Practicing Youth Development: Teaching Young People to Strive and 'Follow Their Bliss'

On the death of Ed Bradley...

"Born June 22, 1941, Bradley grew up in a tough section of Philadelphia, where he once recalled that his parents worked 20-hour days at two jobs apiece. "I was told, `You can be anything you want, kid,'" he once told an interviewer. "When you hear that often enough, you believe it."

The above quote serves as support for the importance of having high expectations for children and young people. Youth development research tells us that adults who have high expectations for their kids, and support them accordingly, play a major role in nurturing resiliency in young people, particularly those that grow up in at-risk environments. Resilient youth are those that are able to succeed where so many others fail; who can pick themselves up when they are knocked down and who are less likely to fall victim to the lures of vice and unhealthy lifestyles. Resilient youth do not denigrate themselves because they know their own self-worth; they believe in the words of the adults that nurtured them and taught them that they can be something. To teach someone that they can be something implies that they already are something. Thus, if we teach our children how honored they are to be in the human family, how special a gift their life is, that Allah himself created them as the pinnacle of His magnificent creation and His khalifah, and raise and support them according to this mindset, they will believe it and expect of themselves excellence in life.

Teaching young people to follow their bliss means encouraging them to pursue that inner drive and direction about which the Prophet (SAW) said: "Act, for each of you will find easy that for which he was created" (Muslim). Don't deny young people this divine gift by forcing them to be something that they are not inclined to. Surrender to the God-given fitra that lies within and nurture young people to actualize themselves according to their divinely-created nature. Then, support them and guide them along this path of theirs and help them to learn about themselves along the way. Education, in the end, is ultimately about knowing oneself and "He who knows himself, knows his Lord." So let's practice youth development by encouraging and supporting our young people along the path of self-discovery, self-realization and self-actualization.