“Youths of Tomorrow” In Class Essay

This article is an in class essay I wrote during a grade 12 English class. The teacher gave us a quotation and we had write a structured essay that has something to do with the quote. We had to hand the essay in at the end of the class and we had very limited resources, so I just BSed everything. The result was I got a near perfect score on this essay. It’s a pretty big improvement over my first in class essay, which was not all that well written. I sort of knew I would get a pretty decent mark since even though the whole essay was all bs, it was good bs, so the teacher bought it. Haha. The first little section below is the quote that was given and below that is the essay.

—————————

“Youth are a bridge between the past and the future. Whether that bridge is a shaky one or a firm one depends upon the raw materials from which it is built: family, culture, education, relative prosperity, and chance.”

Youth of today are expected by adults to uphold, to carry on, and to remember the traditions and ways of the past, and yet, it is also expected that young people will learn, adopt, and embrace the ways of the future. This effectively makes youth a link between the ways of the past and the ways of the future. This idea is somewhat contradictory in nature since upholding the past means that changes should not be made, but in order to live in the future, changes must be made. This puts young people in a precarious situation and how they fare in this period of their lives will affect the outcome of the future and also the continued existence of past traditions. How well can each youth withstand this “assault” depends on many factors, such as family, culture, education, and countless others. This essay will focus on just family, culture, and education because of limiting time factors.

The family is one of the most important factors that could contribute to the life of a youth, and their views toward the past and future, because the family (in most cases) will be there when a person is born. The family has the most time and the most opportunities to influence the mind or the person and also family is the first factor to educate a person about culture and other things. As you can see, other factors listed such as education and culture are connected to the family, which makes the family a powerful influence in how the youth will think, what the youth will do and if or not the youth can successfully progress into the future while preserving things of the past.

Culture stems from family and is also a strong influence on all people, including youths of course. The views of the culture can affect whether if a person cares about the past or not. For example, a lot of Indo-Canadian people in the local area wear traditional garments, but the Chinese and white people in the area do not. Culture also affect what a person thinks of other people, a principle easily illustrated by the many conflicts in the world today due to the differences in culture. Culture also affects how a person views his/her family and what kind of education he/she can get.

The level of education is another factor that affects the views of youth of today. Since education is always somewhat biased, depending on where a person is educated and who is doing the educating, education can steer the minds of people, especially youth, towards certain directions. Some people may be tempted to change their views because of new things learned or the knowledge might reinforce their beliefs. This factor, along with family, culture and other things determined what kind of person a youth will grow up to be and how he/she will serve as a link between the past and the future.

Family, culture, and education are by no means the only things that can affect the youth’s ability and willingness to progress and preserve. All th factors are interconnected and dependent upon other factors, and they become the complicated system that we know as our world, and how the youth are influenced by the world now will determine how they will influence the world when they come into power. People should do their best to help the youths to find the right direction so they can positively serve their purpose as a link between the past and the future.