Chapter 7. “Learn What You Like and Like What You Learn”

Abstract

Mark Twain once famously quipped, “I never let schooling get in the way of my education.” Paul Simon, the American folk singer, begins one of his songs “When I think back on all the crap I learned at high school, it's a wonder I can hardly think at all.” These men could just have easily been discussing schooling in Ireland, for this is the way many Limerick children and youth felt about formal school life prior to their involvement with St. Augustine's Youth Encounter Project. But it is prior to their involvement.

This chapter provides a demographic profile of the pupils of that project and explores aspects of the day-to-day life of the project as a child and youth care intervention by examining some of the influences of risk replacement or resiliency projects that have influenced provision of services. This Limerick YEP attempts to alter the approach from one that is risk, deficit, and psychopathology-oriented to one that is protection, strength, and asset focussed. A question posed is, “Has the early intervention enrichment programme assisted the pupils to reintegrate successfully within the community?” By reintegrate I mean the ability to attend a regular school, hold a job, live again with their family and such things. This chapter also explores the establishment of the Youth Encounter Projects in Ireland in the context of an important but largely overlooked study completed by Egan and Hegarty over two decades ago (1984). No official review has been published since.     

Women,work, and wage equity in agricultural labour in Saiss,Morocco

This article documents wages and working conditions for landless female and male agricultural labourers in Morocco. We found that higher-paid, equipment-intensive tasks were predominantly assigned to men, whereas women often performed lower-paid, time-intensive tasks. Women were systematically paid less than men even when they performed the same tasks. Enforcing existing legislation in Morocco to ensure equal pay for women is an essential first step towards enabling women to benefit equitably with men from their agricultural labour contributions. A revalorisation of the importance of agriculture is also necessary so that agricultural labour is not perceived as an occupation of last resort.     

中国青年志愿服务发展的演进脉络

上世纪50年代的青年志愿垦荒活动是中国青年志愿服务的雏形;上世纪60年代兴起的学雷锋活动是计划经济时代青年志愿服务存在的最基本方式,青年志愿服务活动在彰显雷锋精神的情况下缓慢发展;上世纪90年代初期,中国青年志愿旗号的打出,青年志愿服务的广泛开展,标志着现代青年志愿服务的真正兴起;北京奥运会为中国志愿服务的发展提供了一个难得的历史机遇,中国青年志愿服务借助这一盛事获得进一步的发展。     

The Political Significance of Social Media Activity and Social Networks

This paper examines panel data from two waves of the Youth Participatory Politics Survey, a nationally representative sample of young people in the United States. It employs a cross-lagged design to investigate the extent to which common forms of online activity create pathways to online and offline forms of political activity. Specifically, we examine the influence of Friendship-Driven (FD) and Interest-Driven (ID) online activity on online participatory politics and on offline forms of political action. Our findings reveal that FD and ID activity relate to political engagement, but in different ways. In addition, we find that the size of young people’s social networks interacts with both FD and ID online activity to promote political activity. This indicates that having exposure to “weak-ties” (resulting from large social networks) promote higher levels of political engagement. These findings demonstrate the need to specify the kinds of online activities in which youth are engaged and, more broadly, the political significance of social media and social networks     

Youth as Actors of Change? The Cases of Morocco and Tunisia

In the last decades, ‘youth’ has increasingly become a fashionable category in academic and development literature and a key development (or security) priority. However, beyond its biological attributes, youth is a socially constructed category and also one that tends to be featured in times of drastic social change. As the history of the category shows in both Morocco and Tunisia, youth can represent the wished-for model of future citizenry and a symbol of renovation, or its ‘not-yet-adult’ status which still requires guidance and protection can be used as a justification for increased social control and repression of broader social mobilisation. Furthermore, when used as a homogeneous and undifferentiated category, the reference to youth can divert attention away from other social divides such as class in highly unequal societies.     

Female genital cutting in Egypt: drivers and potential responses

ABSTRACT

Female genital cutting (FGC) is a major issue at the interplay of faith and health in development. The practice is in part faith-inspired, and has clear negative health impacts. The prevalence of FGC remains especially high in Egypt. This article reflects on some of the factors that lead to the perpetuation of the practice by analysing data from the 2014 Survey of Young People in Egypt. The focus is on whether religiosity, acceptance of traditional gender roles and discrimination, attitudes towards women’s autonomy, and age at marriage affect attitudes towards FGC, controlling for other factors. The results suggest that all these factors do indeed play a role.     

Environmental advocacy: insights from East Asia

Environmental advocacy in East Asia takes place in a context where there are few well-funded professional advocacy organizations, no viable green parties, and governments that are highly pro-business. In this advocacy-hostile environment, what strategies are environmental organizations using to promote better environmental outcomes? Using an original database of environmental organizations and interviews with activists and officials throughout the region, this paper investigates which strategies are most common, and compares them to the advocacy strategies found in the United States. It finds, perhaps surprisingly, that (a) environmental organizations across East Asia employ similar advocacy strategies, even though they are operating in very different political conditions, and (b) the strategies most favoured in East Asia are also the strategies most often utilized in the United States. It then argues that new theories of advocacy should be developed to pay closer attention to certain actors (academics and artists), and particular processes (organizational networking, government collaboration, and culture-making), that appear to play important roles in advocacy in countries around the world, irrespective of political context.     

转向与疏离——20世纪90年代以来青年国家民族意识分析

在我国,青年国家民族意识的发展状态,对于中华民族的复兴,社会主义的未来都具有决定性的影响。20世纪90年代以来青年的国家民族意识出现了新的特点:由负态向正态回归;存在着情感与行动的疏离;世俗化的趋势进一步加强。当然,青年新的民族意识的表达并非凭空想象,改革与经济发展所取得的社会实效,青年从总体上对中国现实的制度与政权的认同,青年文化价值观的改变等是其国家民族意识发生转向的现实语境。     

《新青年》同人杂感风格之比较

《新青年》时期的陈独秀、胡适、刘半农、钱玄同、吴虞等的杂感在话题风格、说理风格、语言风格上具有各自的特点,共同丰富着早期的杂感创作,为后来的杂文、小品文,甚至其他文学样式的创作,在体式与语言表达上提供丰富的启示与广阔的发展空间。     

论高校共青团组织在构建和谐校园进程中的作用

在构建和谐校园的进程中,高校共青团组织要充分认识构建和谐校园的重要性,树立和谐发展的工作理念;切实推进服务型组织建设,完善和谐校园的构建机制;大力加强校园文化建设,构筑和谐校园的参与平台;全面促进大学生健康成才,培养构建和谐社会所需要的新型人才。