Democracy and Children: The Connection

Democratic participation relies on individuals taking collective ownership and deliberate roles in the societies where they live. From the earliest age children have the interest in their neighbors and communities to warrant actively engaging them in democracy; research, and international practice codified in the CRC, demonstrates that their evolving capacities necessitate opportunities for their active involvement. Children’s participation embraces these realities by connecting young people with meaningful opportunities to share their knowledge, ideas, actions, and more.

For a long time children’s participation was seen as the obligation of child-serving organizations only. Over the last decade we have seen the expansion of this concept as children’s participation is increasingly seen as essential in and by schools; local, regional and international governments; community development organizations; and in other sectors. Initially viewing children’s participation as effective marketing, businesses also have realized the necessity of actively engaging young people. Today, they continue to enrich their activities through technology. As recent developments in the Middle East have shown us, many activists are also realizing the potential of children’s participation, as indeed, many activists in that region are children.

Children’s participation is democratic participation, and serves to nurture all of the skills and knowledge young people need in order to be successful members of democratic society. By increasing the frequency of children’s participation, organizations and individuals can deepen the impact children have throughout society. This will help alleviate many of the worst conditions facing our world today, and help democracy transition to the new forms it will be required to have in the near future as technology and necessity continue to drive growth.

The preceding was an introduction I wrote for a proposed international guide that didn't happen. Thought you might appreciate it.

Critical Questions for Meaningful Student Involvement

Working with groups across the US and Canada to improve schools over the last decade, I've learned a few important points for everyone to consider before giving it a try. Here are 18 critical questions for Meaningful Student Involvement.

1. Are your expectations for Meaningful Student Involvement reasonable and positive? 
2. What do you first think of when you think about Meaningful Student Involvement in your education setting? 
3. Are you excited about the possibilities? 
4. Are you considering the benefits and value of Meaningful Student Involvement? 
5. What kind of students do you want to engage? 
6. Have you selected students who are just like you, or different? 
7. Do the students you're listening to say things that make you uncomfortable? 
8. Is Meaningful Student Involvement integrated into your school improvement plan? 
9. Can you listen seriously to what students have to say even though they may not express their ideas in similar ways as you? 
10. Have you clearly let students know your expectations for Meaningful Student Involvement? 
11. Have you done your best to provide students with the resources they need to reach the set goals? 
12. Have you picked a time when students are available to join in? 
13. What kind of time commitment are you expecting? 
14. Will students be able to fit activities in with other commitments? 
15. Have you provided teachers with enough information to give students credit for learning while sharing Student Voice? 
16. How will you reflect on Meaningful Student Involvement with students? 
17. What will happen to the information, resources, activities, or tools that emerged from Meaningful Student Involvement? 
18. How will Meaningful Student Involvement sustained after the initial activity? 

Once you've answered these questions honestly, you are ready to begin action planning for Meaningful Student Involvement.

Some Observations About Social Change

I started my first community organizing campaign with a group of friends when I was 14. Involved in formal and informal youth engagement work throughout my teens and early 20s, I got my first job supporting youth involvement and youth activism when I was 24. I haven't stopped since then. Starting The Freechild Project when I was 25, I began reading the research supporting community organizing, activism, and social change insatiably. It's been 13 years now, and I've seen a few things.

Following are a few observations about changing the world that I could think of. Let me know what you think of them.

Some Observations about Social Change

Anyone of any age can change the world.

A person’s depth of understanding about social justice isn’t limited to age. As a young person, I had experience and grew up in a community with a lot of deep experiences with discrimination, alienation, and segregation; lacking the verbiage to express their oppression, they turned to the language of action, creating community in gangs, generating income with drugs, expressing frustration through graffiti. Conversely, I’ve sat in rooms full of adult educators and youth workers and listened to self-proclaimed youth advocates pontificate about “us” and “them,” while they launched into diatribes about the ways young people act, dress, and talk… Ignorance knows no age, either.

Critical reflection is the gateway to social change.
In my experience, the “soundness” of an individual’s understanding about social justice is directly related to the amount of critical reflection they have engaged in. This can be both self- and community-reflection that questions our assumptions, values, and perspectives as we’ve experienced them in our own life. Paulo Freire, the acclaimed father of popular education, long espoused the necessity for oppressed peoples to critically examine their own actions as well as those of their oppressors. I have shared this experience with several groups of young people in their teens, and have heard about it done with younger people. The results of this may lead in many directions, including the “firm-groundedness” of which you speak. Many educators, including authors Ivan Illich and John Holt, have cited other outcomes, including broadened questioning of schools, government structures, and other social institutions. Personally, I’ve gained deeper ownership, commitment, and hope for the future through critical reflection.

