What Is A Youth?

Today I received a request from Richard Lewis, long the voice behind the National Youth Union movement, as well as the poignant Chavez/King Youth Teams program. Richard asked me to help define what a youth is, and this post is my response to him. I began to define this in the Wikipedia article on youth, which I rewrote for the first time almost four years ago.

Youth is an attitude, like George Bernard Shaw met when he wrote, "Youth is wasted on the young." In this usage Shaw isolates the experience of being young from the physiology of being young. This definition is apparent throughout our culture, and comes across when adults attempt to use jargon, wear clothes, or do other actions preferred among youth. This is apparent in mainstream media, consumerism, or other vehicles that transmit culture

The more static and concrete definition of youth is one that focuses on a physical age. It is this one that laws, rules, regulations, and other forms of policy at work in the structures throughout our society rely on (as shown in the Wikipedia article.). In this sense, youth may be defined as anyone between the ages of 10 and 20; 12 and 21; 14 and 25, or; any of the myriad other ranges that are so often staked out by local, state, national, and international policy bodies. These are usually determined in order to limit people from being involved, whether within the age range or outside of it. This can be the case in a youth council specifically defined to engage young people between the ages of 11 and 18; or a store policy that disallows anyone under 18 from entering without an adult.

Each of these definitions serves its own purpose in our society. Within youth-serving organizations many adults feel righteous and powerful as they define their own ideals with the first definition, while adamantly demanding the second is absolutely necessary. They might hang Robert Kennedy's quote on their door, "This world demands the qualities of youth: not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the life of ease," with a second sign underneath that says, "YOUTH: Don't enter this office without knocking!"

At the same time, in a society that so strictly segregates young people from adults in schools, nonprofits, prisons, and jobs, we routinely blur the distinctions for the benefit of financial gain. Actress Sophia Loren identified this when she said, "There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age." Her vision was youth as a perception, a way that you view things. This definition is dynamic and elastic, allowing for a lot of things to be defined as "youthful," as well as allowing adults to appropriate useful things for their own desires. In turn, this allows for a lot of products and services to be targeted at adults who idolize youth, as it gives them permission to want to be young in spirit by buying their way to youth, rather than unlearning their internal adultism and confronting ephebiphobia. This perspective allows people who want to be young to discriminate against youth.

SO, RATHER THAN lay down a concrete definition of youth here, I will simply say this: Defining age is necessary in an age-obsessed society where youth are targeted as demons and as idols. In naming your age range, which are you intending to do, demonize or idolize youth?

History of Youth Action: 1930s to 1970s

As I continue studying the roles of young people throughout society, I find more places where the roots of youth voice, youth action, youth-led organizing, and civic youth engagement were growing a long time ago. After showing how these roots extend all the way into the Victorian Era, today I want to start in the 1930s when a different type of youth-led community organizing began to rise, as suddenly, basic welfare and human rights were not enough. Instead, these youth were focused on political power. It was as if they knew Eduardo Galeano was going to write,

"I don't believe in charity. I believe in solidarity. Charity is vertical, so it's humiliating. It goes from the top to the bottom. Solidarity is horizontal. It respects the other and learns from the other. I have a lot to learn from other people."

It was the Great Depression, and the American Youth Congress produced the Declaration of Rights of American Youth, which they presented in front of the U.S. Congress. This group succeeded in getting a concise youth-focused agenda in front of elected officials, if not nominating youth suffrage or other rights. Their approach led to the creation of the National Youth Administration. However, they didn't represent all youth: The educational and economic rights of Southern black young people were ignored; American Indian children were being actively ripped from their families to be "assimilated" into "American culture"; other young people of color were routinely discriminated against; and poor young people throughout the country were subject to the oppressive machinations of middle class American values, which insisted on gentrification. 

In addition to this age-based tension, racial awareness among young people was rising. The Zoot Suit Riots during World War II were led by youth. The Civil Rights Movement included a lot of brash leadership by young people. Claudette Colvin was 15 when she refused to give up her seat for a white woman, 9 months before Rosa Parks' famous launch of the modern movement. The students at the Greensboro Sit-ins were 18 and 19 years old, only in their first year of college, and their actions informed the creation of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. The Birmingham Campaign, focused on challenging the cultural, political, economic, educational, and social discrimination blacks faced in that Alabama city, was most successful when organizers from the SCLC actively engaged child protesters. It was during these times that Dr. King wrote,

"One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake through great periods of social change. Every society has its protectors of status quo and its fraternities of the indifferent who are notorious for sleeping through revolutions. Today, our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change."

