To participate or not to Participate
Is participation really all it’s cracked up to be?
It’s a really strong value for me- as I’ve said before, but last night I was reminded that it’s only one way of doing youth work.
The football coaching session that I observed/ helped out with/ joined in last night was not what I’d have recognised as participative. The young people were lined up, told what to do, shouted at when the didn’t do it or mucked about, and shouted at more positively when they did something well. I’ve been asking myself lots of questions just lately about where the role of sports coach or instructor (a role where you instruct, discipline, control, and tell young people what to do) meets the role of a participative youth worker- when you encourage the young people to think for themselves about how things are done, and think through issues and things that go wrong for themselves.
What struck me was that in the older group, (14 – 19) the young men were told ‘I want to see you playing like young men, not like kiddies’, and that seemed to be enough for them. These young men were able to captain their teams and able to communicate and work well as a group… and they hadn’t been taught it through participative work- they’d been taught it through discipline and having it ‘drummed into them’.
So maybe participation isn’t the be all and end all after all?
It’s a really strong value for me- as I’ve said before, but last night I was reminded that it’s only one way of doing youth work.
The football coaching session that I observed/ helped out with/ joined in last night was not what I’d have recognised as participative. The young people were lined up, told what to do, shouted at when the didn’t do it or mucked about, and shouted at more positively when they did something well. I’ve been asking myself lots of questions just lately about where the role of sports coach or instructor (a role where you instruct, discipline, control, and tell young people what to do) meets the role of a participative youth worker- when you encourage the young people to think for themselves about how things are done, and think through issues and things that go wrong for themselves.
What struck me was that in the older group, (14 – 19) the young men were told ‘I want to see you playing like young men, not like kiddies’, and that seemed to be enough for them. These young men were able to captain their teams and able to communicate and work well as a group… and they hadn’t been taught it through participative work- they’d been taught it through discipline and having it ‘drummed into them’.
So maybe participation isn’t the be all and end all after all?
posted by Nikki @ 11:23 am
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