TO celebrate the Year of Young People, every week in 2018 The National is giving a platform to a young Scot. This week, 26-year-old performance poet Leyla Josephine

ONLY a month after my 26th birthday, Scotrail decided to raise the Young Person’s Railcard age limit from 25 to 30. Instead of being thrown into full-price maturity, I now have until I’m 30 before I am finally an adult that has to pay full prices. Does this mean we’re staying younger for longer, or is it just that Scotrail have realised how truly useless us millennials are?

Either way, I’m totally delighted I get an extra four years to be a young person and will merrily bathe in the waters of the discount bath, splashing like a baby until it is drained away on my 30th birthday and I am left naked, shamed, not only old but poor too.

I’m not really a young person, but being a poet and writer I have the pleasure of working with young people in lots different communities from lots of different backgrounds. My job is to encourage them to write their own poetry about themselves and their lives. I have to convince them 1) that poetry can be cool and 2) to use their voices and speak up about what is important to them.

Sometimes it’s as simple as asking them to describe their favourite meal in detail or sometimes it’s bigger and more political. I believe both are equally as important, after all the personal is political. I always give them the option to write about whatever they want. They speak a lot about their love of their friends, their stresses at school, how they feel like they’re on the outside of normality and what they think is unfair about society. I’m always blown away by how varied and different every piece is and how unpredictable young people can be.

Being a young person obviously has its advantages – discounts, knowing what is cool and hip (I hear it’s all about fidget spinners right now BTW) – but it also has some pretty big disadvantages: never being taken seriously, getting told your emotions are just hormones and not being listened to.

Worryingly, what I see a lot when working in high schools is pupils telling me that they have nothing to contribute.

A couple of weeks ago I was working in a school and a boy sat in front of a blank page for the whole workshop. This sometimes happens but usually with a little one-to-one confidence boost and guidance they at least get something written. This 14-year-old couldn’t find it within himself to write anything down. I spent some time with him, talking through themes and ideas, but he just couldn’t bring himself to put the pen to the paper. He was literate – he’d written in another group exercise earlier in the workshop, but now being asked to make a decision to say something by himself he couldn’t do it.

How have we let young people believe that they have nothing to say? Why have we let some slip through the net? Do we allow young people to believe that nothing about them is interesting? That nothing about them is worth telling? That their stories are pointless? That their opinion not important? If they believe this, then we have failed.

We constantly patronise young people and tell them that because of their age their opinion is not valid. “You’ll understand when you are older”, “you have lots of learn”, “don’t be naive”, “in the real world…”.

I think the biggest problem is we don’t let young people choose anything for themselves. We are training them to be passive citizens. We are constantly telling them where to be, at what time, what to wear, how to think, how to answer questions at school (and don’t worry if you don’t know – the answer is at the back of the book.) We’ve literally written it for you, no need to use your brain at all.

I see worrying self-esteem problems in our schools and in our culture. We need to make sure expressive arts are a priority in our schools. They are one of the first things to go with funding cuts but they must be the foundation to any education.

Expressive arts give young people tools that help them grow in confidence, give them skills to recognise how they feel, language to express their opinions and most importantly provide platforms were they can voice these opinions and be listened to.

We have to encourage them to make their own choices and trust them to do the right thing and if they get it wrong that’s also an important lesson. Our schools should have environments and structures in which young people feel safe enough to express themselves and make their own decisions which will prepare them for the rest of their lives.

We need to start asking for young people’s opinions. Young people are the expert in their experience. So why don’t we treat them like experts? I could never understand what it’s like to be a teenager in 2018 – so many things have changed and I can’t pass judgment on what that feels like. Rather than assuming young people’s opinions, let’s just ask. Let’s put a bit of faith in them and hand over responsibility.

Going forward, I’m going to hand my young person baton back to the young people and let them talk for a while – as long as I get to keep my young person’s rail card please?

Leyla Josephine performs Hopeless at Summerhall, Edinburgh at 7.30pm on Friday, May 4. For more details and to book see bit.ly/LJHopless