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?’!
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