This was true of young people in these times, as it continues on through history. During this same era, working class and middle class white youth were creating new identities through Beat generation lifestyles and rock and roll, both of which relied on the appropriation and blending of cultural norms to redefine popular culture. The tension took shape with the creation of the Students for a Democratic Society, which challenged the very belief Americans held about the impetus for their nation's existence. With the writing of the Port Huron Statement in 1962, young people took new ownership over their own roles throughout society. They emerged as a political force, and within a decade had succeeded in amending the U.S. Constitution with the passage of the 26th Amendment, lowering the voting age across the country to the age of 18 in 1971.

The entrenched radicalization of youth became widespread at this point, supporting the creation of the Youth Liberation Press, based of Ann Arbor, Michigan, which printed materials for youth activists across the country. Youth ran for school board seats, and activities were sponsored by the U.S. government to further entrench young people's participation throughout society, including the National Commission on Resources for Youth. These were largely successful efforts for their times, and led to further growth over the next 30 years.

History of Youth Action: 1400 to 1880

Through my ongoing study of the roles of young people throughout society, including youth action, youth voice, youth involvement, and youth engagement, I have learned that we have seen children in a charitable light since the Victorian era, when they were first placed on a particular pedestal by the upper class. In this position, children were seen as sub-human, incomplete and undeveloped, in need of protection and yearning for safety. Simultaneously, lower class children were seen as miniature adults, incapable of working as hard as adults, but still responsible for taking care of themselves and their families.

During the four centuries between 1400 and 1800, teenage youth weren't particularly identified as such: Young women were married off as young as 12 years old, and young men routinely joined the military, struck out on their own, or (rarely) went to college at the age of 14. They were apprentices in the trades who were growing into professionals, and frequently they occupied the same roles in society as people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s. They attended town hall meetings, served in capacities as teachers and ministers, and even ran for elected offices. There was discrimination against age, though, and it was rampant. In arguing against the popular vote, future President John Adams wrote in 1776,

"Depend upon it, Sir, it is dangerous to open so fruitful a source of controversy and altercation as would be opened by attempting to alter the qualifications of voters; there will be no end to it. New claims will arise; women will demand the vote; lads from 12 to 21 will think their rights not enough attended to; and every man who has not a farthing, will demand an equal voice with any other, in all acts of state. It tends to confound and destroy all distinctions, and prostrate all ranks to one common level."

Now, it's important to see that Adams was contextualizing youth discrimination with gender discrimination and discrimination against poor people (he didn't even fathom the prospect of people of color voting). This actually shows what was happening in America, and throughout the Western World, at that crucial turning point in civilization. This turning point was the beginning of the Industrial Age, which in turn collided with the colonization of western North America. Immediately after the U.S. Civil War, in which the U.S. and the confederates regularly enlisted child soldiers, adults began to change their minds about how to treat children and youth.

The values of life in the North America quickly changed to accommodate newfound prospect of getting rich. With adult immigrants suddenly flooding their countries, the U.S. and Canada forced assistance into the lives of children and youth, and subjugated them as never before. Poor kids who copied adult behaviors were pitied; slave children were disallowed from being educated for fear of their desire to have better lives. This was a crucial turning point for the roles of young people throughout society: Where before poor children and youth were left to fend for themselves, suddenly there were advocates and activists rallying to place them in orphanages and rectories across the hemisphere. Instead of having to rely on kids to work in factories and mines in the East, suddenly there were schools and movements to get students into those schools (John Gatto has written extensively about this). Rather than letting teens get married, there were suddenly social norms and laws preventing early marriage, as well as getting them off farms and into high schools. Instead of being able to hold office, lead families, make a living and manage their own money, children and youth were suddenly relegated to sub-human treatment and almost fully incapacitated from making decisions on their own, and incapable of affecting change in the world around them.