Assumptions are ignorant.
There is a particular danger in saying, "You wouldn't understand" to anyone. That gives many people permission to bombard others with righteousness, the type that popular media fills so much of our time with already. I have seen people with incredibly sophisticated, empathetic, and knowledgeable perspectives about social change; and again, I’ve seen others with extremely shallow understandings. Our perceptions shouldn’t be the determining factor for engaging people in social change work; interest and investment should be.

Authenticity means too much.

I think that by focusing on the whether peoples’ engagement is authentic, a lot of people are let “off the hook” because they don’t know how to give others their own space to speak, or how to engage them in collective community space. This is a form of scapegoating that easily reinforces the supposed “enigma” of engaging people. The real questions here may be, “Do we really want to hear the voices of other people?” and “Are we really looking for people who take risks and make decisions, or do we want to reaffirm our assumptions?”

After all, getting our ideas out of other people’s mouths is a ventriloquist’s trick, not a sign of meaningful engagement or autonomy. As a whole, society has so many attitudinal and structural barriers to engaging people that the question of whether or not anyone can or should actually become engaged needs to be answered first. 

Don't think simplistically.
The systems surrounding and encompassing all our lives are complex beasts. Thinking naively about them and trying to over-simplify them does no favors. Why do we think about having people involved in protests and rallies instead of their infusion throughout the “movement” as a whole? Where are people in the planning and decision-making processes that affect them most? It is vital to engaging people to move beyond tokenism and decoration, and their further engage and infuse everyone as leaders, teachers, and organizers throughout social their lives. When Saul Alinsky wrote, "True revolutionaries do not flaunt their radicalism. They cut their hair, put on suits and infiltrate the system from within," this is what he was talking about.

Engaging people in changing the world is often trivialized by well-meaning people who, without conscious effort, often perpetuate discrimination of all kinds by patently denying others the opportunity to become deeply engaged. We must move from engaging people as decorations and start seeing everyone as a potential partners.

Popular assumptions don't determine ability.

Media, politicians, and others are involved in a plot to turn identity-against-identity throughout American society in an attempt to keep people separate and incapable to work together. That's made many organizers susceptible to their negative portrayals. However, in many cases the people who were supposedly least capable were the ones to make others aware of injustice. In one particularly poignant example, young people in the Philadelphia Students Union have led their communities in organizing for increased school funding, alternative school curricula, teacher pay raises, and more.

We have to dig into the reason WHY.
The crux of the issue is whether people truly understand why they are changing the world. Similar to many people, social change agents often believe that they are doing something for the “good” of doing it without exploring the meaning or purpose of their actions. This is how missionary-style service work has grown so popular in the U.S. and around the world, despite religious missionary work receding from popularity. Many community-based organizations actually exploit the oppressions of low-income communities and people of color in order to further their “service” work! Many of these same organizations use people as “safe” volunteers who don't "safe" activities like picking up trash, serving homeless people meals, coloring pictures for grocery stores and politicians to hang in their windows. Is this meaningful social change? No. Is it “safe”? Yes. Are people told that it is valuable? Sure! And these things do have value, since the people who are leading the activities they reinforce their power over others, they are surely valuable to them. To the recipients of the service they exhibit the “proper” place for social change (arbitrary and irrelevant). 

Everyone can be engaged in deep, meaningful, and powerful social change, if that's what we want. If we want something else, we need to consider what that is and why we're doing it. 

Tips on How to Survey Real People

Recently, I needed to learn some basic things from a group of people at the outset of a weekend-long training. Specifically, I wanted to find out:

1. How capable they were at self-identifying the problems they faced; 
2. How able they were at identifying root causes; 
3. Whether they could determine what practical resources they needed.

To find this out, I printed three questions in circles on a 3x5" card for respondents:

Sample 3x5" survey card.

1. Why are you here? 
2. What can make you come back? 
3. What do you need right now?

From those three questions, in addition to finding out what I sought to originally, I found what participants' material needs were in comparison to their educational needs. I also identified how many participants actually understood why they were there.

I think surveys are an important tool for our toolkit on engaging all kinds of people, at least in a superficial, introductory way. You might decide that you can listen to people by surveying them. Here are some of my tips on surveying real people.

Tip 1) Remember the KISS Principle: Keep It Simple and Straightforward. 
Don't over-complicate what you're asking people. Being simple and getting straight to the point will ensure that you get answers that are... simple and straightforward. Don't ask too many questions either. If you have to do multiple different question topics, make them visually distinct and keep them short. Also, keep the number of questions the same between each topic, like 3+3 or 4+4.

Tip 2) Make it interesting to look at.
The days of handing out lists of questions on clipboards are over. However, you don't need to design a complicated app just to ask questions either. Keeping questions brief encourages respondents to answer how they're most comfortable. Instructions given should be super simple, but reinforce the seriousness of the survey.

