Essay, Paragraph or Speech on “Youth and Literacy” Complete English Essay, Speech for Class 10, Class 12 and Graduation and other classes.

Youth and Literacy

The best and the most beautiful things in this world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt within the head.

—Helen Keller

If it is spring for the Mother Nature, then she has been kind I enough to bestow on us the most beautiful phase of our life, which is often energetically proclaimed as “Youth”. This is the time when the youth dare to think of even gobbling up the whole sun with their enviable energy. This is the ideal time to sow the seeds of thought. They all see through this stage of life called the teens or adolescence and understand the great facts of life and gear up for the impending ones.

Their dream weaving looms now define that time has come for the testing of the weaved magic fabric. They blossom into mature citizens of their nation still maintaining the vivaciousness and vigour in their system.

Incidentally, our nation boasts of the largest share of youth in the population of the world. Statistics show that a staggering forty per cent of our whopping population is comprised of youth.

Why do the oldies describe the youth as the future of the nation? Has anyone spared any thought for that? Any progress our motherland has to make directly or indirectly depends on the youth. They are the ones to whom the baton needs to be passed on. What the youth are is clearly manifested by their knowledge, or rather the literacy quotient. This brings to open mind the wide open question of defining literacy.

How is one literate? Is it the degrees the youth ‘obtain in the college, is it the percentage of marks they score during their academics or in much simpler terms, is it the perception they hold about their society? is it the social, cultural and intellectual make up of the individuals? It was said by Winston Churchill that “the first duty of a university is to teach wisdom, not trade, character, not technicalities.”

How well literate the youth are, if they are to grade themselves? Literacy is the quality of education which they had that now reigns in their thoughts. It cannot be isolated from their thinking and since they live with their thoughts, it is the way they live.

The youth can be called literate with the manifestations of their daily life. Their perception of the world around them, their understanding of themselves and most importantly the reason for their existence, if these thoughts are being given birth and processed in their mind, then they are literate. It is not the years if schooling that make the youth literate; it just lays the foundation for the eternal journey called knowledge. True literacy comes into being when one utilizes the facts one has learned in one’s thoughts and then lives a life based on the concrete beliefs cemented from one’s thoughts.

Literacy and education are the two inalienable entities for setting of the sail of life. If literacy has been simplified, we shall now explicit how youth and literacy are related. The youth always kindle the interest in what the future is going to look alike, which shows that they are anxious of it. They dream of the future they are going to receive but what is out there is the world of harsh reality. Someone has rightly said that life is not a bed of roses. How true and sometimes painful it is!

True, because the youth are going to face the harsh realities of life and painful because the energy with which they are going to venture out will soon sink due to the trammels in the path. That is where the companionship of education and literacy comes into the picture. If education is the shield of the youth, then literacy is an unbluntable sword. It is the rationalism generated by the two unconquerable arms that helps us trudge through this magnificent journey called “life”.

This brings us to the undisputable fact that the youths of the nation have to be literate for the progress of the nation.

In the present scenario, our country is striving for prosperity but it is confronting numerous problems at different fronts. The baton is in our hands to don the mantle as vigilant catalysts to this transformation. Our educated minds will help us understand the pros and cons of the ruling government. It cannot hoodwink the intelligent and patriotically fervent citizens. Such thought processes helping directly or indirectly are our literate souls. What are we without them? God’s simple creation without the power to distinguish the good from the bad. Why biologist C. Linnaeus placed human beings in a higher platform or hierarchy of intelligence was because we had the power to think. What would have been the shape of this society f we had no such power? A pitiable morbid decadence I wonder whether this beautiful world would have existed under the rule of savages.

We have multiple roles to play in the society and the recent developments happening in different walks of life are a testimony to this statement. We have seen a new dawn of energy of the youth in our political machinery not to mention sports and business. The Indian capital market and job territories are bustling with the energy of dynamic entrepreneurs.

The youth are everywhere—from pioneering the change to supporting and ably subordinating the senile backbone. Our nation has been facing in its road towards development, tough challenges such as terrorism and corruption, to name a few.

Don’t we have this moral responsibility and the sense of duty to act cohesively and fight against the menace by all possible means for the mother is looking towards her empowered sons to restore peace and morality in her?

Youth today are not conservative in many ways as they used to be earlier: they are being swept by the changes of globalization. Materialism and pomp have conquered their mind. This drastic evolution can lead to mental morbidity, where morality and righteousness will be crucified.

Fanatics from alien nations are bent upon terrorizing us into timid silence while our own men involved in unscrupulous practices in our society are manipulating and exploiting us for their vested interests. In spite of being academically sound, youth are falling prey to the anti-national forces and are unable to choose between what is good and what is bad for them and our nation. Is this what we call the educated progeny which is supposed to lead our society to the path of progress. Definitely not. This is not what we dream of being in life. The disturbing fact is that we may divert into diabolic pathways. The terror strikes in Mumbai and other parts of the worlds have shown that the grimy hands which were used to carry out these attacks were the educated youth who were derailed from their normal course of life. They were radicalized and brainwashed by evil perpetrators with the help of money. On the other hand we have outstanding examples of individuals who became scapegoats and had to lay down their lives sticking to their values and boldly blowing the whistle against rampant corruption.

We still remember those brave soldiers who sacrificed their lives fighting the jehadi infiltrators in the Kargil War even before pocketing their first pay as inducted soldiers of the Indian Armed Forces. If we have to salute them for their valour and wisdom, we need to deserve that right. The world has glorified the spiritual leadership heralded by Swami Vivekananda who ascended to heaven at a young age. The whole world demands Indian talents for accomplishing their tasks. The extraordinary alumni of IITs and top ranking management professionals from the IITs and IIMs have taken the seeds of our outstanding heritage of knowledge, learning and wisdom to far-off corners of the-globe and planted them on alien soils with the distinctive strength of their identities. The recent boom in the economy demonstrates that India is going to see unparalleled growth and unprecedented changes in the coming years and we are going to be the drivers of this change, sitting in the hot seat changing gears for the unstoppable journey of prosperity. Our whopping youth population is a huge reservoir of manpower. However, human resource also goes waste, thus people can become asset or a liability. We should remember what Michelangelo said, if it’s to be, it’s up to me.