The old youth work mottos still ring true
Howard Williamson
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Sometimes we can be inclined to reject the quaint statements that kicked off various youth organisations as suited only for historical archives rather than as a basis for informing contemporary thinking about youth work philosophy and practice. But we do so at our peril.
I have become acutely aware of this following a strange little project I recently undertook. Out of the blue, Simon Antrobus, chief executive of Clubs for Young People, contacted me and asked me to modernise his organisation's original mission statement of 1924.
Clubs for Young People is the latest name for a youth organisation that started out as the National Association of Boys' Clubs. By the late 1980s, there was a dinosaur feel to a youth organisation that catered solely for young men and was arguably too associated with boxing. (What goes around comes around, and both of these issues are now being debated again.) I contributed to a national conference around that time where we interrogated how the organisation might reconcile its traditions with new expectations around the youth work curriculum and principles such as participation and equal opportunities.
As I ploughed through the founding document, I realised that translation was not enough - although it was an important first step. Too many strange words and phrases remained that trapped the paper in its time. So I then did some interpretation. It was only then that it became possible to discover the contemporary relevance of forms of progressive thinking that prevailed nearly a century ago.
As a club-based organisation, the document necessarily starts with an argument about the need for clubs, especially for young people on the cusp of transition from school to work. There is an extensive discussion of what is called the "club method", focused on the provision of association, self-discipline and participation. And then, fascinatingly, there is a section on play - "as an appeal and as a force" play is seen as the bedrock of both self-realisation and responsibilities towards others, equipping young people with fitness for what was originally called the "adventure of life".
Indeed, the following section dedicated to fitness discusses this in more detail, before addressing themes of comradeship and self-government. Throughout, however, young people are not left to their own devices and leadership hovers in the background, always ready to intervene: the youth leaders must have a "clear understanding" of the aims of their work. They must enable young people "to judge things for themselves, to be critical of catch-words, and to resist mass suggestion".
Once interpreted, we discover a framework of recreational pursuit (play) and peer association (comradeship), contributing to personal development (fitness) and active citizenship, promoted through an appropriate balance of self-government and youth leadership. Pretty much a motto for today?
Howard Williamson is professor of European youth policy at the University of Glamorgan