Tip 3) Avoid linear lines of questioning.
In my experience, many people don't respond well to A-to-Z thinking, let alone attempts to force them into doing the same. Many surveys do this, either on purpose or by accident. Avoid this by keeping questions short, and removing any bias you might have about getting specific types of answers from respondents.

Tip 4) Ask broad questions about the future.
It can be challenging for people from diverse backgrounds to activate their future-thinking abilities, especially when they come from adverse situations. Because of this and other reasons, asking them specific questions about the future sight-unseen might turn them off to answering any other questions you ask. However, asking broad questions about the future may activate their future imaginations and allow them to trust you more because you believe they have something worth sharing about the future.

Tip 5) Don't answer the question in the way you ask the question. Asking respondents, "What will you study in college?" assumes they'll attend college and that they value it; and asking others, "What do you need to be successful?" and providing five things to choose from narrows their options and assumes they want your definition of success.

Similarly, asking questions about life assumes they think they think about life the way you do. For instance, some people have come to accept this formula:

• Life = grades K-12 + college + career.

However, for some other people, the formula looks more like this:

• Life = K-2 then move, 2-5 then repeat 5th grade, 5-7 then get expelled for bringing a gun to school, 7-10 then juvie for shoplifting too much, then drop out and get GED, then tech school for a quarter, then dropout to fight addiction... 

In many cases, the lives of real people are too disjunctive to attach your expectations to the questions. Don't allow your biases to influence your survey. Try to release those and ask different questions.

Tip 6) Ask questions in bubbles or circles or triangles or... 

Organize paper and online surveys using a graphic interface in order to make them more visually stimulating to real people. However, be aware of the effects of shapes or colors on participants. Variation between the shapes might cause them to inadvertently put more weight towards the object they find more appealing or familiar. Here's an interesting summary of what I'm talking about.

Tip 7) Customize for your audience. 
Effective surveys for real people are like effective programs: they must be to respondents' unique needs and capabilities. Here are some sample questions and the audiences they're intended for:

• "What are you responsible for right now?" —To help determine what a neighborhood group sees itself capable to doing through a community service project.
• "Describe your life in the next 1 year, 5 years, or 10 years." —To help a program identify what services they can provide for formerly incarcerated people in order to help them succeed.
• "What do you need to change your life right now?" —To identify whether service industry workers see there are options between short-term and long-term planning.
• "What's your plan for the next three years?" —To help a GED program determine how to appeal to youth participants.

Tip 8) Let respondents know you'll take it seriously. Rarely are interviewers held accountable to survey respondents. This is your opportunity to let them know you're going to do something with what they say, and that you honor what they write down. Without this reassurance, respondents might reply in one of three ways:

• Refusing—"That's your job to decide," or "You tell me," respondents may protest.
• Testing—Offering outrageous suggestions or responses to see if the interviewer is really serious about the invitation to answer the survey honestly.
• Parroting—Repeating what the interviewer has said or guessing what they want to hear. A respondent might be asked to suggest a problem in the program and write, "We should keep our noses to the grindstone and finish the job," even though they're not planning to do this themselves. 

These responses are conditioned from years of not having opinions taken seriously. Challenge respondents by letting them know you take them seriously, and then follow through.

Surveying real people can be richly rewarding and almost immediately beneficial to your program, nonprofit organization, school, or other location. For more information contact us.

Issues Addressed by Student Voice

Planning the winter dance, setting the price for Valentine’s Day candies, and deciding the new school colors are decisions some schools allow student voice to influence or even drive. However, Meaningful Student Involvement amplifies student voice much further than this. There are literally countless issues throughout the education system where engaging students as partners can be crucial for success, and yet rarely happens.

This SoundOut class is at work addressing issues in Miami.

There are countless issues that schools are facing and that are being discussed by people working in schools as well as those working for school change from outside schools, including politicians, community groups, and the media. Focused exclusively on school transformation, Meaningful Student Involvement catalyzes student/adult partnerships for education change. Students can be partners with adults to address these issues and many more through both convenient and inconvenient student voice. The following list is just a beginning of what can happen though.

1. The Goals of Education and Student Success. Defining the purpose of schools focuses the direction of schools, teachers, and students. While some originally intended for public education to provide basic learning for successful democratic citizenship, others saw schools mainly as a way to support the economic workforce. Today, educational goals and “success” have become defined by student performance on standardized tests, in addition to measures like student attendance and graduation rates. While these might be part of the purpose of education, many school reformers are seeking ways to broaden the goals of education to include students’ social, emotional, and intellectual development, as well as helping students gain the skills needed to build a better and more democratic world. 

2. Voice and Engagement. The question of who has control and authority in schools has long been answered with “leave it to the professionals,” meaning administrators and policy-makers. However, as more people push for participatory structures throughout the government, there are also efforts toward more participation throughout the educational system. Creating opportunities for meaningful involvement for students, teachers, and parents is growing in many communities, while the federal government is increasingly asking how and where nontraditional voices can be engaged in decision-making. Businesses, community organizations, mayors, and others want roles, too.  This is a topic that many people can rally around. 

