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The Filipino Youth Today: Their Strengths and The Challenges They Face
The Filipino Youth Today: Their Strengths and The Challenges They Face
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The Filipino Youth Today: Their Strengths and the Challenges They Face
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Published by:
Regional Unit for Social and Human Sciences in
Asia and the Pacific, UNESCO, Bangkok
920 Sukhumwit Road, Prakanong Bangkok, Thailand 10110.
ISBN 92-9223-059-X
Contents
Contents iii
Acknowledgements v
Contributors vi
1. Introduction 1
Stephanie Fahey and Fay Gale
Contents · iii |
9. Are youths moving forward? A Bangladesh perspective 119
Abdur Rahim Khan
| iv · Youth in Transition
Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements · v |
Contributors
Jeffrey Jensen Arnett is the editor of the Journal of Adolescent Research and the
author of the textbook Adolescence and Emerging Adulthood: A Cultural
Approach (2004, Prentice Hall). His book Emerging Adulthood: The Winding
Road from the Late Teens Through the Twenties (2004) was recently published by
Oxford University Press.
Yogesh Atal retired as Principal Director of Social Sciences at UNESCO in 1997.
He was the first Secretary-General of AASSREC and served as UNESCO's
Regional Adviser for Social and Human Sciences in Asia and the Pacific from
1974 through 1993, during which period he continually provided UNESCO
support to AASSREC. Currently he is on the Board of the Indian Council of Social
Science Research. He is an internationally acclaimed sociologist and author and
editor of several books.
Richard Eckersley is a Fellow at the National Centre for Epidemiology and
Population Health at the Australian National University, Canberra. His research
areas include: measures of progress in the relationships between economic growth,
quality of life and ecological sustainability; the social and cultural determinants of
health and happiness; visions of the future; and young people and their world. He
is the co-author of a national index of subjective wellbeing, the first of its kind in
the world, and a founding director of Australia 21, a not-for-profit company set up
to address, through interdisciplinary research and development, some of the major
challenges facing Australia this century.
Stephanie Fahey is a geographer and the Director of the Research Institute for
Asia and the Pacific at The University of Sydney. Her research interests are
primarily in Vietnam and Papua New Guinea where she has focussed on issues of
household livelihood strategies, gender and labour relations and macro socio-
economic change in transitional economies. She is Professor of Asian and Pacific
Studies and is a member of various government committees which advise on
Australia’s relations with Asia.
Fay Gale was President of AASSREC and coordinator of the conference that led
to the production of this volume. She is a former Vice-Chancellor of The University
of Western Australia and President of the Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee.
She was also a former President of the Academy of the Social Sciences in
Australia. Her research as a cultural geographer was in the interface between
| vi · Youth in transition
Indigenous and other Australians particularly in relation to women, juvenile justice
and rock art protection.
Siri T. Hettige is Senior Professor of Sociology at the University of Colombo. He
was formerly the Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the same university. He had his
undergraduate education in Colombo and PhD in social anthropology from
Monash University, Australia. He has carried out extensive research on
globalisation and education, sociology of youth, labour migration and micro-
analysis of poverty. He is President of the Sociological Association of Sri Lanka.
Graeme Hugo is a demographer and population geographer who has worked
extensively on population issues, especially migration in Southeast Asia and
Australia. He is Professor of Geography and Director of the National Centre for
Social Application of Geographical Information Systems at The University of
Adelaide. He currently holds an Australian Research Council Federation
Fellowship to work on a study of international migration.
Abdur Rahim Khan has been associated with the Bangladesh Social Science
Research Council in various positions and capacities since 1981. He also teaches
social work, economics, sociology and gender studies in different universities of
Bangladesh. His main areas of publication are in youth, food security, rural
development, research methodology, development planning and gender issues.
Hardip Singh Kingra is Director of Youth Affairs in the Ministry of Youth
Affairs and Sports, Government of India. He is heading a large student youth
volunteer movement in India called the National Service Scheme (NSS) which
currently has 2.23 millions enrolled volunteers in colleges, universities and
schools. He is involved in policy work related to youth development, national
integration and promotion of adventure sports among youth of India and
international co-operation. He is also implementing an innovative programme
called UTA (Universities Talk AIDS) programme to raise awareness about
HIV/AIDS amongst the student population of the country.
Nguyen Thi My is a senior researcher in the Institute for Southeast Asian Studies,
and visiting lecturer of the Department of International Studies, School of Social
Sciences and Humanities, Hanoi National University and of the Department of
Southeast Asian Studies, Open University of Ho Chi Minh City. Her main research
field is international relations in Southeast Asia. She graduated from the Faculty of
History, Hanoi National University and obtained the academic degree of Doctor of
Philosophy at the Institute of Far East Studies, Academy of Sciences, the former
Soviet Union.
Mita Noveria is a researcher at the Research Centre for Population, Indonesian
Institute of Sciences (PPK-LIPI), Jakarta. She gained a Master’s degree on
Population and Human Resources Development from Flinders University in South
Contributors · vii |
Australia. She is involved in various research projects on population mobility
including mobility among internally displaced persons (IDPs).
Gregory Phillips is Waanyi from North West Queensland. He has previously
worked in healing, youth, culture, spirituality, land and education issues in
Australia and internationally. He is a medical anthropologist based at The
University of Melbourne, where he is managing a national project to include
Indigenous health in core medical curricula.
Amara Pongsapich is the Dean of Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn
University. She received her PhD in anthropology from the University of
Washington, Seattle, USA. She specialized in development studies, ethnic studies,
youth and women’s studies, and civil society. Her recent publications cover the
areas of governance and civil society; cultural diversity: paradigm shift and role of
civil society; Thailand civil society organizations and development; development
paradigms and social transformation in international and local communities; and
public-interest sector in Thailand.
