Youth

八岁偷照镜，长眉已能画。十岁去踏青，芙蓉作裙衩。十二学弹筝，银甲不曾卸。

十四藏六亲，悬知犹未嫁。十五泣春风，背面秋千下。--无题 （李商隐）

People are always talking about the problem of youth. If there is one--which I take leave to doubt--then it is older people who create it, not the young themselves.Let us get down to fundamentals and agree that the young are after all human beings--people just like their elders.There is only one difference between an old man and a young one: the young man has a glorious future before him and the old one has a splendid future behind him: and maybe that is where the rub难题 is.

When I was a teenager, I felt that I was just young and uncertain--that I was a new boy in a huge school,and I would have been very pleased to be regarded as something so interesting as a problem. For one thing, being a problem gives you a certain identity, and that is one of the things the young are busily engaged in seeking.

 I find young people exciting.They have an air of freedom, and they have not a dreary commitment信奉 to mean ambitions or love of comfort.They are not anxious social climbers, and they have no devotion to material things.All this seems to me to link them with life, and the origins of things.It's as if they were, in some sense, cosmic 宇宙的 beings in violent and lovely contrast with us suburban 见识不广的creatures.All that is in my mind when I met a young person.He may be conceited, ill-mannered, presumptuous自以为是的 or fatuous愚蠢的, but I do not turn for protection to dreary cliches陈词滥调 about respect for elders--as if mere age were a reason for respect.I accept that we are equals, and I will argue with him, as an equal, if I think he is wrong.

理解
take leave to do sth= take the liberty of doing sth

get down to sth= handle sth in a serious manner

there is the rub= there is the problem

for one thing= first

turn to... for ...= ask help for 

Muliple choice questions多项选择题

Choose the correct answers to the following questions.

1. What's the main difference between young people and old people?

a. Old people think of the young as 'a problem'.

b. Old people create this problem of age difference.

c. Od people have a past; young people have a future.

d. Od people and young people forget they are all human beings.

2. One of the things young people want to do is to

a. find out who they are

b. make sure they become 'a problem'

c. feel uncertain about themselves

d.  feel they are in a huge school

3. According to the writer, young people

a. are conceited, ill-mannered or fatuous

b. don't see life in the same way their elders do

c. don't have any ambitions

d.  come from another planet

4 The writer doesn't believe that ____.

a.people automatically deserve respect because they are old

b.young people and old people are equals

c.you should argue with young people if they are wrong

d.young people have any faults