3. Curriculum. The question of who decides the curriculum in schools has a big impact on what goes on in schools. With influences ranging from textbook companies to politicians, and from school boards to businesses and more, schools and teachers somehow have to sort this out and provide a meaningful learning experience for students.  The federal government, along with a coalition of private organizations, is supporting the concept of “Common Core State Standards” that would create the same standards throughout the country, and many governors have urged their states to follow them.  

4. Time in School. The length of the school day has been a popular topic for decades, and particularly in recent years. Recent brain research has shown youth have different sleep needs than adults, while it’s been popular to say that students in the US have less “seat time” than students around the world (as a matter of fact, this is incorrect: while students in some countries have more days of school than the US, most of those countries have shorter school days that actually results in less seat time). The length of the school year is also a consideration, as some advocates are determined to add more seat time by replacing traditional summer breaks with more frequent shorter breaks throughout the year. The amount of years a student needs to attend school is also an issue, as more public education leaders consider a “P16” system essential: pre-kindergarten through college graduation.

5. Schedule. The schedule of a school often drives the learning and curriculum in the school.  The traditional 45-minute period of high schools, for instance, means that projects and activities are harder to do and fit within that time, as is traveling outside of the school for field trips or connecting with the community.  Block schedules often have 1.5 or 2 hour blocks of time for classes, which provides some of these opportunities.  Other schools provide classes for part of the time and give students self-directed learning time to pursue projects that earn them credit.  

6. Out of School Time. Offering activities after school, in the evenings, on the weekends, and throughout the summer are common in some schools, while other schools do not provide them at all. Tutoring and mentoring, sports and extracurricular clubs, and other learning or social experiences are out of the norm for many students, as their families or their schools are fiscally incapable of participating. Schools and communities could come together to devise creative ways to offer these opportunities to all students, regardless of income.  

7. Charter Schools. In most states that have them, charter schools are schools that are publicly funded and privately operated (outside of the typical school district), and which students and parents can choose to attend instead of the local public school. Charter schools are all different, some are experimental and innovative, while others are very traditional but with longer hours.  Studies are mixed about the benefit of charters, but the issue is becoming one that dominates education today.  Many political leaders are supporting the creation of more and more charter schools, while those opposed believe charter schools take the most engaged parents and students, leaving the least engaged to stay in the regular public schools.

8. Class and School Size. The number of students to teachers, called “student/teacher ratios,” has been shown to affect how well students learn.  Many advocates call for smaller class size, while others claim size makes little difference.  School consolidation, where small schools in local communities are merged into a single large school for a large surrounding area, has been happening since the 1940s. Now many of those larger schools are being closed, such as in New York City, to create smaller schools.  

9. Teacher Development. Thinking about what teachers learn and how they learn it is important to making schools work better. The idea is that more and better opportunities for support, mentorship, and professional development for teachers will lead to better teaching and improved teacher quality.  In some countries, teachers have far less teaching time than in the U.S., and have more time to plan with other teachers and observe the teaching of others.  Half of all teachers leave teaching within their first 5 years, and new teachers have a steep learning curve.  

10. Teacher Quality. Teacher quality is one of the biggest issues being discussed now by teachers unions, politicians, and teachers themselves.  Many are saying that we need to determine who is a good teacher and who is a bad teacher.  What some are saying is that when students are not succeeding in schools at sufficient rates, it must be the teachers’ fault. While teachers certainly have impact on their students, outside factors are also a big issue, including poverty, home life, and the outside community.  Getting rid of teacher tenure (which gives teachers extra support from being fired) and firing low-performing teachers based on student test scores is the new approach taken by districts around the country.

11. Technology in Schools. The issue of schools maintaining their relevance in the face of technological developments isn’t new. In the 1950s the US became engulfed with the Cold War, and schools were forced to innovate their educational goals with the supposed purpose of keeping America competitive with the Soviet Union. Today the issue of how to teach about technology in schools continues, as some schools limit access to the Internet, raising concerns about free speech, while other schools are increasing their use of technology in the classroom.  Virtual schools and online classes are becoming more and more common, and many educators believe the future of education is found in technology.  

12. Special Education. The questions facing special education include the labeling of students, funding the support services that special education students receive, and “mainstreaming” special education students throughout the school population. There are concerns about disproportionate representation of males and students of color as special education students, as well as equal access to support for such learners.  Charter schools and other schools of choice are sometimes criticized for weeding out special education students since they have more leeway in which students they accept.  

