Page 8 - Phonebox Magazine October 2008

HAVE YOUR SAY
Letters
Dear Editor
Whilst this is not an attempt to continue this subject in a childish manner, I would like to address the comments of a Mr D Waller who wrote to you in August in response to the letter by Victoria Stean (in July) on the Youth activities in Olney. I will not deny that I am thrown into that generalised group like thousands of others and like any of the intelligent members of the aforementioned ‘youth’ I can promise you the generalisation is insulting, as is Mr D Waller’s letter.
The insult implied by the ‘youth culture’ of
drugs, alcohol, vandalism, and whatever else
politicians, media and the merely narrow-
minded blame on the younger members of
our society, is not the occurance of the
actions themselves at all. We would be naive
to assume these things don’t happen and
frequently at that. The insult is therefore
being thrown in with the minority group that
condemns us. The ‘youths’ that set the
terrible example then lay the path for
sensationalist tabloid headlines such as
‘Britain: Worst Youth in Europe’. However Mr
Waller also represents a minority, the
dogmatic and bigoted select group of adults
society are nothing better than a group of ‘louts’ who merely drink on the streets and need to be pushed aside with the aide of the ASBO.
It is high time that Mr Waller thinks about the
assumption he is making about the writer to
whom he responds. After all, he was
assuming that an intelligent girl who takes
enough of an interest in her community to
write about it does nothing with her life and
needs to ‘grow up’. Surely you would
assume that the choice to continue voluntary
education suggests a degree of ambition and
responsibility. The assumption that we are
mere ‘yoof’, as Mr Waller so articulately puts
his irony, is simply offensive. Almost all of my
colleagues at sixth form (including Victoria
Stean) have jobs and work hard at them
(especially in the holidays) for the simple fact
that we need the money, and no this is not
so we can all drink or all smoke, it is so we
can spend time with our friends in the
cinema or shopping in Milton Keynes, or
paying for our own driving lessons! This
makes me wonder how understaffed (and
able to survive) the shops, Mr Waller is likely
a customer of, would be without any
teenagers having jobs at all. How over-run
would our community be then? I have a job
and thankfully my customers tend to
appreciate my help more than Mr Waller
would, and I have high hopes for the future
and am studying hard in attempts to be
at University of York (and hopefully a masters following that). It may come as a shock to Mr Waller but I do in fact somehow manage to split my time between work, reading, school and enjoying time out with my friends without getting drunk and harassing my community. I have colleagues that wish to take maths at Cambridge University and ones who wish to merely leave with their A- levels and get jobs or travel and they are people to be respected, not categorized and patronized.
As aforementioned I accept that the definition of the ‘youth culture’ exists and is a very difficult thing to prevent or deal with, however the narrow-mindedness of people like Mr Waller will merely exacerbate the situation. This school year, myself and all the members of my year turn 18, and in some cases 19, which by legal standards qualifies us as adults in this country, we can buy alcohol if we choose to and we can vote for our next government. We are living our ‘reason for being’ that Mr Waller seems to think we are all too ignorant to be able to find. By the end of Mr Waller’s letter I found his argument little more than amusing to have dissolved so much that his last resort was the plight of those in the third world. Any deeper investigation (such as to the website) and he may have discovered that our sixth form does get involved in charity work, and in the coming months have a charity week approaching. Last year our school raised
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