Tired of having adults speak for them and complaining about them, young people are getting vocal in their own Dáil, writes Róisín Ingle
When he was in first year at his Dublin secondary school, Darren Bates wrote a letter to his headmaster complaining about the level of hygiene and the fact that, in his view, there was too much religion in the school curriculum.
"I was complaining about things like there being no toilet roll and no soap and I was also questioning all the Catholic stuff," he remembers. His letter got him into trouble. "I had to write to the headmaster to apologise - otherwise, I was told, I'd be out of the school," he says.
As you might have gathered, Bates isn't your average 16-year-old but he is the kind of person who won't have a problem airing his views at the annual Dáil na nÓg (youth parliament) event tomorrow. He didn't turn up for the photograph for this article and he didn't want the name of his school mentioned here either, saying "I don't support their way of doing things, so I don't want to be associated with it".
He is, however, an active member of an exhaustive list of organisations; European Youth Parliament, Comhairle na nÓg, Fianna Fáil, Urban Ballyfermot Rejuvenation Project, Ballyfermot Heritage Group, Union of Youth Against Sectarianism and Bigotry and most recently he was elected to youth parliament Dáil Na nÓg. The two themes being discussed at the annual Dáil na nÓg event in Croke Park on Saturday are road safety and attitudes towards young people. It's the latter topic which at a meeting in the Dublin City Council's Wood Quay offices last week seemed to exercise the group of Dáil na nÓg delegates.
Part of Bates's punishment for his subversive letter was not being allowed to join the school's student council. When he was finally allowed to join, he says he was "kicked off" as a punishment for using his mobile phone in class. Is he bothered? "I haven't noticed the student council doing great things. If the teachers don't agree with it, they say they can't do it so I don't really mind".
IN THE MEANTIME, he has set up his own student council, the DUSC, which stands for the Democratic Unofficial Student Council.
With the upcoming referendum on children's rights and the legal wranglings over the age of consent, the under-18 population has lots to talk about. Delegates also said a recent Fine Gael call for random drug testing worried them, as did what they perceive as a widespread anti-Bebo mentality among adults.
"Things like Bebo get adults all worried, but they don't understand that young people are very aware of how to use Bebo safely," says Bates. "I think the age of consent should be lowered and the voting age too."
LIKE MANY DELEGATES, he is concerned by how the authorities view his generation. "There have been times when I've been minding my own business, doing nothing wrong in a park with my friends, and the gardaí start going on about public order issues. Also, the media have a way of stereotyping young people as just being interested in drink or causing trouble which isn't right." He noticed during a special youth edition of RTÉ 1's Questions and Answers recently that some adults texting in to the programme didn't like the fact that the audience was dominated by under-25s. "There is a fear from adults sometimes about giving younger people a voice," he says.
Susanna Cully (14), a student at Manor House School in Raheny, Dublin, says adults have a patronising attitude towards young people. "One of the few ways we have of expressing our individuality in school is how we wear our hair but teachers are constantly on our case about it," she says. On a more serious note, she is angry about the fact that gardaí regularly take down the names of her male friends for no reason. "They are just sitting around doing nothing or playing football and they act as if they have done something wrong. They don't take any girls' names, which seems wrong. I'd like to ask them why, but you'd be afraid," she says.
Dawn Clinton, a 12-year-old Dáil na nÓg representative from Dublin believes there are "good things and bad things about the way adults treat us. They are nice to us and give us stuff and usually are not too mean to us. The thing I do think is a problem is that adults will read bad stuff about children in a newspaper and then they will think all children are doing that. It's not fair, sometimes they think the worst of children which can make us angry and sad."
Clinton says adults should listen to children more. "You might think you know what your child thinks but you probably don't. I think a lot of the time adults just assume they know everything about us. And they listen to what the media say about us too much. If they see a drunk young person in the paper who was out celebrating their Junior Cert, they worry that their child will do that too. But we are not all the same." Clinton suggests that a daily newspaper, produced for young people by young people, might inform adults about what is really going on. "A lot of the time, stories in the newspaper pick on things that are negative. If they concentrated more on the good things that young people are doing, it would be better," she says.
Niall Lane (14) from St John's College De La Salle in Dublin believes young people have a responsibility when it comes to changing attitudes. "It's up to us to encourage others younger than us to act responsibly and educate our peers that there is a way we can get adults to listen to us," he says. "Stereotyping of young people doesn't help, though. I just think it's a minority of people who the media hone in on because they are the ones attracting the attention and the good, quiet ones out of the spotlight, who represent the positive aspects of youth today, are sometimes ignored. They should show both sides."
LANE HAS HAD his own experience of being treated differently because of his age. "I obey the rules that are put on young people, things like don't wear hoodies in certain shopping centres, but I have still been followed around shops as though I have done something wrong even though myself and my friends were buying things," he says. Unlike Bates, he does have faith in bodies such as student councils. "They give us a voice, it allows us to get our points across. We discuss everything from bullying to fireworks and we think of ways to tackle problems. We get taken seriously," he says.
For others, being involved in youth groups can have a positive affect on their personal development. Joe Murphy (15) from Kilkenny is looking forward to Dáil na nÓg and says he'd recommend being involved in groups such as Voice for Youth in his area to all young people. "I feel I've achieved a lot personally through being in these groups. When I first joined Comhairle na nÓg and Voice for Youth I wasn't very good at getting my views across, now I am much better and a lot less shy about saying things," he says. Murphy is confident young people can initiate change, and points to the funding of skate parks across the country, an ideathat was put forward by a group of young people. He thinks attitudes towards youth generally "aren't too bad but it could be better. In news bulletins you always see young people hanging around street corners as though they are looking for trouble. Obviously, young people do hang around but that's because there is a lack of facilities. There are loads of sports facilities, but if you aren't interested in sports there is hardly anywhere to go".
He'd like to see more youth cafes where he and his friends could go to listen to music or use computers. "The activities young people want to do are much more diverse now but I'm not sure adults are really aware of what these things are," he says. "Maybe they should listen to what goes on at Dáil na nÓg."
