 2000), while her “somewhat questionable orientation” (Smith 2002) that children are “beings of ‘a corrupt nature and evil dispositions’” (More 1799: 44, quoted by Thompson 1968: 441) might suggest to some that she saw young people as trouble. I feel this has more to do with the perspective her Christian-based value system brought to her practice, that all people have an imperfect nature and “fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23)
With the creation of the YMCA and Uniformed associations such as Brigades and Scouting for Boys, youth work began to be more accessible for young people than ever before. Smith stated that by 1930, 390,000 young men were participating in Scouts and Cubs. With so many young people engaged in positive activities that best suited their unique interests, it meant that “’youths’ [were seen] as a separate grouping with specific needs.” (Smith 2000) Unfortunately, the by-product of this heightened awareness of young people was a focus on their being ‘trouble’ or ‘in trouble.’
It was after World War I and leading into World War II that youth work experienced a boom as “the continuing development of community-based forms of working-class organization… and the emergence of state intervention, and hence paid part-time youth work” combined with “movements in leisure.” As services changed to cope with economic and social changes, youth work was able to grow and flourish. This provided a “bulge” (Smith 2002) in youth work numbers through the 1970’s.
During the 1980’s and 1990’s through to today, there has been a rise in “issue-based work by youth workers and a growing emphasis upon concrete outcomes by policymakers.” (Smith 2002) This has included youth workers being restricted in funding opportunities unless there is proof that the young people are “deemed to be ‘at risk’ in some way.” (Smith 2002)
It is this time that I would consider to be the beginning of a detrimental shift towards targeted youth work. It is at this point in youth work history that young people begin to be seen as ‘trouble or in trouble’ to a greater extent. It goes beyond offering services to young people and has begun to dictate that young people seen as being ‘at risk’ be enrolled in services that will control and manage their challenging and ‘anti-social’ behaviour.
I believe this history shows two approaches to youth work. One is needs-based while the other is target-based.
While based on the needs of young people and positive activities, youth work saw not only its inception but tremendous growth. It is since introducing targets in the late 20th Century that “numbers attending youth clubs and centres [declined].” (Smith 2002) And while the government appears to be well intentioned in offering ‘places to go and things to do’, it is actually offering this provision to “encourage and enable children and young people to contribute to their communities and help divert them from anti-social behaviour” (HM Government 2008) rather than for the benefit of the young people. Targeted youth work has also had a detrimental effect on youth workers providing a “demoralized professional youth service” who are unable to “organise simple things like youth clubs.” (Howells 1998)
Question: What is the history of Youth Work where you are? You can share your thoughts in the comments below or submit a guest post by contacting us.
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