13. Funding Priorities. Traditionally funded by taxpayer dollars at the local, state, and (at a smaller level) federal level, in recent decades schools have actively sought funding from corporations, philanthropic foundations, and private donors as well. Funding basic education is an increasing issue in times when government support is waning, and as a result teaching materials and school buildings are becoming neglected or worn out. Teachers often purchase supplies out of their own pockets, or simply go without in communities where schools are underfunded. In affluent school districts students generally have access to better materials and teachers get paid high salaries, affording those students better educations. In turn, this reinforces the “academic achievement gap” that separates many students.  Calls for equitable funding are frequent, and have found mixed success.

These are some of the issues students can address in schools as you consider what to change and how to work with adults. By learning more about these issues and taking firm stands, young people can contribute to the conversation and take action in sophisticated, relevant ways that make you a partner in working with adults to improve your school.

Visit the SoundOut website for more information on issues addressed through student voice and Meaningful Student Involvement.

100 Ways To Engage The World

An engaged world is one where everyone lives fully and wholly, everyday in every way. Since 2010, the bevy of consultants and trainers with CommonAction have been working across the U.S. and Canada to promote the concept of an engaged world. We define engagement as the sustained connections people have to the world within and around them. We teach that becoming engaged in any way affects everybody. Read this list and learn why.

Engagement can happen in every way you can imagine. Here are 100 ways to be engaged.

