Teen Spirit

Despite repeated media frenzies about ASBO collecting hooded youths prowling the streets of Britain and common reinforcing oft-repeated complaints on the lines of:

• young people have no respect
• the youth of today don't know how lucky they are
• I never had X, Y or Z in my day
• kids are so rude
• this sentence is too damn long and complex

I was proud of the kids that we took to Poland on Tuesday: Two hundred 17-18 year olds on planes & coaches and on their feet for much of the day in sub zero temperatures and driving rain. Of course you'd expect anyone visiting Auschwitz to be decorous but that wasn't my experience when I was there before. Some of the American visitors were the most noticable; complaining about the toilets and the lack of refreshments available in the camp and totally oblivious to the irony at the heart of their complaints. In their defence, maybe I only noticed the Americans because I could understand what they were saying. Perhaps there's a World wide irony reduction agreement that the UK have decided to abstain from.

It didn't take long for these young people to make the link between their own discomfort and the relative inconsequence of it when compared to the people they were learning about. These weren't a bunch of posh kids either: many of them were 'proper cockney' kids from the most deprived areas of London. They asked intelligent questions and listened intently to their guides. Some (re-assuringly) reverted to type on the plane on the way home but must were subdued and reflective. It's a shame that our common perceptions can't be redressed a little somehow. I know mine have by being a part of this but I also know that stories about young people making us proud don't sell papers.