Are we failing our youth?
by Prof. Saths Cooper
In a period of youth turmoil across the globe, it is apposite to consider the condition of youth in our country and continent. In the early 1980s, the question was asked, “Are we creating a lost generation?”
Over four decades later, it seems that we have created lost generations with a rising sense of helplessness and hopelessness, intolerable levels of disaffection, joblessness, violence, dependency, and the inability to engage meaningfully in disrupting prevailing narratives and emerging with a qualitatively different and inclusive trajectory for the future.
Was Shakespeare correct in stating, “The fault… is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings”? Can we cohere in the quest to find meaning for youth and enable them to fully assume their rightful roles in society? These and other critical issues affecting all of us will be traversed in this lecture, to enable us to work together in our various roles and disciplines towards a quest for our common humanity and future.
Date: 10 September 2024
Time: 15:00 – 17:00
Format: Virtual
Prof. Saths Cooper
Prof. Saths Cooper is the current president of the Pan-African Psychology Union and the past president of the International Union of Psychological Science and the Psychological Society of South Africa. Prof Cooper is also a Fellow of the Psychological Societies of South Africa, India, Ireland, Britain and Nigeria. He is a founding governing Board Member of the International Science Council and a Foundation Fellow serving on its Committee for Freedom and Responsibility in Science. Prof Cooper was a close colleague of the Black Consciousness Movement founder, the late Bantu Stephen (Steve) Biko. At the age of 22, Cooper was banned, placed under house arrest, and thereafter jailed for nine years, five of which he spent in the same cell block as the late South African President Mandela. He was Accused No. 1 in the seminal South African Students’ Organisation/Black Peoples Convention (SASO/BPC) trial, a leader of the struggle against apartheid oppression and exploitation from the late 1960s. He obtained his PhD from Boston University as a Fulbright Scholar. Prof Cooper has taught at the University of Witwatersrand, Boston University and the University of the Western Cape. He also served as the last Vice Chancellor of the University of Durban Westville. Prof Cooper chairs the Robben Island Museum and the 1970s Group of Activists.
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