Jayne Dowle: Could National Service give the young a sense of duty in our selfish society?

Leeds-born broadcaster Jeremy Paxman, 63, would be in good company. He suggests that a spell of military duty could be just what younger generations are lacking. Never mind putting international statesmen on the spot or unpicking European monetary policy on Newsnight. I can just see him putting the world to rights over a cup of tea and a currant teacake.

A year or so white-washing lavatories and cutting the grass with nail scissors never hurt anyone, did it? Well, that is debatable. I know plenty of older gentlemen – National Service ended in 1960 – who found their years in compulsory uniform the most liberating of their lives. A few more who hated every single mind-numbing minute. And some who won’t talk about what they witnessed in Kenya or Korea.

It is worth pointing out that he has not exactly come all-out in favour of conscription. However, in an interview with the Radio Times to promote a BBC series that he is presenting on the First World War, Paxman makes wider points which should resound with us all. He argues that we’re far too cossetted compared to previous generations. “It might have been better for all of us if we’d been obliged to do something rather than choosing for ourselves,” he says.

Too right. In fact, if he’s nipping to the café for a chin-wag, I wonder if he could call round to our house on his way back to London. I’d like him to have a word with our Jack. I promise you I haven’t “cossetted” this child. I practice what the psychologists call “tough love”. I call it taking no nonsense whatsoever.

Yet, how ever many boundaries I set, how ever much I explain the consequences of certain actions, I’m coming up against an 11-year-old brick wall.

My son knows his so-called rights more thoroughly than any hardened criminal. He doesn’t feel obliged to do anything he doesn’t feel like doing. Ask him to pick up the socks he has thrown on the floor or to answer the front door (it’s usually for him) and he looks at me as if I’ve asked him to go over the top to fight the Hun in his pyjamas.

How can this be? What can I do to get through to him? If it’s this difficult with my own son, at the age of 11, in my own house, no wonder there are millions of Neets (young people not in employment, education or training). How to show them that the world does not owe them a living is a serious challenge for parents – and government.

I’ve just heard that another £20m has been promised in our region to provide funding for new programmes to put such youngsters on the right path. It’s good news, I guess, but I can’t help but think that we have heard it all before. No amount of money seems to make much impact on the hoodied gangs hanging around our town centres, trying to get enough change together to buy a pasty. It’s all about the attitude, another word this lot are rather fond of. And I’m sorry to say that too often that attitude is nasty, selfish and lazy.

As Paxman implies, we’ve only got ourselves to blame. Not you or me personally. Just the fact that there was far too much of a laissez-faire attitude towards duty and obligation for several generations. It was all too easy, in every sense of the word.

It is no coincidence that National Service ended the year the Swinging Sixties began. The permissive society brought us much which was good; equal rights for men and women, free contraception and much more tolerance. However, it also brought us the sense that somehow we were absolved of responsibility.

As Paxman says, it is now difficult to comprehend a society in which individuals were expected to do things other than gratify themselves. When people of a certain age start talking about bringing back National Service, that’s what they are really getting at. It’s the same argument which underpins Education Secretary Michael Gove’s plan to bring former military personnel into schools as teachers and mentors. And it’s the same reason why all attempts to inculcate David Cameron’s “Big Society” have failed so far. Few people see the point of doing something for anyone else if it doesn’t benefit them directly.

Paxman is right again. We have been too privileged. And it’s true. Most of us have never been tested, certainly not through military conflict or war-time deprivation.

However, we face a test which could be even bigger. To get over our guilt at not having done what our parents and grandparents did. And to try and redress the balance without sending our sons and daughters off to whitewash lavatories, cut grass with nail scissors and lose their lives pointlessly on the field of a foreign battle in the name of duty.