Political Leaders: Stop Screwing Our Youth!
By Shlomo Maital
It is widely agreed that our political leaders, all over the world, are screwing up badly, on the crackpot advice of economists. Europe is in recession, it is spreading to America and elsewhere, and no solution is in sight.
With such short-term woes, it is easy to lose sight of a more serious long-term problem. We are screwing our youth. If the political leadership of any country were to define a mission statement (why we exist), it should always include, near the top, “building opportunities for the younger generation”. There seems to be no such mission, and even if there were, politicians are everywhere destroying such opportunities. Look at these youth unemployment rates: Spain 45%, Greece 49%, Sweden 30%, Ireland 35%, Finland 25%, U.S. 20%, Eurozone 22%. And those are vast underestimates – because faced with no jobs, many youths simply do not even bother to look for one, and hence are not included in the labor force. And the best and the brightest, those who can, get on a ship or plane and leave.
New research by Harvard U. political scientist Robert Putnam (remember “Bowling Alone”, about growing fragmentation of society) reveals:
► “…. the children of the more affluent and less affluent are raised in starkly different ways and have different opportunities. Decades ago, college-graduate parents and high-school-graduate parents invested similarly in their children. Recently, more affluent parents have invested much more in their children’s futures while less affluent parents have not.” [See David Brooks’ NYT Op-Ed, July 9].
► Over the past decades, college-educated parents have quadrupled the amount of time they spend reading “Goodnight Moon,” talking to their kids about their day and cheering them on from the sidelines. High-school-educated parents have increased child-care time, but only slightly.
► Over the last 40 years upper-income parents have increased the amount they spend on their kids’ enrichment activities, like tutoring and extra curriculars, by $5,300 a year. The financially stressed lower classes have only been able to increase their investment by $480, adjusted for inflation.
► Putnam writes: “It’s perfectly understandable that kids from working-class backgrounds have become cynical and even paranoid, for virtually all our major social institutions have failed them — family, friends, church, school and community.” As a result, poorer kids are less likely to participate in voluntary service work that might give them a sense of purpose and responsibility. Their test scores are lagging. Their opportunities are more limited.
► Richer kids are roughly twice as likely to play after-school sports. They are more than twice as likely to be the captains of their sports teams. They are much more likely to do nonsporting activities, like theater, yearbook and scouting. They are much more likely to attend religious services.
Our worthless politicians are indeed addressing the youth issue – they exploit it, to seek voters and constituencies, rather than address it, to ameliorate it. As Brooks notes: “Political candidates will have to spend less time trying to exploit class divisions and more time trying to remedy them — less time calling their opponents out of touch elitists, and more time coming up with agendas that comprehensively address the problem. It’s politically tough to do that, but the alternative is national suicide.”
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July 16, 2012 at 10:36 am
Eelker van Hagen
Even though the Netherlands are but a small drop of ink on the map, we are quite exemplary. The moment I hopped around in high school the educational system was praised for the fact that it had been able to make a change in a relatively short time in history (roughly between the reconstruction years after the war and the 80’s), it had increased social mobility immensely. The talent pool of the young was being targeted across the layers of our social fabric. During the nineties I wandered around university and the first social studies saw the light that the times were changing drastically the increase of social mobility from the mid eighties on had come to a halt. It actually already faced the other way, it became increasingly difficult for people in “lower classes” to “escape” purely based on the talents they had. One would have expected this to ring alarm bells across the political landscape. For different reasons both parties with a social democratic background and parties with a liberal background should have met half way for this outcome is contradictory to their belief system. At this specific point in time, for almost 8 years the dutch government was formed by a pact between the 2 political movements mentioned before. They were not able to address this specific issue but effectively deepened the gap. Now all across our last century the debate whether Keynes ideas on government spending are effective or not has been dominated by monetary views, one specific aspect has been overlooked. Keynes ideas had been effective but for one reason, the goal of investment was embedded in a society that reached communis opinio on the goal of investment. Today no European investment plan is able to create such communis opinio. Let’s face it no bag of money that has been gathered for a bail out or protection of government or bank has been able to gather that kind of support across the European social fabric. The