From this place, a charitable attitude towards young people arouse. The Children's Aid Society started it in the 1850s. It took further form by way of schools and the Big 7 youth organizations, all of which grew popular in the early 1900s, in addition to the Children's Rights Movement, which held that there were basic . This consciousness continued to grip America through the 1970s, when organizations like Children's Defense Fund and other groups began "crusading" on behalf of children and youth in North America and around the world. They worked to feed hungry kids, stop child labor, get students into schools, provide healthcare for poor kids, and stop child abuse. These advances, though, marked the end of progress on behalf of children in many ways. However, as Saint Augustine wrote, "Charity is no substitute for justice withheld."

I first found an awareness of injustice caused by age emerge among young people in the 1880s. Starting in that decade, children working for the newspaper empires in the American East began seeing that the adults they worked for didn't have their best interests in mind. These 8-12 year olds, called newsboys, protested in 15 major cities, managing to shut down the distribution of several major newspapers. They continued random efforts for more than 50 years after, forming a longstanding campaign for youth justice. For the first time in I can find in recorded history, young people were organizing for the benefit of young people.

This is the beginning of the movement for youth voice, youth involvement, youth-led activism, youth organizing... and the place from where our society planted the roots that have become a global phenomenon that is re-envisioning the roles of young people throughout society. More tomorrow...

For Fighters: Five Steps to Change the World, NOW.

After demanding that you to do more, please let me explain: For more than 20 years I have been working with children, youth, and adults in Canada and across the U.S. to change the world. For all my life, I have been learning from fighters, people who burn with the desire to make another world possible. I have learned a lot from them about how to engage young people; how to create change throughout our communities; when youth voice must be heard; who listens, who speaks, and who ignores children and youth; and what difference engaging youth can make.

Today, more than ever, the fighters among us are wondering what they can do to make a difference. Among the things I have learned from my work is what work is worth doing, and how to get that work done. Never one to just listen and believe, I have tested these learnings in my own life and in the work of the organizations I've worked with and have found they work. Here, then, is one thing I have learned.

Five Steps to Change the World, NOW. 

Step 1: GET MOTIVATED.

• Start by figuring out what reality you want to change. Do that by asking yourself what matters to you in your life and why that matters. Wonder out loud or write privately, but whittle your concerns down to a tangible, real issue that you can see. Check out this list on The Freechild Project website if you want inspiration.
• Ask yourself why you want to change that reality. Develop a clear picture of what is wrong, what should be different, and what makes you think that it needs to be different. If you can't figure out those points, you might not have the right issue in mind. If you are positive you do, then keep digging. The Community Toolbox offers a useful writeup of the SWOT Analysis tool.

Step 2: INCREASE YOUR KNOWLEDGE.

• Begin by getting educated. If you think you already know a lot about an issue, dig deeper and learn even more. If you know nothing, begin slowly. Use free tools like Wikipedia, and ask your friends, family, and neighbors what they think. The Freechild Project provides a useful resource section.
• Get different view points. No situation is exactly what it appears to be; there are layers to peel back and opportunities to examine. Ask tough questions of anyone who agrees with you. Have one-minded conversations with people you totally disagree with. The PEW Research Center for the People and the Press has a nice online tool for learning about different social perspectives, and Tom Hayden wrote a great summary of how radicals and idealists become co-opted by opportunists.

Step 3: BUILD YOUR SKILLS. 

• Get real. Figure out what you're capable of doing right now, and what you are not capable of doing right now. You must have the ability or be willing to develop the ability to affect the world around you. 
• Get uncomfortable, NOW. Challenge yourself to do uncomfortable things in uncomfortable settings, and if you don't know how to do a thing, figure it out. If you can't figure it out, ask someone. If you can't find someone to ask, look further.

Step 4: TAKE ACTION.

• Action requires... acting. Without spending too much time planning, launch into employing the knowledge and skills you have and have acquired. Sometimes, the best way to move things forward is to simply get moving, deliberately and with intention. Learn about the good work of Take Part.
• Do not accept the way things are. Anytime you face a roadblock, name it, walk to it, and confront it. If that is another person, if that is an organization, if that is a situation, it doesn't matter: work to change it. Do not take "No." for an answer, do not settle for complacency, and whatever happens, never say "never". Here's an introduction to "Stimulants and Barriers to Social Change" that I found useful.

Step 5: LOOK BACK TO GO FORWARD.