100 Ways to Engage the World

1. Home—Get engaged in your day-to-day life.
2. Family—Engage with people you are born to and choose: brothers, sisters, parents, children, others.
3. Learning—Find ways to engage in your own learning no matter how old you are.
4. Water—Engaging in the surface cover of 72% of Earth includes swimming, drinking, and enjoying it.
5. Beauty—Becoming engaged in beautiful things can mean a lot to the beauty around you.
6. Work—Engaging in what you make your livelihood in may be the key to your happiness.
7. Reading—Exploring literature about new topics, your interests, or art can be engaging.
8. Play—Find engaging ways to dig into the things you enjoy, and enjoy them more.
9. Hospitals—Develop sustained connections with people who are recovering and emerging from care.
10. Breathing—Get consciously engaged in the moment-by-moment function of living, with purpose.
11. Advocacy—Standing with others and empowering the powerless can be very engaging.
12. Self-Empowerment—You can engage within yourself and discovering the role of yourself in the world.
13. Art—Engaging in art can mean creating it, viewing it, critiquing it, and more.
14. Peace—Fostering nonviolence in your life and the lives of others can be very engaging.
15. Friendships—Developing short or long term connections with people we choose can be engaging.
16. Wildlife—Surveying animals, studying birds, sustainable fishing and hunting can all be engaging.
17. Communication—It is engaging to share thoughts and wisdom with others in creative or direct ways.
18. Pets—Engaging in sustained connections to the animals kept as pets or helping others doing the same.
19. Critical Thinking—Developing sustained connections with honest, authentic, and real responses in you.
20. Parks—Go and walk, lay, eat, draw, paint, climb, run, paddle, swim, and have fun.
21. Friendships—The people you spend recreational time with want to be engaged with, too.
22. Physical Activity—Movement that supports healthy bodies can be very engaging.
23. Ethnic Backgrounds—Engage in learning about the backgrounds of people from specific places.
24. Nature—Find engagement in the gardens, forests, ocean, lawns, and air around you.
25. Neighboring—Actively knowing and interacting with the people around us can be engaging.
26. Community—Stand with people you relate to and engage with them.
27. Culture—Engage in the shared attitudes, traditions, and actions of a connected background.
28. Libraries—Be in these public places designed to share free learning with the masses.
29. Coaching—Engage in provide encouragement and support to people trying to achieve things.
30. Music—Sharing melodies within or outside yourself can be very engaging.
31. Health—Getting engaged in your health and well-being can connect you deeply with your body.
32. Neighborhood—Engage in the place you live, work, play, and grow everyday.
33. Homemaking—Nurturing family by building the capacity of children and parents can be engaging.
34. Community Centers—Get engage in the places where community is fostered in play and sharing.
35. Anti-Racism—Challenging racist thinking and action can be very engaging.
36. Music—Listen, share, create, dream, sleep, and breathe engagement in the sounds of life.
37. Place-Based Connections—Living rural, urban, or broadly can be engaging when done intentionally.
38. Teaching—Facilitating others learning experiences can be a deep avenue for engagement.
39. Mediation—Developing deep connection in resolving self-conflict and other's can be illuminating.
40. Self-Development—Engage in challenging negative assumptions or building skills and knowledge.
41. Globalization—Engaging in enriching world perspectives and uniting cultures.
42. Hiking—Walking, climbing, and otherwise traveling by foot can be very engaging.
43. Nonprofits—Engaging with staff who are building on missions to help the world.
44. Poetry—Engaging in the feelings, motions, ideas, and thoughts of others can happen through poetry.
45. Refugees—Supporting people who escape from oppression or suffering can be engaging.
46. Love—Know the greatest engagement in deep love for the universe and all that is within it.
47. Cooking—Engaging in foods and meal-making can be sustained throughout a lifetime.
48. Homelessness—Create lasting connection with youth, families, and others without a permanent home.
49. Farming—Growing food and consuming local farm food can be deeply engaging.
50. Heritage—Become engaged in the history of your neighborhood, family, or other identity.
51. Disconnection—Engaging in fostering healthy disconnection and bridging new ones can be vital.
52. Construction—Fostering lifelong connections to building homes and places for others matters.
53. Volunteering—Engaging in supporting others, places, or issues can be rich and exciting.
54. Relief—When places cannot get enough of what they need, it is engaging to provide relief.
55. Nutrition—Learning about healthy eating, food knowledge, and diverse food sourcing is engaging.
56. Sports—Being engaged in athletic play, competition, or achievement can be sustained.
57. Finances—Engaging in personal, community, company, or cultural economics can be rich.
58. Politics—Develop lasting connections to the formal and informal structures of influence and power.
59. Crafts—Creating homemade supplies, arts, food, clothing, and other items can be engaging.
60. Orphans—Engage with children and youth without parents through mentoring and other ways.
61. Schools—Teach, learn, or help others do the same in the formal places where education happens.
62. Outdoor Education—Deep connections in facilitating outdoor learning can change the world.
63. Decision-Making—Lean into the decisions you make everyday to engage in them meaningfully.
64. Government—Engage deeply in the social structures designed to ensure people can engage.
65. Education—Engaging in the challenges and opportunities others face in learning can change your life.
66. Small Business—Supporting and creating local, small, and nimble business can be very engaging.
67. Writing—Making imagination and knowledge pour on paper can be engaging.
68. Travel—Becoming engaged in visiting places you aren't familiar with can defeat ignorance.
69. Restoration—To engage in bringing life to old things can be enlightening and powerful.
70. Evaluation—Look at your own life, the world you live in, and the people you are engaged with.
71. Repairs—Fixing broken things can be engaging.
72. Protesting—Engage in sharing concerns with lawmakers and officials about issues that concern you.
73. Internet—You can engage in connecting, learning, and creating content on the web.
74. Reporting—Engage in sharing news, stories, and details with others in dynamic ways.
75. Senior Centers—In can be very engaging to be with learned wisdom goes towards the end of life.
76. Tutoring—Helping learners discover their capabilities in any topic can be very engaging.
77. Strategic Thinking—Become engaged in new and logical avenues for seeing wisdom. 
78. Environmental Restoration—Engage in rebuilding and enriching the natural cycle of life on Earth.
79. Emergencies—Engaging with others in times of need and crises matters immensely. 
80. Clubs—Connecting over professional and personal interests can be engaging.
81. Parenting—Engaging with being intentional in childraising can be vital.
82. Philanthropy—Engage with issues that matter by fundraising and giving money to causes. 
83. Trees—Examining, learning, reforesting, planting, preserving, or caring for trees can be engaging.
84. Media-making—Engage in creating websites, newspapers, television, videos, and other media.
85. Fun—Engage in creating, becoming part of, or expanding fun in your own life or with others.
86. Driving—Exploring new spaces and examining where you already live can be engaging.
87. Languages—Engaging in languages can mean listening, speaking, or exploring communication.
88. Solar Power—Connecting deeply with alternative energy can change the world and yourself.
89. Identity Issues—Fostering and exploring connectivity between and within identities can be engaging.
90. Playgrounds—Engaging in play with your children is supporting their engagement in play.
91. Clothing—Establish deep connections with other's and your own clothing needs.
92. Dance—Creative movement, motion, rhythm, and melodic play are all engaging activities.
93. Self-Teaching—Learning new things and developing your understandings can be engaging.
94. Intergenerational Partnerships—Engage in forming deep connections beyond your age group.
95. Civic Action—Volunteering, voting, connecting, and building in communities can be engaging.
96. Healthcare Access—Engaging in making sure everyone can access healthcare is important.
97. Social Engagement—Fostering sustainable connections to the world around you is vital.
98. Personal Engagement—Recognizing the ways you're engaged within yourself can be essential.
99. Languages—Learning, examining, and exploring different ways people communicate can be engaging.
100. Inequality—Bridging social, cultural, and structural differences can be engaging.

I have written a lot about how to become more engaged, and simply acknowledging the things you're already engaged in. How would you engage the world?!?

10 Steps To Youth Integration

Challenging youth segregation can be tricky.

Anyone who advocates for youth involvement, youth engagement, youth voice, youth empowerment, or youth rights is ultimately calling for the same this: the integration of young people in our society. As it stands, young people are routinely segregated from a lot of places. This includes the institutions that serve them directly, such as schools, nonprofits, governments, and faith-based communities. It also includes their homes, as well as places where they should be treated without bias but aren't, including businesses. Ultimately, youth integration has to happen in all relationships between young people and adults.

