Phrase young people when we mean children

I read 'young people' as teenagers so in a secondary school- thats everyone except year 7 and half of year 8 so I wouldnt mind it.
I mostly see young adults for over 18s or sometmes 20 and up and young people is kept for teenagers so 13-19.
In the places I have worked where the age range is primary secondary and sixth form we say children and young people and then just secondary and sixth form we use young people.
I dont think as a term there is anything wrong with it- they are people who are young, bit of a weird thing to complain about really. Pupils would have also been fine but its a normal term- not like they were called 'pre-adults' or 'mini grown ups' or even something like 'young adults' . Its just a formal term for teens.

I hadn't thought of this.

I actually started using the term after watching the wonderful prof Michele Moore talking about impact of Gender ideology on teens and the way the system uses it as an excuse as she uses the phrase a lot.

I also agree with you OP. Mermaids uses the term Young People and it refers to anyone up to the age of 20. They do have an 'online activist programme' for 16-19 year olds but everything else - chat forum, residential weekends is for any age.

Lumping young children in with people who are legally adults is poor safeguarding

I agree with you OP. My children’s school (ends at year 11/no sixth form) does the same and I find it uncomfortable. The anecdote above about the social worker is telling.

I read an article recently about the fact the children is a term which has a fixed legal definition - under 18 which determines how children can be protected. Young people is much more wishy washy and obscures whether we are describing legal children or adults, it blurs boundaries. I wish I could remember where and share it here, in fact it might actually have been part of my recent safeguarding training in which case I can’t share it.

It assummes they are responsible for what happens to them or that they are possibly 18, 19, 20 years old.

I don’t think it assumes this at all.

We got a new head teacher at my primary school (1990s) and I remember she insisted on calling everyone in year 5 and 6 a "young person" and I hated it! It made me feel too grown up. I wanted to be a child.

I have seen a similar demarcation line between "children" and "young people" in some research carried out in England, where it was explained that it was because 10 is the age of criminal responsibility, so only the under-10's were recorded as "children".

So the upper age limit of "childhood" depends on context - and in some contexts they are referred to as "young children" and "older children". The boundary needs to be defined and explained though.

With schools, the ones that sound fine to me are:

• pupils
• scholars (seems to be a regional variation, at least I have only seen it in the North East)

A variation that I think is definitely iffy is "little people".

I heard a Social Worker talking about "little people" and I genuinely thought she was talking about people of restricted growth and had difficulty making sense of what she was saying.

When I realised she was talking about children I told her that I had been confused and she explained that as Social Workers they saw children as people in their own right - just "small". I found it really odd and it stuck with me in the back of my mind for years.

When all the "Grooming Gang" scandals started coming out ("Child Rape Gangs" would be a better term to my mind) there was talk of how Social Workers had regarded children who were prostituted as having made "life-style choices". It made me wonder if the practice of referring to children as "little people" played into that? Whether Social Workers had been conditioned into seeing children as small adults who were making informed decisions, rather than as vulnerable children being sexually abused and exploited.

Even so, they must surely have known that legally the children could not consent to sex? The attitudes of the Social Workers baffles me even more than the attitudes of the police because their job is meant to be child protection.

Going back to the OP and this wording:

"I have just had an email from secondary school (with sixth form) asking 'all parents and carers of our young people from all year groups' to complete the survey."

I don't like the "our" in there. It doesn't need to be there and the school does not own the "young people".

If you take out "our" then why does "young people from all year groups" need to be in there either?

The school is writing to the "parents and carers". All it needs to say is, "all parents and carers".

So the extract would read:

"I have just had an email from secondary school (with sixth form) asking 'all parents and carers' to complete the survey."

Bingo! The school is no longer seeming to claim ownership of the "young people" and there is no need to decide how to refer to them when addressing their parents/carers.

That phrase, "our young people from all year groups" - it seems a bit cheeky on the part of the school rather than just unnecessarily wordy.

The school should have stopped before writing "our" - and if it needs to be more specific then it should stick to terminology that reflects its remit, eg. "pupils", "students", etc.

I think it's fine to have words with differernt levels of meaning. As much as sometimes people want to treat children like they aren't children, society often seems to want to treat older young people as if they are the same as tweens or even younger children.

Children are young people, teenagers are young people, so if you are talking about both, it's a reasonable phrase to use.

I don't think I'd make myself a complaining parent over this.

