Youth work stays secular
WORKERS, DEC 2005 ISSUE
THE BODIES that validate training courses for youth workers, the Education and Training Standards Committees for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, have reaffirmed the importance of a secular approach after considering proposals for various faith-based training courses, in at least one case from a company big in private education.
And several more such proposals were received recently for Christian evangelical and Muslim youth work courses.
Youth work is an advanced form of informal education practice. It deals with the social and political education of young people on the basis of a voluntary relationship between the young person and the youth worker. The "curriculum" of learning is negotiated between the two. It deals with young people's senses of personal and social identity. Youth workers challenge ill-informed bigoted ideas and antisocial behaviour and promote collective values. They do so in a way that helps the penny to drop and young people learn through their experience and dialogue about human shared citizenship and values.
To equip youth workers to undertake this sensitive role, training courses have developed curricula based on modern secular values. In order to operate, the training courses are licensed by a strict validation process. This checks the quality resourcing and curricula and value base of the proposed courses.
Originally course providers came to the union (CYWU) alone for approval.
In response the ETS debated the significance of non sectarian and secular qualification criteria. Youth workers need to be equipped to deal intellectually and professionally with sensitive ideas about behaviours and human worth. They cannot do this if they hold prejudices. They have to challenge what is inappropriate from a progressive value base, which balances tolerance with an intolerance of divisiveness. Pre-Reformation or pre-Enlightenment attitudes are inappropriate in this sector or the divisions in communities and superstition run rife. Community cohesion and non segregation depend very greatly on youth workers embedded in local communities.
Young minds have always been targeted by the self appointed angels and bigots. By keeping its secular approach the youth work profession is helping to keep the heavenly choir out of education and thereby enable young people to deal more effectively with the real world.