From teen vaccines to school strikes – who’s in charge?
Partners:
The opening of vaccinations this summer to all 16 and 17-year-olds – without the need for parental consent – raises questions about what sort of autonomy we should grant to young people, and where the boundaries of authority lie. While formally 18 is the age of adulthood, increasingly younger people are seen as independent from adult authority. In Scotland, the voting age for local and Scottish Parliament elections was reduced to 16 in 2015. In January 2020, legislation was passed in Wales to lower the voting age to 16 for local and Assembly elections in Wales. Moves are afoot to bring England in line.
In schools, too, the idea of ‘student voice’ offers more independence to young people, and actively encourages them to shape their own educational institutions and curriculum. The traditional view that it is teachers who possess knowledge and authority has been inverted – strict discipline has fallen out of fashion. Instead, the desire to seek young people’s ideas about environmentalism, racism and gender identity is seen as a necessary corrective to an outdated world of education which has, for too long, been dominated by the ideas of the pale, male and stale.
Many welcome this seemingly renewed political consciousness among the young. A focus on their views is seen as in keeping with values of the 21st Century – more reflective of the diversity of contemporary mores; perhaps a necessary corrective to the ‘boomer years’, caricatured as typified by environmental destruction, rampant inequality, racism and sexism. But how far should student voice go? The 2018 ‘school strike for climate’ – a loosely coordinated ‘strike’ by pupils led by a then unknown Greta Thunberg – was not just tolerated by teachers and parents, but in many cases actively encouraged. Is adults welcoming truancy for political ends desirable?
Somewhat darker consequences of this development were perhaps evident in the ruckus at Batley Grammar School. Complaints from students (and their parents) about the RE teacher’s decision to show a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad forced the teacher into hiding for fear of his life. More broadly, this suggests pupils’ sensibilities should dictate curriculum decisions, and inevitably undermine teachers’ authority. Will vaccines for teens – without parental consent – in turn create tensions between adult carers and the young? Conversely, do worried parents who describe their 16 plus offspring as children in need of protection undermine the idea of young adults now deemed mature enough to vote?
At root, this is a question of who has authority. What is the balance between the demands of adult society and the originality and fresh perspectives of the young? How much latitude should pupils get to put their values into action – and should schools, teachers and parents condone, indulge, or challenge this youthful energy? What is driving these trends? Are young people more certain of their own values and beliefs or are adults shirking their responsibility to assert their authority? Why have older generations seemingly lost confidence in their traditional role of imparting adult values to the young? Who, then, is ultimately in charge?
