Thanks to generous donors, we have been able to complete another YPAT program. After I visited several sessions and met some new and returning attendees, I reflected on what young Australians are facing.
It can be hard to look at the world around us. Disengagement and apathy are rife. Anxiety dominates our personal lives and our political order. The world is full of things that don’t make sense and decisions that don’t go anywhere.
It’s tempting to think there are simple solutions – one trick that will make everything better.
But this is not how the world works.
It’s not about shortcuts or simple solutions, but hard, dedicated work that looks difficult problems square in the face, saying: we can do something about this.
We can build.
We can connect.
We can understand.
It’s slow going, because it’s not just about sitting in a room and furiously agreeing with one another about what’s wrong with the world and what we would do if we were tyrants.
Our problems cannot be solved by strong men strongarming society into doing things in a certain way.
Society is complex. Politics is complex. Everyone has their own hopes and fears, their own ideas and goals.
The solution to our apathy and civic fracture is not to impose answers, but to explore problems and consider their resolutions, to see how the personal impacts the political and the political impacts the personal.
This is what makes YPAT such a unique and powerful experience.
Young people from across the country came together to explore big ideas and what they mean for their lives. Leading experts in their fields spoke about key issues and the attendees discussed and debated them, seeking to learn what they meant for their lives.
YPAT has been running since 2009. It is a contemporary iteration of the formation programs The Movement has run since its inception, building on programs run before The Movement even existed.
The idea is to see how the principles of a truly liberal education play out in everyday life.
It’s taking the intellectual foundation and applying it to the personal and professional and political challenges of today.
YPAT respects its attendees. They are not cogs in a machine expected to fulfil specific roles, but free agents deciding for themselves how to bring about the Common Good in their own lives.
This means YPAT is not just about big ideas or political activism but about that fundamental thing our democracy so desperately needs – engaged citizens capable of principled and evidence-based independent thought who can work with one another.
We don’t want people who can regurgitate what a lecturer or a political operative want to hear. We need to go beyond what there is to discern what there should be.
We need to identify reality rightly to work out what is to be done.
This is a lifelong process. We have been building this up for years, and the result is young, vibrant, self-directing and engaged groups operating in Perth, Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne.
These groups are dedicated and idealistic. They are exploring real problems and devising real solutions. They are making a real difference in the world.
Luke McCormack is national president of the National Civic Council.