• Look in the mirror to see the world around you. Whenever you think you're complete, take a moment to recognize what you've done. Accomplishments, barriers, things you've overcome, and places you've made a difference should all come out in your reflection. After spending time doing that accounting, celebrate what you've done. There's a useful introduction with some nice personal reflection activities on eHow.
• Don't quit - you're never really done. Don't rest, please. Don't just get back to your regular job. Please don't ever do things the ways we've always done them ever again - please. There is a reason why things are the way they are, and while we may not be directly responsible for those realities, we are not not responsible, either. There are so many books that inspire action- if you're looking for inspiration right now, I suggest the Tao Te Ching.

There is so much happening right now, and we all need to work to change the world right now. 

For Fighters: Do More, Please.

My friends, these are perilous times we're living through. They began more than a decade ago, and my seven-year-old daughter has lived her entire life through the worst of them. Wars, terrible unemployment, increasing violence, floundering education systems, huge government cuts, failing social welfare... these are tough times. Of course, you already know this because you are living through these times, too. No matter what your station in life, as a youth or parent, teacher or business tycoon, you have felt the impact. Those with fewer resources at the beginning have felt it most. The reports keep pouring in, too, that things are bad and getting worse all the time.

A lot of people find themselves wondering what they can do to change things. A lot of us read self-help books about changing our lives, watch do-it-yourself shows about fixing our things, and look to hopeful movies to get regular injections of positivity in grim times. Other folks are simply throwing their hands up in frustration and giving up. It's tough being out of work for months at a time, having to rely on friends and family for charity and understanding, or simply for support while you bite your fingernails at the prospect of layoffs at work. Television offers salve, and hikes through the woods calm your soul when it's most worked up. But for you and I, these things aren't enough, none of them.

We are fighters. Growing up in fat times, we learned quickly to wean ourselves from the dependence many people have on exterior recognition, internal placation, and cultural subjugation. We became vegans, bought locally, and drove less. We shared meals and greeted strangers, volunteered and opened nonprofits, and wrestled with the social demons that a lot of people ignored. When I started traveling to light up the youth movement, you took a job as a social worker, you brought up three kids on your own, and you helped people learn about how to take care of themselves. Thank you for what you have done and what you are doing right now. We are fighters, and we have been doing great things.

However, our ranks seem to be surrounded, and the enemy seems to be moving in. How can we simply keep going? My answer is this: We don't. We don't give in, we don't give up, we don't turn around, and we don't just keep on keeping on. Now is the time to switch up our style and go faster, further, and more; now is the future.

If you have been working with youth, work with them more.
If you have been raising your own kids to be active, start teaching them to be activists.
If you are a teacher, teach better.
If you are a fighter, fight harder.

We need more education for everyone, everywhere, all the time. More hungry mouths exist than ever before- take personal responsibility for feeding them. Offer rides to strangers, especially if they are moms with flocks of kids standing at bus stops in the rain. If you have power, make jobs and employ the unemployed- not people who are hopping from one job to the next, but the unemployed. Lend friends and family anything you can. Share dinner at your house, volunteer at the food bank, talk to the stranger on your way to coffee. Teach a class at the library in your favorite topic, or find your local free school. But do more, please.


Here are Five Steps to Change the World, NOW.

Ending Youth Violence

Youth violence is horrifying, real, and completely solvable. Growing up in a violence-ridden neighborhood, I learned quickly that nothing sucks more than getting beat up because you're walking on the wrong block, living through years of drive-bys, and growing up with the constant tension of crime surrounding you. I lived that way.

The way I made it through were programs and opportunities that were specifically afforded to me because I was a youth, because I came from a low-income house, and because my neighborhood was a rough place. After more than 20 years working with youth, and 10 years working nationally to support youth involvement, I have seen repeatedly that the answer to youth violence is not more severe punishment, heavier enforcement, or stricter parenting. The solution does not rely on just schools or just churches or just African Americans. Ending youth violence is not just a political pipe dream, either. Instead, I know today that ending youth violence requires youth involvement. Radical, democratic, educational, and intentional youth involvement.

Now, I am not talking about your run-of-the-mill youth involvement. What I am talking about has to be real. It has to address real situations in real time in order to be as effective as possible. Research shows those effects include impacts on adults, organizations, communities, and non-involved young people, as well as the youth who are involved.

