step by step 3000 第三册Unit 6 Youth Aspirations

do they see themselves going! How do they feel about living in the Britain of today!

When you think about young people, you might picture dancing, clubs, music, fashion and fun. But there is an equally well-known dark side: fights, trouble, hooliganism, drugs and anarchy. Is this a true picture or is there another more positive side that the media do not show? I think the young of today are having a hard time. First of all, throughout the ages back since the 40s, the 50s, young people have been portrayed very badly by the press. The press say the young . . . don’t believe in anything, they don't want to do anything, they don't want to work, they don't want to get a job, they don't want to provide any help for anybody else. This, I'm afraid, is absolute rubbish, but young people are reading this all the time. We visited the City of Newcastle in the northeast of England where there is a large multi-racial community. There we met a young man of Asian extraction. What's it like being a young Asian person in Britain today in comparison to a few years ago? Is it some easier to keep separated cultural identity yet at the same time to be accepted? It didn't ten years ago or something, but gradually just started accepting it. It's probably because there are more and more people from different culture backgrounds coming to this country So people in this country are accepting it . . . These days many young people find that one of the best options open to them is to set up their own business. How can they do this

especially if they have no money of their own? There is an organization in Britain, which was set up specifically to help people in this situation. It was established to give advice to and help raise finance and provide support for new business ventures. Chief executive Jeremy White told us about it: “What we do is. . . we have over five and half thousand volunteers from all over the country. We attach a volunteer to each business, not to run the business or interfere with it but just to help the young person through that process. Learning how to deal with the VAT, how to negotiate with your bank manager, for example. And we give advice on how to do marketing and those skills that you need when you're starting up a business. This year, we'll start up about3,700 businesses, for example , the window cleaners. Four young men from Birmingham, I mean they are just embarking and that business may grow or it might just keep them in employment, but that's a great success in itself. They seem a lot more open-minded, they don't seem to be able to be led as much today as maybe kids of my age group – the sixties and seventies. Young people need more than anything an opportunity these days. They need a chance to take on personal challenges. Part III

The United States is in the midst of a boom in new business creations, one that is being carried out primarily by entrepreneurs in their teens, twenties and thirties. Never before have so many young people started so

many businesses. Technology is changing everything, says Kate O'Halloran, who helps run a graduate entrepreneur program at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts. And no one, she says, is more tuned in to the latest technology than young people. Add to that the unusually long recent period of national prosperity, Mrs. O'Halloran says, and you have a youthful generation with a unique outlook on life. This new generation of twenty and thirty something have never really seen a war, they've never really had an economic depression. They are absolutely willing and able to take more financial risks, social risks. The stigma of having a start-up that has failed is almost a badge of honor, which is certainly unique to this country and very, very different than in years past. Business historian Rita David agrees there's never been a period in American history where so many young people have started businesses that have made them so wealthy so quickly. But, she says, there have been periods which share some of today's characteristics. She points to the turn of the last century, the late 1800s and early 1900s as an example. It was a time of huge technological change, and you've always had tremendous opportunity when you've had tremendous change in technology. You had a huge influx of immigrants into the country, really following the notion of the American dream, which is that America was the land of infinite opportunity. It was then Rita David said that Scottish immigrant Andrew Carnegie founded a steel plant that would eventually

make him the richest man in the world. It was in that period, she says, that banker J. P. Morgan provided venture capital for such new firms as International Harvester, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, and General Electric. Like today, she says, there was a sense of limitless possibility. What always happened in the past is that you had these huge boom times, you had this huge movement of entrepreneurialism, which always trickled down to the whole population, and really moved the American standard of living up a notch. Hopefully, she says, today's entrepreneurial boom will have similar results.