call for leadership in Europe is but the longing for people that are able to gather support for common sense decisions. No democratic structure is in place in Europe to build that kind of support across nations, no national politician is able to translate European endeavours to its national constituants. Politics and goverments alike are breaking their heads on how to deal with the vox populi. But maybe we should break our heads over the question what is it that they want rather than what they say, because in basis, the outcry of nationalistic parties across Europe that started mid 80’s has but one common ground, they state the lack of “building communis opinio”, something the European Union had been known for for quite some decades. Now if we take but for one problem, we all Europeans have to face the coming years, is the fact that the amount of people working versus the amount of people are not working anymore is shifting in a dangerous direction. All across Europe we are preparing our societies for the idea that the moment that we are able to stop working will shift to a later age, simply because we need to do that to be able to keep our social structures sustainable. The one thing we are forgetting is that if we want people to be productive during that specific time in their lifes they need to carry the tools to be that productive. The decrease of social mobility is a strong indicator that we are spreading the tools across an elite that will be too small to handle things when we hit the rough times. That could form a basis for communis opinio. It’s not half of Spains youth that we all currently enable to sustain damage in a way that might hinder their future productivity. The Spanish youth is already part of the European Labour Force that is under heavy enemy fire. Any plan that has the economic dimensions of a Marshall plan should encorporate the support of the communis opinio. Thank you mr. Maital for bringing it to our attention that we have but the one thing that we all share the same worries about, which is our youth and the young. Our worries are easily captured in the questions: “Do we equip our young with enough changes?” and “Are we able to really foster the potential of them?”. We share these worries across national borders and cultural backgrounds. If we choose to accept these challenges in a proper way we should face the fact that there will be tough coockies to crack but that despite current crises, Europe is a vast container of unimaginable resources. Do we need communis opinio forming to be effective? Hell yeah, we should. Should we be worried about the vox populi? Hell no, but let’s remember one thing, as long as we decide to confront the public with idea that Europe is a scale of decisionmaking that we do not trust the public to handle responsibly so in stead we send our national elite to handle it, their will be politicians that are able to tell their voters; “You are not being trusted and therefore you are not being heard. I’m the one that will take care that your thoughts and fears are properly addressed”. There is nothing wrong with that, as long as the political process is able to address the legitimate demands from these voters as legitimate and the illegitimate ones as illegitimate. If we are not able to handle their legitimate demands properly, large parts of our society will feel left unheard and ignored. Ignoring is the one social divider that has left the most black spots on the map of our recent past. Let’s face it, we will make major steps forward the moment a political party that only adressess interests for senior citizens will be the topic of debate in a Spanish barbershop amongst dutch pencionados and Spanish senior citizens alike. There is but one valid argument for politicians to not support increased access for European voters to European decision making; the distance between the citizens themselves and the decisions to make. Let’s turn this the other way round. As long as there is no incentive for politicians to address European citizens but only to address national ones, they will not be incentivized to address issues that have a European scale. As long as decisions that have a European scale are “translated” by national politicians with a national interest, no European citizen will be informed in a way that Europeans will be informed on the impact they have on European citizens. Every member of the European parliament will return home to explain that even the slightest splinter of influence is a huge responsibility in the light of the immense impact of the decisions. We need to return to the fact that only direct access and influence will tell European citizens that they are trusted enough to sit at the table of European decision making. And that is a key element in the communis opinio forming we need to succeed in a Marshall Plan on the youth of Europe. A plan we so dangerously need. If we get on with that plan we need to ask ourselves this question. Do we build a future labour force out of the demands of the society we currently live in or do we have our young to follow their hearts, equip them with chances and encourage their inventiveness so that they will be able to adept to the future challenges we have no knowledge of yet. Facing future challenges that might be crucial to the sustainability of our social fabric. The social fabric itself might just be crucial in the support our society is able to offer us, when the time comes we need it.
