Young people.

This morning I did a talk to my English class for a speaking and listening activity, we were allowed to pick any topic we liked. Obviously there were the obvious topics done by people such as, Snowboarding and Manchester United, but I really wanted to push myself at doing it well so picked a topic which I'm passionate about but at the same time would challenge me to talk about in front of a group of young people.
I chose the topic of 'The Representation of young people'
A topic that is close to me, I like many others hate the way in which we are seen in the public eye via news channels and newspapers. I actually think that in Great Yarmouth and my college people are quite naive, don't me wrong I've a lot of friends here, I mean naive to the fact that things in the world can be changed. Too many people would rather sit on facebook for hours on end 'liking' groups and adding friends of friends. I knew that it would surprise my class by way of me picking to stick up for young people. A few people after came to me and said that it made them have a think about things. This was exactly what I was trying to do, as well as getting an A.

Knowing that I was to do the presentation today, last night I had a think of what could be done to give young people an opportunity.
I made the point in the presentation that one of the reasons we get picked on by the media is because we're vulnerable, we don't have a voice. Nobody is willing to stick up for young people in a major way, all of the political parties for this coming election are banging on about how education is important. I've not seen anyone actually talk and LISTEN to young people about whats going on now.

When questions are asked like, 'How do you intend to reform education for the better?'

the answer comes back as 'We have set in place for the next 4-7 years to have education compulsory up until the age of 18 etc etc etc'
That's great but in 4 to 7 years I'll be 25 and school and college will be a distant memory.
We want to be heard now, and for my entire time in education I can't remember one big impact on my learning to change it for the better. Its just a system I've been put through and still am right now.     

If I had enough support and knowledge I'd love to set up a political party aimed directly at the youth. It would be in my opinion the ONLY way in which we could be heard, its so possible to do, we have lots of great universities with people studying politics who could pass their knowledge on to others.
The education system currently fails young people on politics, its not a compulsory subject, its not taught in depth and its not understood in schools.
This makes in near impossible for anyone to come out of school with any knowledge of whats going on politically, so we can't make any impact until we are past our youth.

I woud love to get this blog post around a bit getting more people involved in the discussion, so if you can tweet it or reblog it or even better write your own blog on the subject, post it on websites on your facebook anything to get young people interested and talking.

And by all means post a comment below.

Thanks for reading
Ben