10 July, 2011


Think!fest 
Gerard Boyce talking 'youth voices in SA… without the voices

Young people gathered in Eden Grove Auditorium expecting an engaging talk about issues that affect them and getting their voices heard.  The speaker of the day was Gerard Boyce, a PhD candidate in the school of economics and finance in the school at the University of Kwazulu Natal.

crazy4bee statistics...statistics...can't he be a bit practical?#fjpfest11”. (a tweet by young Busisiwe) Mr Boyce began his presentation by giving the findings to his quantitative study.  The presentation continued and we listened hoping that the form of the presentation would change.  I logged on to twitter and realised that I was not the only one who felt that Gerard Boyce was speaking at us and not to us.  Nyx Mclean tweeted “@NyxMcLean: This guy is annoying me, not at all energised - he speaks about the youth like an economist. Which!he just confessed to being”

Devaksha Vallabhjee stood up and told the speaker not to addresses young people like little lab rats.  His research revealed that race matters more than age to young people.  He gave statistics that I can barely remember after the talk.  He failed to speak to us or engage our minds in constructive conversation.  I instead felt like a guinea pig with no voice or opinion.

“@Realmav3riQ A more qualitative study would have been nice #fjpfest11”, this was the cry of the day from young people in that talk.  I genuinely walked out of a talk for young people feeling like ‘ok, WTF?’!

No comments: