Phrase young people when we mean children

[FemaleAndLearning]

The feminist angle here is that I don't think it is right for my daughters (aged 12 and 14) to be called young people. It assummes they are responsible for what happens to them or that they are possibly 18, 19, 20 years old. 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'm going to email the head about this but could do with some guidance or evidence from a safeguarding point to support why I think this is bad use of language. I don't see it as empowering to refer to children as young people. What do you think?

It's worth noting that KCSIE has changed the terms "peer on peer abuse" to "child on child abuse." Which is to age 18 I think? Certainly 16.

11-18.

of course it isn’t appropriate!

Children, adolescents, young adults.

Pupils, students.

Never ‘young people’. It’s an erosion of the very real boundary between childhood and adulthood (18th birthday onwards = adult).

HTH.

Here is a good example. Stonewalls School report, they use young people. They also use pupils within the report. On another thread about Helen Joyce speaking at Cambridge the letter from the LGBT officer quotes this Stonewall report. Is it relevant to university students? The letter uses young people and even though it is about school age children they are using it to imply it is about university students. Which is disingenuous. I know the report is called The Schools Report so the reader should realise that but as soon as the LGBT officer used young people in reference to this report I immediately thought the report would mean university students.

I am not going to complain to the head as it does seem overkill but it has been interesting reading the views of the posters.

If someone used the term young person, I would assume they were talking about someone under 18 - legally a child.

A young adult I would assume to be over 18- legally an adult.

It is expected teenagers know what they are doing for the rest of their life at 16-18 but regardless I don't see a problem with the term 'young people' for any age

I agree OP, it makes me a bit uncomfortable. It's too small to complain about I agree, but I also agree that this just another incremental change. Too small for most to notice or care about, but we're all frogs in the same pot, unaware that we're slowly being boiled alive.

So, OP what happened?

I think pupils or students is better, incidentally.

This is such an interesting discussion. I’m a social worker and I have noticed a shift back to talking about children rather than young people in my area. I use the words child or teenager when talking to parents about keeping children safe. I find it helps them to understand how vulnerable their 16-17 year olds are to exploitation (and what their responsibilities are). There’s a real narrative around ‘oh well they are 16 now, what can I do?’ I do also use ‘young people’ when I am talking about the choices older children are able to make for themselves e.g. consenting to sex at 16+, becoming more independent. (Little people is awful! Have never heard a social worker using that phrase.)

They are children but are also young people. A fourteen year old will not want to be called a child. I’d say leave the school to it- they’ve enough to get on with!!!!!!!

I worked on some government guidance. We asked children for their views on the language, and the older children were very clear that they didn't appreciate being described as children and felt that the guidance didn't apply to them when it talked about children.

My son tells me he's not a child any more at 14.

My brother couldn't understand why I was involved in some work on preventing radicalisation when I work on children's policies. Of course teenagers can be radicalised, he was thinking children=primary age.

I agree OP, it makes me a bit uncomfortable. It's too small to complain about I agree, but I also agree that this just another incremental change. Too small for most to notice or care about, but we're all frogs in the same pot, unaware that we're slowly being boiled alive.

The language has been used for decades and pre-dates the current debates. Check out old youth work manuals for evidence.

My feeling this happened because the earlier you class children as adults, the earlier you can target them directly as consumers, but it has carried with it a lowering of guard regarding safeguarding and the acknowledgement of immaturity.

Traditionally, you came of age at 21. This was the case in eras when some actual children were in the workforce, life was short and if you see photos or portraits of what we'd call teenagers, they dressed like their parents and many were in work.

So why lower that to 12 - 'young adult', in publishing, 'student', previously a term for university undergraduates, in schools, 'young person' elsewhere? If anything, today's teenagers are far less mature and independent than their grandparents' generation (the ability to watch graphic 'adult material' online or be given lots of spending money by parents does not make you an adult).

Pupil, schoolgirl or boy, teenager, youth are fine. Anything else and you think why the rush to bunch them in with people older and more worldly?

My feeling this happened because the earlier you class children as adults, the earlier you can target them directly as consumers, but it has carried with it a lowering of guard regarding safeguarding and the acknowledgement of immaturity.

Marketing happened when the term 'teenage' was popularised after the war and roughly in the 50s and after that.

The Albemarle Report on the Youth Service in England and Wales (1960) uses the term 'young person'. It's not new.

www.educationengland.org.uk/documents/albemarle1960/#02

21 ceased being the age of majority in 1969 when it was revised to 18.

I get it OP.

There is a group of men who work rather hard to change the language used about children. There was a document leaked about it a while ago, for example they’ve successfully persuaded the media to refer to “child prostitutes” instead of “rape victims”. Puts the responsibility and blame on the child. Similarly “paedophile” is slowly being replaced by “minor-attracted person”.

Language is important.

I wonder why those men are doing this 😕

Thesonglastslonger
Thats a bit of an extreme comparison to calling a teenager a young person though!!

Thank you for all the comments. I didn't complain but I've had to write to the school on other issues and I used the word children.
I agree Thesonglastslonger this is where I was coming from. Language matters and I agree language changes and as someone else said up thread when talking about vulnerability it is important we don't allow the language to be abused.

As for letting children decide the language to describe themselves I think that is a problem. If you give a child if 14 a choice of child or young person I think most would choose young person.

The adults are in charge though!