Awarding and guiding youth
Wednesday, 21 April 2010
A British Foundation recently selected 480 students from different educational institutions in Bangladesh, both tertiary and secondary levels, for having satisfactorily completed the given terms and conditions to win its Bronze and Silver 'Duke Edinburgh Awards.' These awards were initiated two years ago, purportedly, to enhance the personal development of the chosen youth. For obvious reasons most of them happen to be from urban backgrounds. The awards are won after one and a half year's of dedicated efforts in specific areas, such as voluntary community service, new skills development, physical recreational pursuits like the martial arts or challenging expeditions and adventures. Awardees' interests ranged from teaching underprivileged children to simple cleanliness drives in the locality, learning foreign languages, acquiring self-defence or musical skills or even backpacking off to other climes.
The benefits of such healthy extra-curricula activities are not insignificant, as was pointed out by the British High Commissioner, speaking as the special guest at the award-giving ceremony. Young people do need to engage themselves in community work in particular, for their own good and that of the country as a whole. If replicated creatively, to reach out to the wider section of Bangladesh's predominantly youthful population -- urban and rural alike, well-to-do and otherwise, within educational institutions and outside -- the British initiative could have a very positive impact on all. Such activities deserve to be included as a mandatory part of formal education for all institutions, to keep 'the devil's workshop' at bay, so to say, and tap the latent talents of the Bangladesh's youth.
The rate of unemployment and under-employment are both quite high among youth. And although the unlettered and modestly-lettered are mostly found to fend for themselves in the informal sector, it is the section with direction-less degrees in 'general education' (or in the process of taking those degrees) that ends up jobless, but with great potential for either good or evil, depending on the socio-political circumstances. Quite often it is the evil pull that succeeds, given the undeniable criminalisation and commercialisation of the body politic. The fallout from such a vitiating environment is clearly manifest in the relentless thuggery and hooliganism now masquerading as student politics, in the current epidemic of drug abuse and sexual offences, in the rapaciousness of those in power, in the brutalisation of society as a whole. In such a depressing socio-political situation, initiatives like the above could begin to keep targeted youth on a wholesome track, and therefore deserve to be taken up by others both to guide and award Bangladesh's youth.
The benefits of such healthy extra-curricula activities are not insignificant, as was pointed out by the British High Commissioner, speaking as the special guest at the award-giving ceremony. Young people do need to engage themselves in community work in particular, for their own good and that of the country as a whole. If replicated creatively, to reach out to the wider section of Bangladesh's predominantly youthful population -- urban and rural alike, well-to-do and otherwise, within educational institutions and outside -- the British initiative could have a very positive impact on all. Such activities deserve to be included as a mandatory part of formal education for all institutions, to keep 'the devil's workshop' at bay, so to say, and tap the latent talents of the Bangladesh's youth.
The rate of unemployment and under-employment are both quite high among youth. And although the unlettered and modestly-lettered are mostly found to fend for themselves in the informal sector, it is the section with direction-less degrees in 'general education' (or in the process of taking those degrees) that ends up jobless, but with great potential for either good or evil, depending on the socio-political circumstances. Quite often it is the evil pull that succeeds, given the undeniable criminalisation and commercialisation of the body politic. The fallout from such a vitiating environment is clearly manifest in the relentless thuggery and hooliganism now masquerading as student politics, in the current epidemic of drug abuse and sexual offences, in the rapaciousness of those in power, in the brutalisation of society as a whole. In such a depressing socio-political situation, initiatives like the above could begin to keep targeted youth on a wholesome track, and therefore deserve to be taken up by others both to guide and award Bangladesh's youth.