Categories: uncategorized
Date: 15 July 2008 07:06:25
I've been reading Disconnected by Nick Barham , it's a couple of years old now but still one of the most accurate accounts of youth culture I've read. It's a book which interviews young people in order to try and explore what's going on in their world and what their values are. As such it comes to few conclusions and even fewer reccomendations but it does represent an accurate picture of elements of youth culture in Britain.
Looking for a link to the book I found this review on UCCF, which was interesting. It goes through the book and then knocks the secular author for not finding Christianity as the answer. To some extent I think it has a point, but I also think this review also misses the point completely aswell. Here is my take on it.
The book interviews a selection of young people about violence, leisure (sex, drugs, music) and politics (protest) amongst other things. What it finds is that it is a complicated picture full of contradictions like people say they aren't influenced by the media yet it seeps through. Like people want to do something with their lives but they also feel the need to escape. Like people want to be learn meaningful stuff which they can put into practice but they don't value educational establishments because they don't think don't want to be told how to learn it. They want a say over what happens in their lives but they don't see the point of engaging in the democratic process. They want to fit in but they don't want to be "normal".
As a teacher, a mum, a festival goer and a protester I have to say I found the book both disturbing but reassuring. It was accurate. What it highlighted for me was the fact that the majority of young people aren't bad but there are major issues they need to face as individuals and we need to face as a society and areas where we need to realise the picture is far more grey than black and white. They are the issues that mean that Christianity is as relevent as it's ever been and as Christians / churches we have something really important to offer to our communities. They are also issues that mean that quick fix solutions to the current moral panic about knives and youth violence aren't going to make much difference and that much deeper changes in our societies are needed.
I could go on, but I'd be here all day. Yet I want to constructively engage with some of the issues in the book and try to explain why I think that turning to God is the answer and why we need to get back to the bible, but we need to read the bible through the lense of the people in the book, aswell as reading it ourselves as people in todays society, not people trying to hark back to a different society, (which may never have existed anyway). I want to engage in why I think it needs adults and governments to get back to God and change their behaviours aswell. Basically I want to cry for the kids in the book, in our schools and in our homes but I also want to thank God for them and celebrate them and some of their activities which at times seem counter cultural aswell; I want to ask for forgiveness for my own and societies messed up norms and values which ain't so civillised often and I want to scream out to God to help the young people who aren't just cutting each other on our streets but are increasingly cutting themselves or engaging in other self destructive behaviour and I want to acknowledge the hypocricy going on where we try and make out that all these problems only belong to young people.
So I guess that the next few posts are going to be another mini-collection of posts on one topic.