I really really can't see how using the phrase in the context you describe is grooming or has any relevance to grooming. A school referring to their pupils, which includes children of 11 up to young adults of 18, collectively as "young people" is both accurate and appropriate.

From school that's a perfectly reasonable and practical term, but perhaps elsewhere not so much.

It’s a supposedly empowering, yet all the more patronising for it, synonym really. All children are young people. Childhood is that early part of life. Children are people but their being young is a really key aspect of their lives and experiences. But teenagers think they know it all, and don’t want to be thought of as ‘children’. And adults want to make the distinction to encourage certain types of behaviour (not unlike when parents tell their toddler s/he’s a big girl/boy so s/he needs to give up the dummy or such like).

You also see the concept of young added to children (of varying ages) all over MN, mostly to make hugely judgemental posts where the person not understanding that the (for example) 12 year old is a young child must be viewed as morally deficient for expecting better behaviour. Whereas the idea of young person creates the opposite effect.

You get a range of weird rhetorical issues around the concept of ‘old people’ too.

The feminist angle here is that I don't think it is right for my daughters
I am also failing to see why this is a feminist issue? Your argument that a child should not be referred to as a young person would seem to apply equally to sons?

I don't see it as empowering to refer to children as young people
What has empowerment got to do with asking parents/carers of 11-19yr olds to fill out a school survey? Surely the head had simply picked a term that most accurately describes this age range?

Im really trying, but I fail to see the relevancy to “grooming” I’m saying:
I'm seeing it more and more, but I have just had an email from secondary school (with sixth form) asking 'all parents and carers of our young people from all year groups' to complete the survey.

I would agree with complaining if it were a news article referring to a child victim as a “young person”

But for a school head asking parents/carers to fill out a survey? No issue I can see with using young people to refer to 11-19yr olds. It seems the only inclusive term for that age range in a school that has both children & adults, pre-teens & teens.

It's similar to the use of "service users" in a medical setting when people used to be called "patients".

Again it denies the duty of care.

I agree with you - I've hated this for years.
I think it denies the responsibility we have as adults to care for under 18s.

This is the preferred term at my kids school and the school I work at. I hate it, and use 'pupils' for everyone and 'children' for the under 16s. Because that's what they are- I find the blanket term 'young people' for everyone aged 11-18 glosses over the fact that they are children, a status that deserves and is afforded special protection under laws.

Sorry for lack of editing 'compulsory education up to age 16 as education is compulsory' (facepalm).

Interesting about the use in health services.
So basically, it is a meaningless phase.

From the OP point of view, yes it does somewhat downplay the fact that these 'young people' are often still children, and that could be a worry.

But I do think there is a need for a handy word that distinguishes 16–17-year-old children from younger ones. And perhaps such a word could be stretched to include 14+ or 13+, as for instance that is when many professionals and the courts give much more weight to their opinions and testimony.

On the other hand, when you hear about 'refugee children' in the media, do you imagine small children or big 17 year-old lads? In some cases, the word 'children' can give the wrong impression.

There is legal clarity that a child is a person under 18 but you do need to have a gradual change in legal treatment between 0-18. A cliff edge would be completely unworkable and of course anything else will have some confusion. That's not to say that there aren't some odd inconsistencies. What were you thinking of?

In social work / youth work this is a really common way of distinguishing the teens from the children and is probably about empowering them to feel they are have some agency within their life - adults make decisions but young people have an increasing input & responsibility around the choices they make which needs recognising (and encouraging). As a 14/15 yr old I would have responded very positively to that idea. Having said that, when first encountering it in 2003 I did find it a bit twee, but grew to accept it.

@Beancounter1 interesting in health services young people include 10-24

I actually think we need legal clarity on when a child is a child. People forget a 17 year old remains a child. Some of the inconsistencies are ridiculous.

I think it was originally used in social and care professions as an alternative to 'teenagers' but excluding 18+, so a way of referring to 13–17-year-olds, the gap between smaller children and adult teens.
The school were incorrect to use it for 11- and 12-year-olds, and in any case in that context the word 'pupils' is preferable.

'Students' has been fashionable for decades, but originally only applied if the young person had chosen the course. In the 90s it was introduced for KS4 as that is when 'options' are chosen. KS3 was always pupils. Personally, I think 'pupils' can be used for compulsory education up to age 16 as education is compulsory and 'students' for 6th form onwards.