Catherine Ellis’s “The Younger Generation” and Omnia El Shakry’s “Youth as Peril and Promise” examine reactions to adolescents in from the 1930s through the 1940s and during the postwar era respectively. When analyzed together, these articles examination of political and social discourse questions whether inherent adolescent issues create problematic dichotomies between youth and older generations. There stands an uncertainty of whether the youths’ inability to conform to social norms is to blame for social disorder.
This ambiguity suggests looking elsewhere. Through comparative analysis of these to articles, it appears that professional discourse creates and defines adolescence to justify existing social differences between generations and consequently societal turmoil.
Shakry’s analysis of Egypt’s public discourse on youth reveals that Egypt viewed adolescents as the underlying issue to social turmoil due to student demonstrations and revolts.2 In the 1940s, psychologists turned Egypt away from the idea of adolescence as an issue of moralization.3 They were not inherently corrupt. Rather, adolescents did not know how to adjust themselves to fit in their society. Through interiorization, adolescents distanced themselves from society, placing themselves outside of the “larger social and political struggles” of Egypt.
Thus, adolescence marked a step in life in which underlying psychological issues hindered the normalization and placed adolescents at odds with society. Thus, through psychological analysis, professionals labeled adolescents an issue and reaffirmed societal norms. This conscious labeling illustrates the potential detrimental effect of professional discourse upon the average member of society. Professional discourse can define society in such a way that it alienates an entire demographic of society as something that needs manipulation rather than inclusion and acceptance.
Catherine Ellis’s “The Younger Generation” reveals that unlike Egypt, Cold War-Britain started to recognize that the authorities and their management of the environment could be to blame for some of the society’s issues. The findings of the Labor Party’s Youth Commission, formed in April 1959, details this issue in its report Youth and the Future. It stated that “consumer instincts” had taken over all of society, not just the adolescent demographic.
The real problem with youth was that British leaders had not instructed youth how to navigate this new consumer society and become productive members of society. Thus, the state needs to utilize federal funding to implement more “work experience” and “continued instruction in reading” in secondary schools to prepare a younger generation to be good citizens.
This narrative does not alienate adolescents from society. Any noted deviation from societal standards stems from ignorance on proper behavior and lack of instruction on prescribed social paths. The Youth Commission recognized adolescents as a normative unit of society that needed to be included in the social narrative and future state planning if Britain was to succeed as a future nation. Adolescents could restore social order.
Ellis’s “The Younger Generation” and Shakry’s “Youth as Peril and Promise” highlight two different historical moments that society focused on adolescents in relation to social disorder. The variation in professional and social discourse examined in both of the articles reveals that professional discourse creates nation-specific meanings of adolescents. Adolescence is a socially constructed phase of life used to justify various social and political issues.
