YOUTH ORGANIZATIONS OF BRITAIN
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There were numerous different youth organizations in Britain. Some were large, and some small, some nation-wide and some local. Probably the largest were the Boy Scouts and Girls Guides Associations and the YMCA (Young Men's Christian Association), and the YWCA (Young Women's Christian Association) or simply "y" for short. The Boy Scouts and the Girls Guides were for scool-age teen-agers and the YMCA and the YWCA were for scool-leavers, college students and young people who had already started working Boy Scouts and Girls Guides had to do one good deed every day, to develop themselves mentally and physically. In summer they went camping in tents with everything done by young people themselves. At the YMCA and the YWCA more attention was paid for sport and different social events, such as outing in the country, dances, debates, amateur activities, etc.
These organizations were founded in the nineteenth century. Officialy they were non-political, but in reality they aimed not to let young people think about social and political problems in their country, to bring them up in the spirit of nationalizm. Boy Scouts and Girs Guides, for example, promised to be true to the king (queen) and had to salute the British flag at their meetings. |
