Opinions about today's youth.

First I asked some adult members in my family about their opinion about today's youth. Most members have the same prejudice. They all think youth is neither interested in politics nor education. Adults mean youth is only interested in mobile phones, watching TV and parties.

In my opinion it is difficult to fight against this prejudice. On the one hand I have to support the opinion of most adults, because I know many young people who are only interested in things which happen in their surroundings , they do not know anything about other cultures or politics. But on the other hand I know young people like me, who are very interested in politics. But I can understand if young people say that they are disappointed about today's politics. I think the disappointment about today's politics is one of the biggest reasons, why youth is losing the interest in politics. Because of that the politicians have to do more for education and culture. You can see it everywhere, politicians have to do more. For example in Krefeld there are not enough possibilities for youth, most discos or youth centres are closed, often because they don't get enough money. Because of that many young people spend their time on the street and have contact to a bad surrounding .

Friends of mine who come from England have the same opinion like me. They say that in England most of the youth does not spend its time on the street and that pupils do more for school, because they spend more time at school and do their homework there. Furthermore they are of the opinion that the politicians do more for education, for example they spend more money on juvenile programmes and support schools.

So I think the policymakers , parents and school have to be interested in the juvenile education and politics.

Nadine Bloemers

My Experience on a Summer Holiday in Great Britain - What I found out about the British Youth

Last year I spent my summer holiday in Wales. My friend Timothy was born there and lived there for a while. During our visit we stayed in the house of some friends of Timothy's parents.

On our first day when we arrived at Brecon we spent the evening in an English pub. I was very surprised because there were no young people in this pub. Of course I know that young people are not allowed to go to pubs but in Germany either and yet there are juvenile in bars and discotheques.

When we were in Brecon pupils were on summer holidays, too. You could see them sitting everywhere all the time walking through the city. They spent their holidays with sitting in cafes, doing sports (like playing basketball or football), meeting friends or relaxing in the streets. In my opinion holidays of young people in Britain and in Germany are very alike. One day we made a trip to Cardiff, the Welsh capital. This city is of course bigger than little Brecon but here you find the youth doing the same holiday activities as the pupils in Brecon do. It is just that there are more pupils because the city is bigger. Most pupils stay at home and do not spend their holidays in other countries. When they spend their holidays at home they rarely make trips with their parents.

In the last days of our residence there was a "Jazz Festival" in the streets of Brecon. The city centre was closed and there were hundreds of little shops in the streets with many different products. They sold jewels, clothes, antiquities, sweets and old Welsh cultural things. There were different stages on which different bands were playing music. There was such a nice ambience and you could spend a lot of time there because it opened at 11 in the morning and ended very late in the evening every day. But in the whole hurly-burly of the festival there was one thing that shocked me. Every evening when it was getting dark more and more juvenile guests were coming to the festival and drank very much alcohol. And every evening there were conflicts between drunken young people. That shocked my very much because in the first days I have had a very opposite opinion of young British people. I remembered the day in the pub where no youth was and so I was very confused about that scenery at the festival.

Even today I do not know what I have to think about the British youth. Perhaps I just learned about two extreme examples.

by Dominique Jendges