Resources: Review - Art of youth work pegged together by quoteafter quote

The Art of Youth Work By Kerry Young Published by Russell House Publishing, (2nd edition, 2006) 128 pages Price 14.95 ISBN 1 903855 46 2

Author Kerry Young proposes that the purpose of youth work is to engage young people in moral philosophising through which they make sense of themselves, their experiences and their world. The first half of the Philosophy chapter should be a recommended text for all youth workers wanting to learn about the history of the youth service in this country.

During the First World War, the first Russell Commission recommended that juvenile organisation committees should be set up locally to co-ordinate and stimulate youth provision. Young goes on to outline the growth of the voluntary youth service. In 1939, publication of Circular 1486 paved the way for the statutory youth service. As a philosophy and politics graduate, I was pleased that my studies were not in vain as Young quotes Mary Midgley to the effect that "philosophy in fact is not a luxury... (it is) an unavoidable necessity". However, as the chapter progressed and Immanuel Kant was quoted, I started to lose the plot.