The sight of young people interviewed by news media and encouraged to reveal their feelings at being out of school, college or university saddens me.
In September 1939 my father and thousands like him had to abandon university courses as they were called up. Five years later a number of them, many in prisoner of war camps, had used their spare time to undertake private study, many of them as external students of London University. The end of the war saw them qualified and ready to work.
Now we have The Open University as well as many other means of supporting private study. Young people would be helped were they to be asked, not how they feel about their situation, but what they themselves are going to do to show that they are able to use their time constructively, that they are growing up.