I had the delight of going into Humboldt Public School and speaking with part of Jackie Bay’s Grade 7 class about the election.
These were kids who are not going to take part in an election for 6 more years and yet they were still doing the research about the parties and the system Canada has in place.
This is the age where so many kids are told their opinions don’t matter.
This is the age where we treat them with condescension and don’t expect well thought out ideas.
These are the kids that get swept under the rug because they don’t have enough “life experience”.
These are kids we should be listening to.
The word “stale” has been going around a lot lately. Stale ideas, stale businesses, stale money making systems.
What business has ever said that new and fresh ideas were bad for them?
Who is going to bring in these fresh ideas?
Young people.
A Macleans article in 2014 described the kids I talked to as Generation Z, those born after 1995. They are smart, ambitious, creative and driven.
And they want to change the world.
Majority of Gen Zs’ want jobs involving social change, they want to start their own business and they are community orientated.
They are the generation that wants to change the world and more than likely do. So before we count them out, let’s let them go on and change things.
According to the Macleans article, their numbers have reached 2 billion in 2014.
In Canada, the number of 0-14 year olds has now been overcome by people 65 and over for the first time ever.
During election time, those are the early seniors voice that is the loudest and it is the one most listened to.
These are the ones spending money on health care. The ones who’s paid the most taxes.
Politicians go where the money goes and that is the pockets of seniors.
What about the voice of the young? These strong, ambitious, game changing voices?
What about social capital?
What about good ideas? What about game changing plans? What about time and energy spent volunteering and studying?
Is that worth less is a socially cheapened world?
What do politicians care about this money poor, energenic generation and what they think? They’re just going to be running the country one day.
I’ve heard the phrase ‘start them young’ a lot this week.
How do we start them young when we give them the impression that they don’t matter as much as older, richer people?
Encourage them before our current reality crushes that ambition. Support their ideas. They may sound crazy at first but even a bad idea leads somewhere. Push them to go further. Without parents having a similar attitude, their own attitudes towards ambition will change if they think mom and dad don’t care.
Let’s start empowering them before ‘reality’ breaks them down. Maybe then they will not be afraid to change their own reality into something better.