Oftentimes, youth involvement activities and programs are created as special asides in regular organizational operations. There are youth councils and youth forums, youth art and youth offices. Occasionally they get closer to integrated, but still not fully normalized, through youth representative positions on boards and youth-led media. However, the challenge with these opportunities is that they do not go far enough. After more than 30 years of experimentation with youth involvement, today we know that authentic youth engagement happens when young people report there is a high degree of involvement, so much so to where young people are actually completely equitably involved within a historically adult-driven organization.

Today, my colleagues at the Institute for Democratic Education in America (IDEA) shared a trailer for a new documentary about youth violence in New Orleans called, Murder through the Eyes of a Child. Listening to the stories shared in the trailer, I recalled experiences I had in junior high and high school, and I remembered the times that I got caught and was thrust into violence that felt far beyond my own control. I also recalled the most powerful examples of youth/adult partnerships I have seen, stories from Hampton, Virginia; Memphis, Tennessee, and the Bay Area in California. These organizations actively turn the "youth-as-recipients" model on its head by actually engaging youth deeper than simply seeing youth-as-partners; instead, they fully engage very violent, very depressed, and historically very neglected communities in change initiatives by creating equitable, sustainable, and substantial roles for young people in social change.

Luckily, IDEA agrees with me. Soon after posting the trailer they followed up with a more hopeful link to a film about an organization called Kids Rethink New Orleans. These folks are doing the hard work I'm talking about. Take a read of this chunk from their website:

We are a group of students in New Orleans who want to rethink and rebuild our schools after Hurricane Katrina. Our vision is simple: a great education for every kid in our city, no matter the color of their skin, what neighborhood they stay in or how much money their parents make. No one deserves a voice in rebuilding New Orleans schools more than the students who go to these places every single day. That means us!

Youth involvement can STOP youth violence. Learn more about how CommonAction Consulting can help your community or organization with this work by visiting our website at http://www.commonaction.org or call our office at 360-489-9680.

Assessing Youth Involvement

One of the most important questions that is never asked in the youth voice movement is "Which youth are listened to?", which includes "Which youth are involved?"

When you look at the young people in your program, organization, or community who are "involved", what do they look like? What do they act like? What attitudes or opinions do they share? Inherent in this is the question of authenticity, as in, "How much does youth involvement represent what youth actually think?" All these are critical questions that have to be answered before, during, and after a youth involvement activity, program, or organization is underway.

To help people think more deliberately about these questions, I generally break down all Youth Voice with four simple questions for teachers, youth workers, and youth themselves. I encourage people to answer these questions with radical honesty and transparency.

Remember that Youth Voice is defined as any expression of young people, including their ideas, reflections, actions, opinions, knowledge, and wisdom.

Essential Questions for Youth Voice

1. Who is the Youth Voice activity, program or organization for?


Our Activity is for Traditionally Involved Youth...

• Are involved in many youth leadership or youth involvement activities
• Represent adult opinions through parroting or mimicry
• Are typically motivated by adult acknowledgment
• Settle for mediocre or negative forms of involvement, including decoration, tokenism, and manipulation

Our Activity is for Non-traditionally Involved Youth...

• Do not become involved in formal school, organizational, or community involvement activities
• Represent their own opinions, or do not share their voices at all
• Are typically not motivated by adult acknowledgment
• If they commit, when they commit, they are motivated by their own interest rather than extrinsic rewards
• If they become involved, they are generally self-motivated to become involved

What is the Youth Voice activity, program, or organization for?

Our Activity is for Convenient Youth Voice...

• The outcomes are predictable: youth generally say what adults want them to, how adults want them to say it, where adults expect them to say it, when they're expected to say it, from who can be expected to say it.

Our Activity is for Inconvenient Youth Voice...

• Young people are encouraged to represent their most radically honest opinions, ideas, actions, and wisdom
• Adults are encouraged to simply listen to Youth Voice without needing to respond, react, or otherwise engage during the process of Youth Voice being revealed
• Intact incentives have been identified and revealed to youth participants that benefit them directly

Notes: These statements are not judgment statements - they make no value statements about the worth or the purpose or the outcomes of any particular activity. While we can place some forms of Youth Voice activities squarely into particular forms, i.e. youth forums are Convenient Youth Voice, and student governments are Traditionally Involved Youth, not all activities are so easily prescribed, and there can be deviations from expectations. This reveals that each activity has to be judged by its own merits.

