Youth cadets do not deserve to be placed in the line of fire

Proponents of old-school youth work sometimes still celebrate and advocate such a position, but arguably it has never existed. Youth work has always been attached to one agenda or another, beyond the idea of producing and providing an holistic, person-centred and young people-focused approach.

Historians of youth work point to child saving, health promotion, character building, crime prevention and cultural rescue as dominant frames within which youth work was, over a century and a half, supported and developed. Personal and social development may have remained the mantra in more recent times, but for at least 35 years, certainly since the ministerial conferences on the youth service from 1989 to 1992, youth work has been harnessed to wider policy objectives. Today, it might be the re-engagement of young people who are Neet. Then, the first minister to set out such expectations talked in terms of insisting on a "concentrated fusillade" and not a scattergun approach. The imagery is apposite, for one context in which these issues are particularly acute is in relation to the army cadets.

The cadets present themselves as a voluntary youth organisation, providing leisure-time developmental opportunities and activities for young people. For that reason, I invited one military protagonist for the "cadets as youth work" to speak at an international conference considering the contribution of youth work to tackling barriers to social inclusion.

His core argument was threefold. First, the participation of young people was voluntary; they chose to take part. Second, the pedagogy was experiential learning. Third, the objective was personal development, personal responsibility and active citizenship. Had one been unaware that the young people were usually dressed in military uniform and sometimes carried guns, the provision described would have been viewed unequivocally as youth work; these three points are broadly agreed to be established and embedded principles underpinning the practice of non-formal learning.

But the presentation was met with dramatic hostility. The speaker was subjected to protracted unfriendly fire. The Germans and the Austrians, with their specific history around uniformed and militarised youth organisations, were especially vocal. Surely, it was argued, the cadets were about recruitment to the armed forces, possibly even providing some kind of reserve force in particular national emergencies. This was, it was held, complete anathema to youth work.

Yet the metaphorical grenade the speaker dropped into a cosy, self-serving and mutually reinforcing youth work community did its job. Sharper, more focused debate exploded and ensued. If we continued to celebrate youth work as informed by the holy trinity of voluntaryism, experience and development, unless young people dressed in uniform and were subjected to some kind of hierarchical authoritarianism, where would this leave the Scouts, or indeed the Red Cross? Some young people in the cadets subsequently did join the military, but they may well have done so anyway.

The cadets in the UK have outreach programmes where they provide a taste of discipline and development to young people who have failed in, or been failed by other educational and welfare institutions. Evaluations and personal testimonies typically echo the same benefits and value accruing from experience in the cadets as in other youth work provision. And the provision made by the cadets is colossal; though rarely discussed, the budget for the cadets approaches about one-sixth of the cost of the maintained youth service before the recent draconian cuts.

So much depends on the extent to which we narrowly define youth work, but, even within our broad church of non-formal learning experiences and opportunities, there will always be reservations about who should be in and who should be out. My arguments could apply equally to the Young Farmers, religious youth groups or those projects geared to health or crime agendas.

Shortly after the conference, I met a very senior British army officer who asked me what I thought of the cadets. I told the story above. He found it fascinating. He said the military could understand the role of the cadets as part of the defence force and as a recruiting ground for a career in the armed forces. But they could not understand why they were investing so significantly in young people's personal development.

Howard Williamson is professor of European youth policy at the University of South Wales