Lesson 05 Youth 青年

Lesson 5

Youth

First listen and answer the following question

How does the writer like to treat young people?

People are always talking about 'the problem of youth'. If there is one--which I take leave to doubt--then it is older people who create it, not the young themselves.

Let us get down to fundamentals and agree that the young are after all human beings--people just like their elders.

There is only one difference between an old man and a young one: the young man has a glorious future before him and the old one has a splendid future behind him: and maybe that is where the rub is.

When I was a teenager, I felt that I was just young and uncertain--that I was a new boy in a huge school, and I would have been very pleased to be regarded as something so interesting as a problem.

For one thing, being a problem gives you a certain identity, and that is one of the things the young are busily engaged in seeking.

I find young people exciting. They have an air of freedom, and they have not a dreary commitment to mean ambitions or love of comfort.