This work has been underway for more than two decades, and needs to unite now. It starts with re-envisioning the roles of young people throughout society. In the last decade, I've worked in more than 200 communities across the US to help them re-envision their work with young people. Its been successful in some ways, challenging in others.

Through my efforts with The Freechild Project, along with similar programs across the country, a generation of young people and their adult allies have come to believe that our society can do more than simply do things to young people. Instead, we can co-create the world together. This notion reflects the wisdom, "Nothing about me without me is for me."

Studying my own work and the vast library of literature I've collected focusing on this approach, I've devised some key points for integrating youth throughout society.

10 Steps to Youth Integration

1. Think Sustainable—Identify practical ways to ensure youth keep being integrated after an initial planning period. Begin by sitting down with a group of adults young people together and talk about the world today, their specific lives, and what they think needs to change. From the beginning, infuse youth in facilitation, evaluation, research, decision-making, and advocacy right into the culture of your group. If you must involve children and youth in a one-shot activity, let them know of real opportunities for them to be integrated with adults in their lives outside your group.
2. Clear Purpose—Name a clear purpose for integrating young people in your community. Come up with a mission statement. Let youth and adults, organization leaders, parents, community members, and local schools know what you're doing and why you're doing it. Clarity of purpose is often missing from young people's lives, as school is done to them, family is done to them, and stores are done to them. Anywhere in society looking to actually integrate young people needs to let young people know the world be done with them, and they should know why that's important.
3. Integrate The Non-Traditionally Engaged—Create space and help children and youth who haven't been especially engaged in your community to become integrated. Actively integrating both traditionally involved young people and non-traditionally involved young people can radically transform your community in all sorts of ways. If you don't know how to do this, get trained; if you need a reason, read this.
4. Real Connections—When young people see themselves in your program, real connections are happening. When real connections happen, children and youth become engaged. While they may have obvious expertise or interests in a specific topic, its important for your group to help young people discover what they know right now, and to see what they know inside what you're doing.
5. Equity, Not Equality—Develop equitable roles between young people and adults.  This means that groups don't pretend all things between children, youth, and adults are 50/50 split equally, because in our adult-centered society that is simply never true. Equity allows young people and adults to enter into responsible relationships that acknowledge what each other knows and doesn't know, and to work from that place instead of assuming everyone has equal ability and capacity. We're all different; let's not pretend otherwise.
6. Grow Their Capacity—Grow the existing capacity of children and youth to become involved in planning. Both young people and adults can learn from training about work styles, assumptions, skills, and more. 
7. Make A Clear Plan—Having a specific pathway for young people to see how their integration will change their community. Are they contributing to an existing program? Opening a brand-new course of action and learning? Working with the same adults in new ways, or partnering with new adults? Its important to remember that creating a youth integration plan is not the culmination of work, but the starting point of a group's efforts to create a more democratic society. A clear plan should include: 1) Practical next steps; 2) Roles and responsibilities for youth and adults; 3) an integration structure for your community; 4) group member evaluation opportunities. Setting priorities, using timelines with dates, and developing clear benchmarks for measuring success in each area can also enhance your community.
8. Get Systemic—Encourage youth integration beyond your group. Young people can be engaged in researching their community, school, nonprofit program, or anything through PAR. They can facilitate, teach, and mentor peers, younger people, and adult. They can evaluate themselves, their organizations and communities, workplaces and businesses, and other places. They can participate in organizational, family, community, or other decision-making. They can advocate for what they care about. Ultimately, they can be engaged throughout society in every way you can imagine.
9. Connect The Dots—Establish deep youth/adult partnerships wherever possible. Collaborations that reinforce learning will deepen any effort to integrate youth. The partnerships established in this process can deepen efforts through the future, and mutually support youth and adults throughout your community.
10. Eyes Wide Open—Open the doors to critical examination. Use critical lenses to examine your assumptions and effects in your group. Identifying strengths and weaknesses allow groups and communities to improve the overall integration of youth, especially through your particular effort. Make space by giving young people permission and skills they need to be partners in mutual accountability with adults. In your group, set clear benchmarks and agree on celebrations when they're met and consequences that young people can see for when those benchmarks are not met.

Aside from ethical considerations for youth integration, there is a practical basis to integrate youth throughout society. A variety of recent research demonstrates that there may be no parallel to making schools, youth programs, government agencies, and even families more effective. The most intuitive outcome is true: Integrating young people throughout society changes young people who experience integration. 

Less obvious are the effects that youth integration has on adults throughout our communities. When they're actively infused throughout the broader community, young people can actually affect the broad community beyond your group in a variety of ways over the short and long term. The effects include lifelong civic engagement, and developing strong and sustained connections to the educational, economic, and cultural values of their neighborhoods and cities. Youth integration can dream no higher goals. (See here, here, and here for some studies.)

