The awful tragedy of teenage life

'Further education should not just be about getting a job, but about liberating yourself and changing the course of your life'

Has there ever been a worse time to be a teenage boy in Britain? Failing at school, denied the models of masculinity they were able to cling to a couple of generations ago, and outgunned on all sides by girl power, they have now been dealt a swingeing blow by Mary Catherine Lader, the daughter of the US ambassador to Britain.

Has there ever been a worse time to be a teenage boy in Britain? Failing at school, denied the models of masculinity they were able to cling to a couple of generations ago, and outgunned on all sides by girl power, they have now been dealt a swingeing blow by Mary Catherine Lader, the daughter of the US ambassador to Britain.

The poised and fragrant-looking 15-year-old has contributed an article to this month's Tatler opining in no uncertain terms that "American boys are better then British ones. British boys really suck." Ms Lader cites their "lack of appealing social skills and poor dress sense" as the biggest turn-offs.

As she goes into more detail, it is hard not to see exactly what she is getting at. "Constant sunshine and the obsession with sport fills US high schools with tanned athletic guys. British boys seem to be a little more scrawny, pale and unhealthy looking." Yes. "American arrogance takes the form of a desperation to impress and amuse girls, while British arrogance seems to result in antisocial superiority and sulking." Oh, yes. "His idea of conversation is to ask two questions and then feel entitled to stick his tongue down your throat." Indeed.

I suppose that the only consolation we Brits can take from all this is that Ms Lader isn't telling us anything we didn't know already. Her model for the appalling British youth resembles no one so well as Kevin the Teenager, Harry Enfield's comic distillation of all of Ms Lader's great hatreds.

In fact, the situation is now so dreadful that even Kevin himself is concerned about it. Yesterday he could be found on a street corner in London's West End, brandishing a placard bearing the legend "tragic". Kevin is heading up a Don't Quit Now campaign, launched by the Department of Education and Employment, which aims to persuade 16-year-olds to stay on at school or go to college.

A group of teenagers styling themselves "Kevin's crew" will make a tour of schools, talking to teenagers about what they intend to do after their GCSEs. The tour will be supported by a TV and radio advertising campaign, and a Don't Quit Now hotline will offer advice.

Kevin himself had ironic comment to offer on the situation "It's much cooler to leave school," he opined. "You get to stand on streets with signs, and you get paid. If I do this for five days, I can afford a CV." Pointing at the "crew" of teenagers holding signs behind him, he added, "I'm not going to lecture anyone, but you can see how glamorous it is when you leave school."

Now, I'm as keen on persuading young people to stay on at school as Tony Blair himself, but I'm not certain that the modern solution to all problems - celebrity endorsement and an advertising campaign - is applicable here. Can education really be treated as a commodity to be consumed like any other product? And is it wise anyway to employ irony in a campaign when the people you're trying to appeal to are not that sophisticated?

Clearly the Education Department believes it is. Certainly the approach will be every bit as successful as the movitational words spoken by the minister for lifelong learning, Malcolm Wicks: "Dropping out of education between 16 and 18 often leads to unemployment later in life or dead-end jobs, and there can be other consequences such as poorer health or teenage pregnancy."

No wonder Mr Wicks is committed to lifelong learning. He clearly still has much to learn himself. Like, you don't motivate 16-year-olds by painting pictures of doom and gloom eons into the future when they're really old people of 27. Instead, the minister would be well advised to point up the advantages of college as they really are.

First, the level of freedom without responsibility is greater than can be experienced at any other point in a lifetime. College can afford an easy way of moving out of the parental home. You will make more new friends than you might in a lifetime of work, and your social life will be dazzlingly broad and full. Your drinks and entertainment will be subsidised, so you'll take part in all kinds of events that you would otherwise never be able to access or afford.

Further, even if you don't want the kind of jobs you think a college education might offer, then you can still do no better than to enrol. If your greatest desire is to be a DJ, go to college and muscle in on the Student Union scene. Acting? Comedy? Again, there is no easier way to get mixed up in this kind of stuff than college. Pop star? Get in there and sort yourself out with gigs on the college circuit.

Except that there is a huge fly in this heady ointment. As the skills gap gets larger, and the need to get young people into further education gets more urgent, so do colleges get less and less like this sort of panacea.

Where is the freedom from adult responsibility when the years of further education are marked by the need to take out student loans - which after college can be sold on to debt collectors? Where is the temptation of easy escape from the parental home when cheap student accommodation gets harder instead of easier to find? And where are the ancilliary activities at a time when cutbacks in further education mean less and less money to finance theatre groups or film clubs or student publications?

Further education should not just be about getting a good job. It should be about liberating yourself and changing the course of your life - not just through learning, but through experience. Instead, the experience of further education gets grimmer, more serious, and more laden with responsibility, just at the time when it should be made as exciting, broad-based and generally alluring as possible.

It is now financially less tempting to go to college than it has been for decades, just as it has become of prime importance that money should not be an object. Ucas figures yesterday revealed disappointingly low numbers of working-class students going to university. What a surprise. Here are the people least likely to wish to burden themselves with loans to secure an uncertain future. The students whose families are wealthy enough to back them up are the ones who are best placed to embrace the advantages that are historically theirs already.

And yet, there is a part of the governmental machine that recognises that this is the problem. Pilot schemes that offer education maintenance allowances have given young people up to £30 a week to stay on at school. These have helped to raise staying-on rates to 5 per cent, against a national improvement rate of 2 per cent.

It is by easing the financial burden of education that the less affluent are persuaded to stay in. The cost of further education is huge, perhaps too huge for the country to take on. I'm all for the children of the wealthy having their education paid for by their parents. But offering the less affluent the prospect of starting their adult life encumbered by debt is not going to work.

Those who choose to educate their children privately at school level, for a start, should not be able to switch to subsidised education after their children have secured the university places that their privileges have afforded them. And those children who attend the schools least likely to launch them into further education should have a slew of scholarships on offer directly to them. Kevin the teenager might reckon that it's cool to leave school. But Harry Enfield knows that with loadsamoney, Kevin could be persuaded otherwise.

d.orr@independent.co.uk