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Zemanta is a blog plugin that supplies a list of online articles related to the content of one’s blog entry. About one minute after starting to write this blog entry, Zemanta should have enough input to work on and start making suggestions (it also suggests photos).

One of Zemanta’s suggested articles was Global Youth: UK Teens Get Unplugged, Raw & Real, a 17-minute YouTube video which interviews a number of British teenagers about being a teenager.

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The present state of overall disorder and low achievement in some British schools is the direct result of certain beliefs and ideologies, as the British blog Scenes from the Battleground points out. While I am lucky in that I don’t teach in an environment beset by discipline problems, many of those beliefs and ideologies are either already popular or are gaining ground; therefore, what is happening in some British schools (and that seems to be a microcosm of what is happening in British society at large), may well start happening here in the near future – the ideological ground for it is being prepared.

What are some of those beliefs and ideologies?

Unfortunately, I had a difficult time following what the narrator (and some of those interviewed) was saying; I think they might have chosen someone with clearer diction.

I did catch the narrator reciting the following: “Now we don’t hear them when they speak”, and one girl in the video says, “Teenagers have difficulties sharing what they really feel”. The following was posted on the Teens’ Speech website: (my emphasis)

The Teens’ Speech was predicated on the belief that if we gave young people an avenue to express themselves, they would reward us with a genuine insight into a section of society that is, as one contributor in the film states, a ‘taboo’.

And so they did.

Actually, they were already doing it – on YouTube, mainly. We just cut a rip in the curtain and had a peek inside.

Somewhat undermines the video commentary. Nonetheless, the video is a fascinating peek into the minds of some young Britons today and what they think about being a teenager.

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