Youth Rights Day

In honor of the second annual Youth Rights Day today (chosen because it was John Holt's birthday, a man well worth knowing about in regards to youth empowerment), I reread a couple articles about lowering the drinking age at the National Youth Rights Association (NYRA) website. Their strongest argument is based on the phenomenon of "forbidden fruit;" that is, anything that's prohibited only makes it more attractive. Their next argument goes like this: with the emphasis on alcohol prohibition for people under 21, dialoguing about it in any rational way is not emphasized.

Funny the NYRA folks should bring that up! We (adults) don't want to engage in rational dialogue with youth, probably because they would make us confront our own irrational behavior, not only about alcohol, but with drugs, sex, and other "bad" stuff that humans so love to do.

I would get really upset about the craziness of our alcohol policy, except that all our major social policies are just as screwy, irrational, illogical, and need I say, counterproductive? Take your pick: policies about drugs, abortion, taxes, the death penalty, the right to die; compulsory education, all are based on fear, tradition, and one group (highly conservative, mostly fundamentalist Christian people) lording it over those of us that are ready for some major paradigm shifting.

Can't we get real and acknowledge our seemingly inbuilt tendency to want to alter our consciousness from time to time, probably so we can feel less afraid? Can't we acknowledge that simultaneous with wanting to alter our consciousness, we are ashamed of that impulse, so we pretend we don't want to, and officially prohibit young people from doing it as well? After all, we're not kidding anyone, especially youth.

In contrast, consider what the NYRA says in their article, titled "Solutions," about lowering the alcohol age: "It is time we as a nation implement a smarter alcohol policy; an alcohol policy based on education, toleration, and a message of responsible, moderate use." Whew...like a cool breeze billowing the curtains on a perfect spring day, eh?

Please check out the NYRA and their highly rational policy statements on drinking, voting, and curfew. And, next year, think about organizing for National Youth Rights Day (April 14), to stir up some dialogue about our crazy laws based on age.

Anti-Adultist Authors and Schools

One of the institutions most in need of raised awareness about adultism is our traditional public school system. And one of my favorite writers in that arena is John Taylor Gatto, teacher of the year in NYC and author of “Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling” (1992). I remember how grateful I was when I first read his book many years ago for his clear articulation of how public schools fail our kids from his very personal, insider perspective. In his essay, “The Seven Lesson Schoolteacher,” he talks about how he was forced to teach confusion, class position, indifference, emotional dependency, intellectual dependency, provisional self-esteem, and that one can’t hide (children are always watched)…all aspects of adultism.

Another writer who changed my life and my thinking profoundly around the same time as Gatto was Grace Llewellyn, who wrote “The Teenage Liberation Handbook: How To Quit School and Get a Real Life and Education.” Llewellyn’s book is written for teenagers to help them discover what they want to learn and how they can go about learning it away from school. She, standing on the shoulders of John Holt of the Unschooling movement, inspired me to find a way to stop supporting a system that was so damaging to my children (I was raising four teenagers at the time), and get behind them to help them pursue their own, unique and authentic vision for their lives.

If I could choose a school to propagate everywhere in the world, it would be Summerhill, established in 1921. Recently, Adam Fletcher wrote about this school on his blog. Summerhill has recently released a movie dramatization of how the students, teachers and staff took the British government to court to save their unique brand of education and won! You can watch all 12 episodes on YouTube. At Summerhill, children are allowed to choose what they learn, when they learn it and how they define success. The school is run democratically by thrice weekly meetings in which all participants, adults and children, have an equal voice. Their website is terrific, so go check it out.

I see change in our public school system, but the change is coming way too slowly for my taste. This morning at the gym I heard an excited young mom tell another that her child had learned to speak in sentences by her 2nd birthday! I shudder when I remember that as soon as that child goes to school, she will be forced to focus her attention where adults have decided she should. Her natural curiosity, though resilient, will be dimmed, as she tries to fit into the arbitary and abstract world we call school. She will be taught how to regurgitate information for tests, how to be still and quiet; subduing all that comes easily, and struggling with what comes hard. I look forward to the day when we can look back in horror at our current school system, and breathe a sigh of relief that we finally found the will to change it.