Student Activism: Voice of the Youth

Student activism is work done by students to effect political, environmental, economic, or social change. It has often focused on making changes in schools, such as increasing student influence over curriculum or improving educational funding. In some settings, student groups have had a major role in broader political events

Here in the Philippines, the student movement has long been a vital part of the people’s movements—both as an ally of other sections of the people and in the struggle against students’ own particular forms of oppression. A fair number of attempts at building and sustaining national-level, multi-issue student activist organizations have been made over the years. I think the time has come for another effort to answer the clamor of the youth, especially if we’re going to analyze the things happened and learn well our lessons of the past.

It has been found that universities with a strong student influence have become highly politicized, and have generally ceased to be academically distinguished... Schools could suffer a similar adulteration of their academic role. When we talk about student participation in decision-making, we have to be very careful that we are talking about the kind and number of decisions that are appropriate to the students' level of maturity.

Numerous critics of student activism have identified the flaw of developing large categorizations based in the inherent oversimplification of singling out the role of individual recipients of educational processes as agents of change a larger society to which they belong; by isolating individuals as students without acknowledging their multiple other identities, activist movements tend to disenfranchise the very oppressions they sought to challenge and/or transform.

"The world is going down the drain, and we haven't done anything to stop it. We must heed the cries of the younger generation and give them what they want, for they are our salvation.” It is time to hear the voice of the youth in the different issues of our society.