On the same day, a national newspaper carried a feature asking: Will the National Citizen Service stop young people rioting?
The riots have been but one of the triggers for this renewed debate on the idea and content of some kind of national (community) service programme for the young. Rising levels of youth unemployment are also a catalyst. Indeed, that was why the idea was first mooted in 1981. When I resurrected it in the late 1990s, the reasoning lay more in social cohesion – there was some urgency in promoting more shared experiences among the young, given emerging evidence of a "youth divide" between more privileged young people - with educational opportunity and achievement, family support and enabling social networks - and those who had very little of this.
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