The Influence of Youth Underground Culture (anarchism) on Students’ Essays
Its a hectic week for me because this is the exam marking week. Language teachers are often stressed out around this time of the year because we have so many essays to mark.
Marking the students’ essays is both a mentally challenging and stimulating experience. I enjoy reading unique original stories from the students. I like reading about their takes on certain issues. Kids don’t lie about things. Most of them are still so honest in their writings, they are still unable to write manipulatively. Thus, I often find the students essays as a treasure trove for new discovery of ideas, talents, previously unknown information and sometimes hidden problems faced by the students themselves.
Today I read an essay by a student I’d call Mac Alfie here. It was a very unique essay. It was an essay about the greatest day of his life. He started the essay by talking about how he was expelled from school last year and about how his name was in the discipline master’s black book.
Then he wrote about four different youth gangs in town namely The Emo , The Sharp, The Metallic and The Nazi gang.
An Emo Cartoon:
He wrote that he was a member of the Metallic gang and that he and his gang members hated the Emo gang because the Emo gang members were gay. I thought that the way he reasoned this out was ‘cute’! How did he know such things right?
He said the Sharp,Metallic and The Nazi gangs were friends and that they were fighting for democracy, rights, freedom, community and girlfriends. I thought the last reason for fighting was rather weak. He even cited a few lines which look rather synonym with the taglines of anarchists parades I had often seen in some magazines in the past.
This is not the first time I’ve seen such writing though. I’ve seen few other essays written with a lot of reference to anarchism. I know the proliferation of the Internet has caused information to be disseminated rapidly worldwide. Certain foreign ideologies have reached our shore at the same time the penetration of foreign goods, products, services and ideas is taking place.
One of the ideas behind anarchy movement is shown through this banner:
Why should this be a cause for concern?
Well-google the meaning of anarchy , then you will know. I think many urban youths had been exposed to this culture. This underground culture may not pose any major threat to our country now as most of the followers are still in their late teen ages. For some of them this might be just a temporary phase for them like in the olden day when rock and roll lifestyle was the mode of the day.
However, in 10 to 15 years time , these young generation will be the back bone of the country. With the emergence of other issues around us such as globalization, rapid development, human capital (the issue of quality), racial unity, religious tolerance and etc-would this generation be able to withstand the compounding forces of external and internal influences upon the structure of the society. Will they unite guided by traditional and religious moral values or at least basic common sense, or will they succumb to the entrapment of anarchism in the name of total freedom and total progress?
Think about it my friends.