Youth and adult allies can use these questions to get at the essential realities behind Youth Voice, Youth Involvement, and Youth Engagement programs. Find more Youth Voice Assessments online in the Freechild Project Youth Voice Toolbox, and contact me, Adam Fletcher, for training or technical assistance on how to use them in your program or community!

Adults' Fear, Exclusion, and Addiction

More than ever, adults need to understand that the roles of young people need to change throughout society. The radical problems we face need radical solutions, and the only hope for actually conceiving and carrying out those radical possibilities comes in the form of the youngest among us: children and youth, for whom anything is possible at any moment.

Why haven't we come further as a society? Why don't we simply flip the switch from what was and what is to what can be? What holds us from seeing the potential and power of all young people right now?

For over a decade I have been educating youth, parents, youth workers, teachers, and others about concepts like adultism, adultcentrism, and ephebiphobia. These different forms of discrimination against youth are surely what drives our current treatment of young people.

The belief that people who are seen as adults have distinct and intrinsic attributes that people who are not seen as adults don't have is called adultism. It is the belief that adults are superior to young people because of their age and nothing more. Further, it is the prejudice and discrimination young people experience because of their age, as well as the addiction society has for all things adult. Adultism is a cultural phenomenon that enables adultcentrism.

Adultcentrism is the view that only adults have something to contribute to society. The outcome of adultcentrism is the routine and anti-democratic exclusion of children and youth from society. Most institutions in our society operate under the premise that young people do not have anything of value to contribute until they are adults. This includes schools, government agencies, elected bodies, and (even) youth-serving organizations. Adultcentrism encourages the "youth-as-deficit" model, even to the point of George Bernard Shaw's idiom, "Youth is wasted on the young", becoming the standard operating procedure across the board. Adultcentrism encourages ephebiphobia.

Crossing the street when you see a group of kids on the other side, or hanging a sign declaring, "No more than 2 teens allowed in the store at a time", or banning cruising in your town are all expressions of ephebiphobia, which is the fear of youth. Ephebiphobia is encouraged by the mainstream media that hypes violence among teens; popular culture that elevates the difference of youth; and police and social services that benefit from exploiting the problems young people face. Many parents face their own fear of youth as their children grow into their teen years and seem far away from themselves; many kids perpetuate the fear unconsciously by enforcing the alienation that's been thrust on them by segregationist adults. 

All these forms of discrimination impact the very course of our society, and each should be addressed deliberately and with intention. Learn more about the language of youth discrimination at The Freechild Project website. You can get ongoing news and resources about adultism and contribute to the "I Fight Adultism" page on Facebook. If you are interested in training or technical assistance for your organization, contact me, Adam Fletcher, by calling 360-489-9680 or emailing adam@commonaction.org.

Funding Youth

The question is coming more and more often. For almost the entire decade I've been running The Freechild Project website, I've been flattered to be a resource to youth-serving organizations around the world who are looking for resources- especially money. But now it's coming more often. And for a long time the majority of these requests have come from African nations who were looking to move forward - but now that tide has turned, and the majority of the requests for information and resources are coming from the US, Canada, and European nations.

I am not a funder, and The Freechild Project has no money to give.

However, I have worked hard to collect a significant list of resources for youth-led activism, which are located on Freechild's page on "Funding Social Change Led By and With Young People." The other thing that I'd add is that I have operated Freechild as a not-for-profit learning website for a decade, all along the way seeking to find the best way to sustain this venture. Working in nonprofits for 10 years before that, and while running CommonAction as a 501c3 nonprofit, I became rapidly familiar with the problems inherent in funding youth work of all kinds, and particularly with youth involvement. There are VERY LIMITED streams of money to support youth involvement, youth voice, youth activism, and youth engagement. Period. Those that do exist are extremely limited, and extremely small amounts, relevant to the overall field.


So I'm going to suggest two things to anyone working on funding youth involvement:

• Stay radical.
• Do not formalize more than you have to.