Joseph H. Puyat is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the
University of the Philippines. He is a social psychologist and his research interests
include the study of the self, wellness, aggression, violence, and the psychosocial
impact of information technology.
Aswatini Raharto is a researcher at the Research Centre for Population,
Indonesian Institute of Sciences (PPK-LIPI), Jakarta, and is Head of the Centre.
She has been involved with and coordinated various research projects on
population mobility including international labour migration, migration of people
in Indonesian border areas and forced migration in conflict areas in Indonesia. She
gained her PhD from the Australian National University.
Rashila Ramli is the Deputy Dean (Research and Graduate Studies) at the Faculty
of Social Sciences and Humanities, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. She obtained
her PhD in Political Science from Northern Arizona University in 1995. Rashila is
the Treasurer of the Malaysian Social Science Association (2001-2004).
Doreen Rosenthal is Professor of Women’s Health and Director of the Key Centre
for Women’s Health in Society at The University of Melbourne. Professor
Rosenthal is a developmental psychologist and an international expert in the field
of adolescent sexuality. She was formerly Foundation Director of the Australian
Centre for Research in Sex, Health and Society and Director of two National
Priority Programs in the National Centre for HIV Social Research.
Ushiogi Morikazu after graduating from Tokyo University, taught in the School
of Education and the Graduate School of International Development, Nagoa
University until 1998. Since 1998 he has taught at the Graduate School of
International Studies, Obirin University. He has been engaged in comparative
Contributors · ix |
15
The Filipino youth today: Their
strengths and the challenges
they face
Joseph H. Puyat
Department of Psychology
University of the Philippines Diliman, Quezon City
More than a hundred years ago one of our country’s national heroes, Dr. Jose
Rizal, said that the youth is the “fair hope of the fatherland.” Indeed, how well the
country will fare decades from now will depend on the performance of its future
leaders and citizens – today’s youth. Whether they will turn out to be good and
productive members of our society depends to a great extent on how competently
they are managing their current affairs, the life-changing decisions they make now
and will continue to make and the level of support society provides in this trying
period of their lives.
Youth has been said to be the most challenging period in one’s life. It is true that
we continue to experience changes throughout the life cycle, but the relatively
short period between childhood and adulthood would have to be the most
challenging one when one stops to consider all the transformations that we have to
deal with; from the dramatic changes in our physical make-up to the often times
empowering but at times confusing changes in the way we think, feel, act and
relate to other people. Exacerbating the difficulty of dealing with all these changes
is the fact that the current social environment, the backdrop at which most young
people will be negotiating their way to adulthood, is markedly different from the
ones many adults and parents grew up in decades ago. This social milieu
substantially altered by globalization and rapid changes in technology, places the
Employment
Only a little more than half (53.5% or 8.426 million) of the Filipino youth’s
population are actively working as of April 2003. Their number constitutes close to
one-fourth of the entire 36.635 million Filipinos currently employed (BLES, 2003).
This small number is to be expected since a sizeable number of the youth are still
finishing school and are not actively job-hunting yet.
Filipino youth who are out looking for work but were not successful in finding any
number around 4.217 million, representing the highest share (52.5%) in the total
number of unemployed in the country9. Because most of these unemployed have
not finished secondary or tertiary education and are relatively inexperienced, their
occupational choices are extremely limited. Seeing their prospects for finding work
to be bleak many of them are compelled to move to urban areas or to seek
employment abroad. Those who remained unemployed for a very long time may
also be lead to engage in criminal activities as data indicate that around 60% of
petty crimes in the country are committed by unemployed youth (TUCP, 2002
cited in Lanuza, 2003).
As if inexperience and inadequate schooling are not enough to make life difficult
for most young individuals seeking employment, discriminatory practices in hiring
further complicate their situation. In spite of the enactment of the Equal
Employment Opportunities Act (RA 6725) and the country being signatory to the
UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against
Women, discriminatory practices abound and appear to be tolerated. Unequivocal
evidence for this can be found in the job advertisements in the country’s tabloids
and broadsheets where gender and marital status are included to appear as
important qualifications for various jobs. It would appear that one’s chances of
getting a job in any of the following categories are better if one is a male applicant:
cook, driver, mechanic, messenger, engineer, manager, supervisor and security
guard. Female applicants on the other hand appear to have better chances of being
hired in any of the following job categories: waitress, sewer/weaver, nurse, teacher,
secretary, household help, cashier and accountant (Morada and Santos, 1998).
Conclusions
Youth is a transition period where individuals experience marked changes in the
way they think, feel, act and interact with other people. Most Filipino youth today
differ from their parents and other adults in that they have to deal with all of these
changes in the context of a changing social environment heavily influenced by
globalization and rapid technological progress. Far from being mere passive actors,
the Filipino youth of today actively negotiate their way through maturity aided by
internal resources that allow them to withstand frustration and make sense of what
they are experiencing. Such resources however are not inexhaustible. Overly
strained by thoughts about securing good education, landing decent-paying jobs,
and their burgeoning sexuality, some of them may be tempted to engage in
behaviors that put them at great risks, seriously marring their chances for a bright
future. Because of this, parents may need to communicate more and explore better
ways of reaching out to their young so that parents could be partners with their
young in appreciating the complexities of growing up. Government agencies may
need to cooperate and coordinate with each other more so that they could optimally
deliver services geared towards the development of the youth’s full potential. The
community in general and private sector in particular may need to take a more
active involvement in youth development as public funds are becoming more and
more hard to come by. No less than a team effort is indeed necessary to take on this
formidable task of facilitating the youth’s transformation into capable and
productive adult members of our society.
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