Youth Movements
Young people are active participants in their own history. Past
generations of radical students have played a part in protests and revolutions
against the existing order of society. A youth movement in this sense has an
ideological or political character.
At the same time ordinary young people usually belong to a youth
movement through membership of an adult–led, voluntary youth organization, such
as the Scouts of Guides. There are also fashion-led “youth cultures”,
identified by types of dress, music and language. The term “youth movement” is
so wide that it can refer to Punk Rockers as well as the Young Conservatives.
The world`s first voluntary youth organization was the Church-based
Boy`s Brigade, founded in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1883 by William Alexander Smith
(1854-1914).
In England, Major-General Robert Baden-Powell (1857-1941) founded a
uniformed woodcraft movement – the Boy Scouts – in 1908. Like the Boys`
Brigade, the Scout movement has spread around the world.
Young people have contributed to mass political movements of both left
and right. Soviet Russia had Young Communist groups: Octobrist, Pioneer and
Komsomol whose aim was political education of young people.
Since World War II the media have spoken a lot
about the activities of various notorious youth cults: the Teddy Boys of the
1950s, the Hippies of the late 1960s, Skinheads, Punk Rockers and many
others.