Read those links and think about what I'm talking about. Then reply to this post or email me directly with your thoughts - adam@commonaction.org

An Open Letter to Teachers, especially Mr. Roach

Dear Mr. Brian Roach, and Other Teachers Who Might Read This:

I read your blog post on the ASCD website called, "Teacher: Dictator or president?", and I want to reply directly to you, and directly to the question you pose in the title. Let me start by saying that I believe teachers are something more important than either role, and in their jobs they possess the powers to transcend these boxes; I believe that teachers are Teachers.

First, an illustration: The United States' unique experiment in democracy has led us down a lot of roads that were bumpy and twisted, and others that were smooth and relatively easy-driving. Public schools have been a combination of both. With regards to learning efficacy and equal opportunity, we seem to be driving on a jeep road in the dry mountains of the high plains in southeastern New Mexico. A growing number of young people were never prepared to start the drive in the first place. There are treacherous turns where students fall out of the truck, careening over the edge into some sort of oblivion where most drivers are afraid to go. Cresting the mountaintop, learning gets high-centered on consumerism and the vehicle has been taken over by businesses whose maps aren't the same as ours. Looking out over the view, jeeping down the mountainside means a lighter load, unfulfilled expectations, and sadness for those we left behind, those who couldn't make it to the top. When the jeep gets back to the ranch, there is renewal among the mourning, and preparations are made for another drive.

Please note, Mr. Roach, that in my analogy there aren't entangled notions of classroom control and authority with democracy and totalitarianism; doing this confuses the central purpose of schools. The purpose of schools is not to control students. The purpose of teachers is not to be benevolent, or strict, or managerial. The purpose of teaching is not to enforce compliance. Anyone who believes otherwise is singlehandedly defeating the intention of the great American purpose in public schooling.

Public schools are the institutional embodiment of the democratic ideal fought for by the revolutionaries that founded this country. No question, that is their purpose. We live in an age when we continually dilute their purpose with marketplace priorities, especially exacerbated by the corporate forces controlling curriculum and testing, universities, prisons, and increasingly, teacher professional development. These private entities see their greatest gain in the increased privatization of public schools, which in turn encourages teachers such as Mr. Roach to demean their own profession, and view themselves as the rulers of fiefdoms.

Well, Mr. Roach, you are wrong.

In your role as a teacher, you are neither a dictator or a president. You are not in control of the young people who occupy the seats in your classroom. "You're not the boss of me." Rather, you are a teacher: A chosen steward of learning whose privileged experience has led you to foster a climate to encourage succeeding generations of The Great Democratic Experiment. You are lucky, Mr. Roach! And while it's too bad that too many teachers see it as otherwise, you don't have to!


Teachers don't have to pose classrooms as hierarchal, singularly controlled structures that students must learn to conform to. Instead, you can re-imagine your classroom as a unique learning experience for each student, where learners can experience student/adult partnerships built on equity, opportunity, and commitment. This is the difference between teachers and rulers: Teachers don't do to students what students can do for themselves; rulers do. I want to implore you, Mr. Roach: Don't rule your classroom - teach it. That's the only way our future as a democracy is going to survive.

Youth and Adults Transforming Schools Together

In 2009, I was honored to become well-acquainted with Helen Beattie in Vermont, where she has carefully created a powerful program called Youth and Adults Transforming Schools Together (YATST). Over the last three years Helen has worked with a variety of organizations and high schools to develop a this effective model of school transformation that closely reflects my Frameworks for Meaningful Student Involvement. Seven high schools participated in YATST, with several more joining this year.

Last year, Helen's colleague Jean Berthiaume contacted me to share YATST and some of the challenging work he is engaged in as a Rowland Fellow. Working as a social studies teacher at Harwood Union High School, Jean has been deeply engaged in the work of effectively fostering and shepherding student voice towards full partnerships for many years. His wisdom is awesome, and his experiences learning from his peers and engaging students as partners make for wonderful storytelling. After several long conversations with Jean, and his generous introduction of Helen, they came to visit Washington in October, 2009. For their tour, I partnered with my longtime colleague and youth voice and action ally Greg Williamson, who is the director of learning and teaching support at the Washington State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction. We excitedly showed Jean and Helen around Western Washington, introducing them to Carole Layton, a teacher/hero of mine who has worked long and hard at Black Hills High School in Tumwater to promote student engagement. Our group met with Mark Perry, principal at NOVA High School in Seattle to scan the awesome work- only to have him direct us straight to students we met in the hallway to talk about their experiences! It was awesome. We also met with Claire Buddeke, a student at The Evergreen State College formerly of the Washington Legislative Youth Advisory Council. She freely shared her experience with youth/adult partnerships, particularly in state government, and told Helen and Jean a lot about Evergreen, as well.