Thanks again mr. Maital.
July 16, 2012 at 10:40 am
timnovate
Very thoughtful, interesting and insightful comment. Thank you!
July 16, 2012 at 12:10 pm
Eelker van Hagen
There is only one observation on a very personal level that I would like to add if you allow me. Over the last week I have been on a camping trip with my nephew and halfway during the week his best friend from school joined our small vacation. Not being a parent myself I was immensely aware of the responsibility I was rendered. Already at the age of 10, the 2 best friends showed my that they were starting to figure out everything by theirselves, the way the world works, how to form opinions on that, the way they themselves should behave toward it. There was just the one tiny thing, they sometimes need help with: How to make the transition from the persona that did something wrong to the persona that didn’t wan’t to do something wrong but it happened anyway. That is a tough mental coockie to crack that they need help with from the sometimes adult outside world. Then again at that age they are still at a level of mental flexibility that every small investment made by the outside world has a huge pay off. We should be aware that some of the gaps our society has struggled with over the last decades has been caused by the failure of social fabric to lend a helping hand at that specific moment in the lifes of our young. The gap some immigrant groups now face is divided over “We entered a society that rendered our mechanisms to succesfully have our young bridge the gap between being someone that made a specific mistake to somenone that didn’t want to make that mistake, useless.” versus “You entered our society with inadequate tools to have your young bridge the gap between being someone that makes mistakes to someone that didn’t want to make them in the first place”. Let’s not forget these tools have been an integral part of our society. Every single one of our elite, the ones with enough self-assertion to shape our future cherish a particular memory of devilment in their youth. Not for it being the biggest thing they did wrong, but for it being the biggest transition they made from being someone who does that to someone who did that. These tools have not been available for large part of our immigrants, for the simple reason that our ways to do that were being feared by them for their apparent license to ill, rather than for their possibility for the young to experiment and learn. Are we able to stand on moral higher grounds and condemn them? I should think not in times where we are confronted with the results of the way we were and are handling things; Our moral institutes are turning out to be the ones that were least capable of safeguarding our youth from ourselves. The unemployment rates amongst our young are turning out to have a devastating effect on their lifes to come and we are less and less capable of defend our young against themselves; their experiments and missteps are put under the media microscope of labeling them criminal rather than our capability to spot the talent of self-assertion and help them on their transition from someone who does that to someone who did that. What did we miss? Well maybe we missed the qualities of the boxing and judo coaches, the ones our young could look up to, to learn how to handle their inner demons. Maybe we missed the fact that these parenting skills are shared at the coffee table when neighbors talk through the challenges they face when handling their own kids. Maybe there weren’t enough coffee tables in place at the specific points in our society where immigrants met their welcomes. I don’t know. All I know is one thing no solution will be formed over the adagio “It’s not my responsibility”, we can only start to face the challenges we face, if we see that it is every single one of us that faces the same challenges. If we want to make a Marshall Plan for our youth work we will have to face the fact that our society is loosing its power to have our young make this crucial transition. Our increasing hunger to punish young under adult law is a clear indication that we are loosing this power and this power might just be turning out the only mythological power that we as a western society had to offer the world. Make no mistake, read the lifes of people like Steve Jobs, Barack Obama, and the like, they have been able to grow to their proportions because they were able to benefit from this power and return the benefit.
July 16, 2012 at 12:18 pm
Eelker van Hagen
We leave our young with vast amounts of choices and a accompany them with a level of responsibility that is unparalleled compared to our own youth, but we fail miserably at presenting them with options to experiment and fail at them successfully.
July 16, 2012 at 12:24 pm
Eelker van Hagen
So maybe our struggle with the lack of privacy of Facebook is nothing more than that; a way for our young to preserve their embarrassing moments and learn to deal with them in their future lifes in a way that they will not prevent them from being successful.
July 16, 2012 at 5:20 pm
timnovate
Eelker, all of this is very wise and very interesting. Thank you!