Unlike their Japanese cohorts who are still under similar pressure, in 2008, Greek children and university students have not responded like their pampered and frustrated East Asian youth. Instead of turning inwards, the young Greeks’ attention has turned first to symbolic activism.
This may be primarily because of the wage levels these young people in Greece face, which is from 600- to 800 Euro-per-month category even after decades of biding their time in the school system and in the unemployed world of the Greek economy. These are wages that most Western Europeans would never be able to accept. Moreover, like in Japan, these Greek youth must live into their thirties at their parents’ expense in their parents’ homes or flats.
Concerning this December 2008 student activism in Greece, Nikos Lountos states, “What was the most striking. . . was that in literally every neighborhood in every city and town, school students walked out of their school on Monday morning.”
Lountos adds, “So, you could see kids from eleven to seventeen years old marching in the streets wherever you could be in Greece, tens of thousands of school students, maybe hundreds of thousands, if you add all the cities. So, all around Athens and around Greece, there were colorful demonstration of schoolboys and schoolgirls. Some of them marched to the local police stations and clashed with the police, throwing stones and bottles. And the anger was so really thick that policemen and police officers had to be locked inside their offices, surrounded by thirteen- and fourteen-year-old boys and girls.”
Lountos emphasizes how these young students’ actions were received at a more universal level, “Th[is] picture of these young people in Greece standing up to have their political say during the world economic crises of 2008 was so striking that it produced a domino effect: The trade unions of teachers decided [to have] an all-out strike for Tuesday [last week. Next] [t]he union of university lecturers decided [to hold] a three-day strike. And so, [finally] there was the already arranged . . . . strike . . . for Wednesday against the government’s economic policies, so the process was generalizing and still generalizes.”
I ponder whether these events in Europe in 2008 are a one-time affair or whether the expected length of the oncoming world depression or recession will lead to more youth becoming more radicalized world-wide.
SHOULD DISCRIMINATION LAWS PROTECT YOUNG PEOPLE?
My interest in the concerns of youth in Asia, the Middle East, in Europe, and Latin and North America has been strong for decades, especially as I have taught and educated young people now in nearly ten different countries and on a variety of continents since 1985.
Most recently, I have been teaching in Kuwait, where I accidentally got a whiff of the generational wars that potentially may brew here, even though much of Kuwaiti society respects more traditional pecking orders in societies, tribes, and on the global stage. However, as the world-wide global expansion collapse will dovetail with the rise in teenage population in Kuwait over the next decade, will there be youth becoming more vocal?
For example, it was mostly youth—including well-organized Kuwaiti youth often-too young to vote--who organized a political coup of sorts in 2006 by spearheading a movement to redistrict the parliamentary system in the State of Kuwait.
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