After that spectacular occasion, Helen and Jean invited me to Vermont to learn about their work and share my information about meaningful student involvement. Among the many, many awesome things they shared with me there, I had the opportunity to facilitate at the annual Youth and Adults Transforming Schools Together gathering. IT WAS AWESOME. Seeing so many youth and adults willing to work together, digest and make sense of the challenging information I was sharing, and trucking through all that together and doing wonderful things afterwards was great.

I wholeheartedly and fully suggest to anyone wanting to learn how to do meaningful student involvement to learn more about YATST. Visit their website at http://yatst.com/, and if you get really into it and want more information contact Helen Beattie by calling 802-472-5127. Very cool!

Co-Opting the Radical Instinct

In summer 2000, Tom Hayden released the following essay. It's powerful historical revelation still moves me, and may help you understand further what we're up against. Even if you don't see yourself as a radical, read it - it can help anyone in nonprofits, schools, and throughout our communities. - Adam

Co-opting the Radical Instinct, by Tom Hayden.

I think that you all might want to know something about how the other side sees you.

There’s a study done by the Cattlemen's Society. Now, you may think they’re an irrelevant, marginal group, but they’re quite crucial to the frontier mentality that built this great country on the backs of the native people. They are a big special interest group, and they pay good money to find out who these activists are. A few years ago they did a study. The question was: How do we contain and stop this direct action movement? It wasn’t called the direct action movement then; it was the civil disobedience movement, the protesters, the environmentalists, all the rabble that they were concerned about at the time.

They created a chart. At one end were the radicals, defined as people who believe that the system itself has to be changed. A radical would he anybody who understands that globalization is a system with many fronts and many issues. Their prescription for the radicals was to isolate and discredit them, not because there was something inherently radical in their behavior, but because they were pointing out that it was a system. So, the first goal, they said, was to discredit the radical analysis.

The second group on the spectrum were the idealists. These are people who want to give the system a chance. They believe in the same social justice values that the radicals do, but they’re idealistic; they don’t have a cold, cynical view that nothing is possible under the system. So, it’s extremely important, the study said, that the idealists don't become radicals. In order to keep this from happening, you raise the stakes of radicalism so that people are afraid to become radical, because they then get smeared, discredited, and worse. You have to give the idealists occasional victories in order to keep their hope in the system alive.

Third on this continuum came the pragmatists. The pragmatists are former idealists who’ve won some victories, who start to believe that the system works. So, they said, it’s extremely important for the idealists to have victories — not because of justice, but because that way they become pragmatists. And you want the pragmatists to be able to say: See? The system works. Be pragmatic.

And the final part of the spectrum — the culmination of your future, if you follow this plan — is that you can become an opportunist. An opportunist is a former pragmatist. An opportunist, they said, is a pragmatist who gets attracted to the money, the glamour, the status, and the power. And then they had a whole workshop on how this could be done. How to discredit the radicals, cultivate the idealists, make them pragmatists, and then find the opportunists among the pragmatists. And there — you have the story of my generation, the 60s generation.

You have millions of people who have radical instincts but little expectation, who have lowered their expectation. You have millions of people who are former idealists, who have become pragmatists. And you have plenty of people who are opportunists. My question is: How can you break this cycle? It’s the most important cycle to break. You can’t break the cycle of poverty; you can’t break the cycle of violence; you can’t break the cycle of corporate expansion; you can’t break the cycle of the arms race; you can’t break the cycle of imprisonment, if you don’t break the cycle by which radicals are isolated, idealists are turned into pragmatists, and pragmatists into opportunists. I have not found an answer to this problem, but I’m here to tell you it is the problem. And you are its answer.

Tom Hayden cofounded Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in 1959, and in the early 1960s he co-authored the highly-influential Port Huron Statement. After the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, he was indicted with the Chicago Seven and later acquitted. Tom Hayden is currently a state senator from Los Angeles and has authored over 175 measures, including animal welfare, campaign finance, education, environmental, prison reform, and worker safety initiatives.