More importantly though, this pathway shows that youth integration is feasible. What are you doing to get it going in your community? 

18 Myths of Education

Here are 18 myths of education in the United States. The resolve to number 12 is the essence of our work through SoundOut all these years. What else have you seen meeting these myths?

These are important points, and you can find the citations for each one at the bottom of the graphic. Leave your thoughts in the comments section!

The Need to Take Action for Schools

I don't advocate for "free children".

Almost a century ago, English author and educator A. S. Neill wrote, "Free children are not easily influenced; the absence of fear accounts for this phenomenon. Indeed, the absence of fear is the finest thing that can happen to a child."

It was in 2001 that I was sitting with a group of "non-traditionally engaged" youth in Olympia, Washington, brainstorming about changing the world, when they suggested I start "Free Children" and promote youth activism. Finding a Canadian organization already took that name, I modified it and began working.

The Freechild Project has never advocated for "free children" though, and neither have I. I have written about this concept of the free child before, but rather than an anarchistic sense of radical self-entitlement, I advocate for freedom. Early on in my work I learned its important to acknowledge that while it's true that there are 74 million people under the age of 18 in the US, and 2.5 billion people under-18 worldwide, they aren't the only ones here. As the feminist hero Fannie Lou Hamer once said, "Nobody's free until everybody's free." So I don't advocate for "free children", but for freedom.

That said, the road to freedom is through education. bell hooks once wrote, "To be changed by ideas was pure pleasure. But to learn ideas that ran counter to values and beliefs learned at home was to place oneself at risk, to enter the danger zone. Home was the place where I was forced to conform to someone else’s image of who and what I should be. School was the place where I could forget that self and, through ideas, reinvent myself."

That is what I am most interested in: public schools as a site to examine, invent, and reinvent oneself. Because of this, they are still roads to freedom, and for that, we engage with them, not against them.

I believe that a substantive, child-centered, child-driven education is absolutely essential to the health of democracy, and that's what I advocate for. Public schools have the capacity to delivery that education. Towards that end, I work to actively engage them with the knowledge, skills, and abilities they need to transform their own educations and the educations of succeeding generations; I also work directly with educators, school leaders, and community advocates to transform public schools to become the kinds of places that infuse the "passion, free will, freedom and joy" of all young people throughout the education system and the democratic society we share. Ultimately, public schools are the only places in society where that collective, conscious enterprise can occur, and in that way I support them.

Critics who suggest that any and every public school is incapable of genuinely benefiting students in any way are generally offering misguided criticism, if only because in the vast majority of schools benefit some of the students some of the time. There are a growing number that make many students richer all the time. I support schools if only because that's the institution where the vast majority of young people spend their time. I believe we must engage them where they're at and revolutionize places we can affect, rather than extinguish those places without paying attention to the rest of their lives that may actually be more harmful.

Saul Alinsky once wrote, "True revolutionaries do not flaunt their radicalism. They cut their hair, put on suits and infiltrate the system from within." I'm going back inside now, and I'll get quiet again soon. This is why I believe we need to engage in schools.

Footnote:

This post is stemming from an interesting dialog. On this blog a few years ago, a writer named Laurie Couture took the privilege of grandstanding and wrote,

"The Free Child project is a great idea, but I think it fails to indict the most mountainous, enormous force in society's hatred and oppression of children: Forced/compulsory schooling. Public schools abuse children in every way possible. Everything about the school environment is antithetical to children's basic physical needs (food, hydration, elimination, movement, play, connection with parents), emotional needs (connection, safety, freedom and affection) and their creative and intellectual needs. Children are truly treated as hostages in public school, and their passion, free will, freedom and joy are stripped from them and their ability to learn. You cannot work for children's rights as long as you support a system that was designed to oppress children. Please consider working with the unschooling and Attachment Parenting movement."

Curious about how to respond, yesterday I took the liberty of posting this comment verbatim to The Freechild Project facebook page. It received more views than average posts, and elicited some impassioned responses from readers. You can read that conversation.


While Couture's position is thorough and not wholly wrong, her analysis is ultimately misguided and ill-thought through. In America, the privilege of leaving school and succeeding in life by one's own terms belongs mostly to well-to-do white people. Similar to how the experience Couture describes isn't true for all students, the experience of dropping out is rarely positive for most students.

Stay tuned for updates, but know that this is why I do what I do. And this. Why are you doing what you do?

Coming May 2013: "Inconvenient Youth" by Adam Fletcher

CommonAction is proud to announce

Coming May 2013

"Inconvenient Youth: A Guide to Discrimination Against Young People" 

by Adam Fletcher, founder of The Freechild Project.

Contact us for information, including author booking and appearances, orders, and more.

Email info@commonaction.org

Phone (360) 489-9680