Topic "Youth Movements"

   

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.