Youth research in Slovakia

Ladislav Machacek
Slovak Sociological Society
Bratislava, Slovak Republic

State youth policy systematically makes use of scholarly knowledge about processes, which affect the living conditions of the present young generation and overtly manifest themselves at school, at home or at the time of leisure. State youth policy is also formed through contacts with all elements operating within the system of youth work, especially during free time activities. Civic children's and youth associations, leisure time centres, youth information centres, as well as youth experts at the district and regional offices accumulate a large mosaic of practical knowledge and incentives of appreciable cognitive value.

Sociology of youth enables the researcher to gain stimuli from youth work and vice versa – the personnel and the volunteer activists of civic youth associations, instructors at leisure time centres and employees of youth information centres can orientate themselves in the theory and the methods of sociology of youth and other scientific disciplines too.

It is only natural that the knowledge from other scientific disciplines (psychology, pedagogy, ethnography, law, social medicine, criminology, etc.) infiltrates the youth work projects. However, it is the sociology of youth as a special sociological theory that provides the systematic analysis and constructions of an image of youth as a socio-age group of society.

Sociology of youth observes the ways in which the young people take on respected social values and norms, the models of behaviour and expert knowledge gained in the name of social progress and generational continuity, analyses the causes of creation of separate youth subculture at the crucial moments of the social development and eventually its role in revolutionary situations of changing social system.

Sociology of youth provides the required frame of reference for the complex characteristics of youth, regarding the changes in its social structure and the growth of social mobility, equal educational opportunities and other relevant issues. With regard to the development of political culture, it explains youth activities in civic youth associations and the levels and forms youth participation in political life. Into this system of information are also integrated data on acquired general and specialized education as well as professional qualifications, data on the state of its (youth's) health and the choices of leisure time activity as preferred by city and country youth. Within the complex perception of youth is examined its social situation while looking for a job and starting to work as much as the time of establishing a family and a household (housing situation).

In connection with the effects of modernization of society, the socio-pathological symptoms among young people (drug and alcohol abuse, delinquency and criminality) and processes of their marginalization in case of a longer unemployment are clarified. A comparison of these characteristics on a time scale reveals the measure of change in social conditions and the kind of principles implemented in state youth policy of the given country.

Historical parallel.

On the occasion of the 5th Conference of European Ministers Responsible for Youth in Bucharest, April 27-29, 1998, the Council of Europe Youth Directorate published an information document called 25 Years of Youth Policy in the Council of Europe: Taking Stock and Looking Ahead. It points out that the years 1964 – 1969 were the actual stimulus to creation of European youth policy, when the conflict between young people and society and its values had plainly manifested itself. For that reason the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe decided in May 1968 to regularly confer about the situation of youth in Europe and recommended to establish the European Youth Centre and the European Youth Foundation.

In Slovakia, the years 1964 – 1969 were also marked by the attempts to solve the generation gap problems. Originally, the discussions on non-conformism of youth art in the magazine Kultúrny život (Cultural life) turned into reflections upon new elements of youth subculture (hairstyles, clothing, dance, music). Philosophical and sociological reflections on the generation gap nevertheless clearly indicated (M. Kusý, J. Suchý) that it was not just a self-serving protest against the older generation. The stagnation of society became a problem of both the young and the older generation, which understood the socialist state-party regimentation of social processes to be limiting individual career possibilities and aspirations.

The public discussion, joined by a large circle of literary men and publicists brought about a request to do a research of youth's taboo themes also. Hence, next to the already existing (since 1964) Youth Department of Slovak Sociological Society at the Slovak Academy of Sciences, the Initiatory Group for Youth Research of the executive body of the united state youth organization in Slovakia (ČSZM) came into existence in 1966.

On its initiative originated the research (Quo vadere – Whither we go) on the relationship between the young people and their youth organization (Š. Lahita, K. Šuran, P. Ondrejkovič, L. Macháček), which led to a proposal for a division of the organization according to individual interest and age groups. A group of experts from the Sociology of Youth Committee of the Institute of Sociology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences (prof. J. Čečetka), came up with the suggestion of bringing about some changes in the state youth policy. During an acrimonious discussion the group argued in favour of creating a government youth committee. Direct party and state management and the control of young people's lives within their organization was seen as their innerly inseparable characteristic. The true meaning of this kind of system decision-taking was aptly summerized by one of the experts in an altogether blunt remark: if the Ministry of Youth is established we might as well dissolve the youth organization.

It is a well-kown fact that August 1968 was a foreboding month for the young people in Slovakia. The invasion of Warsaw Pact armies and the ensuing „normalization" after April 1969 blocked the modernization process in countries of Central and Eastern Europe for 20 years – even the lives of young people, their youth organization and the state's youth policy. Many sociologists of youth in Slovakia were persecuted and marginalised. In some European countries, above all in the Soviet Union, the fresh impulse in the youth research was brought by the „perestroika" socialist reform idea of M. Gorbachov's „European House". Still, these concepts never received a wide enough acceptance in Slovakia.

