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GREG NEIMAN
Advocate Staff
1/9/01 |
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Roy MacGregor has been writing newspaper and magazine
columns since before the times most of us began reading them.
That must make him an elder statesman of public
commentators.
So you would expect him to know his history
when he writes about young computer phenom Keith Peiris, of
London, Ont., hailing him as a leader in “the beginning of a
modern Children’s Crusades.”
Peiris, at the tender age of
12, is the CEO of Cyberteks Design. If you want a Web page
drawn up for your company, he’d be able to do the job.
MacGregor says in his column in the National Post that
Peiris’s basement operation is pulling in six figures in
annual revenues.
Perhaps missing the irony of his reference
to the Crusades, MacGregor holds forth that a 12-year-old
running a business taking in more than $100,000 a year is
something intrinsically good.
Even better, says the
article, Peiris will be joining Prime Minister Jean Chretien
on a trade mission to China. That would be the trade mission
our Alberta premier won’t have time to join, there being an
election to win, and all.
Considering the tone of the
article, which praises the efforts of young people all over
the world who have joined the world’s power structures, you’d
think Premier Klein should at least find a junior high school
student somewhere in Alberta, to represent our interests. But
that’s another topic.
What’s disconcerting about the
National Post article is an unwritten assumption that
computer-savvy young people are poised to take over society’s
power structures — and that it would be a good thing when it
happens. MacGregor has a host of examples of the good things
that happen when the groups holding power today (most of them
middle-aged and over) actively listen to the advice of young
people, and allow them a say in decisions.
That certainly
sounds like a good thing. It wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine
how our schools might be a lot better-built and equipped today
if the power elite would listen to the reasoned arguments of
young people. But the Alberta government scarcely even listens
to the reasoned arguments of teachers, at least where building
schools is concerned.
The unsettling part comes when the
assumption is made that we should be putting the burden of
shaping our society’s values on a group that hasn’t had a
chance yet to fully learn what they really are, or understand
why some things are as they are.
No doubt Keith Peiris
understands his business. Likewise there’s no doubt that Craig
Kielberger, Canada’s teenage advocate of children’s rights,
knows his. Youth need be no barrier to having a knowledge base
that people can trust.
But let’s hope that people like
Peiris and Kielberger also get a chance to hang out with
friends, try out new experiences, share with their peers on
matters that are only important to them, and maybe even get
into trouble once in a while.
Let’s hope they also allowed
to quit something when it stops being fun, and switch into
something completely different, just to see what it’s like.
What’s so great about the adult world, that you have to give
up your childhood to attain it?
Taking a trip to China
(accompanied by his father) will be a fabulous experience for
the young programmer. It’s kind of scary, though, to think he
may be landing international contracts in the world’s largest
untapped market, while out seeing the sights.
That’s what’s
ironic about the reference to the Children’s Crusades. The
thousands of children who left their homes in Europe to join
the knights in the Holy Land, ended up sold as slaves — at
least those who survived the journey. Is this what we’re
asking for?
— Greg Neiman |
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