Not untill 1989 were the data from the sociological research of youth used again. It was during the oreoaration of the document Principles of State Youth Protection and Aid in Slovak Republic, which the Slovak government adopted in January 1992. The fact that Czechoslovakia/Slovakia were invited to join the Council of Europe and especially the Council's analysis of the associative life of Slovak and Czech youth (O. Stafseng), the contacts with collegues in Austria (LJR Wienna – J. Holos, NO – A. Kager, OJI) and in Germany (M. Heger – Bavaria, DJI), involvement in research programmes PHARE )K. Roberts), the cooperation with RC 34 ISA in organizing a conference on youth unemployment in Europe (L. Chisholm, C. Wallace), all these meant that our specialised activities have reached a higher level of qualityin the decade of 1989 – 1999.

Institutionalizating the youth research.

The youth research in Slovakia has an adequate institutional background - research centres, university faculties, scientific institutions, civic associations, a scientific magazine, WWW presentation. Theoretical and methodological questions are mainly dealt with at the Institute of Sociology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences (doc. L. Macháček) and the Department of Sociology of Education and Sociology of Youth at the Philosophical Faculty of Comenius University (doc. P. Ondrejkovič) in Bratislava. The most extensive and continual empirical research on children and youth is done regularly by the Department of Youth Analysis and Research at the Institute of Information and Prognosis of the Ministry of Education of Slovak Republic in Bratislava (PhDr. M. Bieliková). Small groups of experts holding a chair of pedagogy at the pedagogy and philosophy faculties of some Slovak universities, as for example in Bratislava (doc.E. Kratochvílová), Nitra (doc.V. Žbirková), Banská Bystrica (doc.J. Hroncová), Prešov (doc.A. Tokárová), also study various problem areas of youth.

In Slovakia there has never existed any centre such as the DJI in Munich, so that the scientific association of sociologists played an important role in self-organizing of individual persons and small groups of researchers. Since 1965, the Youth Section of the Slovak Sociological Society at the Slovak Academy of Sciences has been one of the most active. It organises regular conferences (eg. „Youth and Unemployment" in 1997) and workshops on state youth policies in Europe. After 1990 (Madrid), it has been cooperating with the International Sociological Association and its research group RC 34 Sociology of Youth (M. Hubner-Funk, O. Stafseng, L. Chisholm).

In order to avoid communication problems of individual scientific disciplines and of scholars and those working with youth, the Slovak Youth Information and Consulting Association (SlyCA) was established in 1990. Each month it publishes a leaflet containing information about youth work in European countries.

In 1995 , the efforts to found a journal devoted to youth problems in Slovakia were brought to a successful fruition. On the initiative of the Department of Youth Care of the Slovak Ministry of Education a new journal dealing with questions of state policy and youth research appeared. It was called Youth and Society and it continued with the work of the yearly journal Sociology of Youth 69 and 70, the information bulletin Theory, methodology and praxis of youth movement (1971-85) and the bulletin Youth and Society (1990-94). It received a new graphic layout (in 1995) and it changed its profile in accordance with the requirements set for periodicals: Youth and Society. Slovak Journal for State Policy and Youth Research with the registry number ISSN 1335-1109.

The ISOM, Youth Information System, which was set up as a part of a departmental information system, has also research parameters. It should provide actual information to those formulating and putting through the state policy of children's and youth care. It serves not only the Slovak government and the Parliament, executive officials of central and lower bodies of state administration, but also the ICM system, civic youth associations and all experts on youth research in Slovakia. The ISOM concept was drafted by PhDr. M. Slovíková, CSc. The material for procuring, processing and publishing the required information is provided by the section of ISOM of the Institute of Information and Prognosis at the Slovak Ministry of Education in Bratislava.

Finally, it must be said that in 1999 the WWW entry on youth in Slovak Republic (www.changenet.sk/slyica) was introduced. It informs about the results of youth research after 1990 as well as the synopsis and content of leading articles published in the journal Mládež a spoločnos (Youth and Society) since 1995 (available in English language, too).

European youth research

The affiliation of Slovak Republic in the European Union and its membership in the Council of Europe has an additional meaning to the young people. The activities of youth associations and notably the Youth Council of Slovakia are of considerable importance in view of Slovakia's integration into the new Europe, all the more so since many initiatives intensifying this process are realized precisely with the help of the emerging European youth policy. Its development was greatly influenced by the civic youth associations and movements, especially the recently united (Youth Forum) national councils and international youth organizations in Europe.

Sociologists believe it is not enough to speak of youth movements, but also of other social (ecology, peace, human and civil rights, women's, etc.) movements having predominantly young adherents merely as a chance product of modernization. One might say that the higher developed, modernized societies tend to become „movement societies".

Youth movements that appear to be a kind of organized and continuous collective effort of cooperating individuals, groups and organizations aimed at supporting and sustaining social change by means of public protest activities.

Therefore, it is not enough to create a state of affluence as a material base to introducing the citizenship and modern individuality to all. Especially the young people grow to become citizens through the process of „subjectivisation", i. e. organized effort, movement or initiative of people of equal standing and interests who, within their rights, join forces to achieve a social change. They do it by gaining public recognition of their legitimacy and secure their legality through respective representative and administrative organs.

The proposals and projects of legislative change put forward at negotiations with the representatives of state institutions require a high level of expertise. Therefore, it becomes more and more important for the heads of civic and youth associations to work together with the youth research experts. Under Slovak circumstances, where after 1989 the representatives of youth associations were naturally replaced and even the expert ministry officials were expelled owing to party machinations, the youth research has also a function of saving and passing on information, concepts and analyses in the area of youth policy. It guarantees the continuity of the know-how in solving the youth problems in the atmosphere of a personal discontinuity.