All Engagement Matters

Saving the whales, tutoring under-performing students, building low-income housing, replanting native prairies... All of these are important activities that have value in the world. So do meditating, writing poetry, playing piano, and going for nature hikes. Anytime we engage within or outside of ourselves, it matters.

For a single mother of several children, finding time alone can be a treasure. In a comfortable home filled with material wealth, it can bring new depth to give time and energy to the community. To working class people developing a strong sense of personal ability may be vital, while to a forester spending time with his family in downtown stores shopping may be important.

Each of us gets to identify, draw out, and sustain what is important to us in life, what connects deepest with our Heartspace. When we do this, we are engaging with life. Engagement, which is a sustained connection to anything within or outside of ourselves, is how anyone can find deep warmth, joy, and fulfillment in life. It is the most elastic feeling we can have, because it holds all others: Love, happiness, pain, sadness, all can have a home in engagement. The treasure I have discovered is that none of these feelings are wrong to engage in, just as no action is wrong to engage in.

Engagement is an unselfish and unbiased feeling. Without requiring specific attention or energy, we can engage deeply throughout our lives. In many ways, engagement is indifferent to our circumstances. It can change purpose or form, but it is always the same: A sustained connection within or outside ourselves. This sustainability is marvelous, because it allows us to be distinctly human, and simultaneously, deeply universal. We become one with all creation when we simply live, instead of having to interpret and assign. The treasure of Heartspace is that it allows us to be non-dualistic and one with everything. And that is what real engagement is, oneness with everything.

That oneness can feel challenging to attain. One awesome thing about Heartspace is that by maintaining our quest for engagement we will never be disengaged. It's a reward unto itself. But remember this: The next time you're in the garage working on restoring your old car so deeply that you loose track of time, you have found it. When you're rolling around on the floor with the kids tickling and playing so much that you feel like a kid too, even if just for a moment, you have found it. Painting that scene, laminating those pictures, knitting that scarf, breathing in the ocean, serving food at that shelter, praying... These are all different ways people can become engaged, different avenues towards Heartspace. If you are looking for ways to get engaged in your own life, you will find them. The key is to know when you've found what you're looking for.

If you want to change the world, change yourself and get engaged. If you want to engage in yourself, do something to change the world. The beating pulse of Heartspace flows through reciprocity, and in this way it is ensures that we maintain deep integrity. You can't fake engagement. You can't become engaged for someone else, and you can't do engagement to someone else. We can only get engaged ourselves. You are engaged in ways throughout your life that you haven't acknowledged yet. Look and see, and give yourself credit for your engagements.

Today I am grateful for all that I am engaged in. Every day my life changes, and every day I am engaged. It really is a wonderful life.

The Evolution of Society

Children and youth have been treated as apolitical and passive throughout time. They are viewed as immature, irrational, untamed, incapable, dependent, inexperienced, victims, compliant, under-developed, unacceptable, manipulable, unknowledgeable, compromised, uncultured, and unfinished for what seems like eons. Treated as less-than-human, non-members of society, and as adults-in-the-making, children and youth have experienced generations of indifference and neglect simply because they were not perceived as adults.

This view of children and youth is not science; it is bias. It is bias towards adults, which is the definition of adultism.

Over the last 40 years, young people have boldly challenged this view. In the last 10, they have more loudly challenged it through activism and technology than ever before. THAT scares adults for many reasons, primary among which is that the historical order of society is continuing upheaval. That upheaval is quickening though, and as ethically responsive adult allies, it is our obligation to advocate and guide this change in every part of society.

Adultism has become more oppressive as a response to this evolution. More than ever before, the systems, cultures, and attitudes that treat children and youth without regard for their full humanity are becoming obvious. Parenting, friendships, schooling, social services, community groups, governments, faith communities, legal systems, economic systems, health care, nurseries, and playgrounds are among the institutions throughout our society that are being revealed for their biases towards adults.

At the core of the discrimination young people face are the historical roots of adultism:

• Paternalism. Paternalism is when a child or youth is controlled with the claim that they'll be better off or protected from harm. It's ugly enforcer is patriarchy, which is protectionism on a grand level.
• Segregation. Setting young people apart from other people because of their age is segregation. It's ugly cousins include alienation, which happens when children or youth are segregated from a group or an activity they should be involved in; demonization, which happens when young people are portrayed as evil, deviant, or malicious; and criminalization, which makes children and youth illegal because of their age, like age-based curfews do.
• Adultcentrism. The belief that adults are superior to young people is adultcentrism. It's obvious outcome is adultocracy, which is the system of structural and cultural controls adults use to impose their authority, domination and supremacy over children and youth. The linear outcomes of adultcentrism and adultocracy are their ugly children, gerontocentrism and gerontocracy, which are focused on seniors.
• Fear. The fear of children, which is pediaphobia, allows adults to segregate them; the fear of youth, which is ephebiphobia, gives adults permission to demonize and criminalize them. These responses to so-called deviance are dove-tailed with infantalism, which is the ascribing of behaviors that are perceived to be "child-ish" to children, youth, and adults. 

All of this allows adults to maintain their power over young people in the most dramatic and simplistic ways. Without any voice in the matter, young people are routinely treated apathetically, pitifully, sympathetically, and charitably. This is despite the fact that all adults have been young. Our social programming disallows adults from remembering our younger years, which would lead us to empathizing with children and youth.

What may be needed is that farthest point on the spectrum of perceptions of young people, which is solidarity. More on that later.

I want to end this post by acknowledging that a massive evolution of young people is underway right now. Technology of all kinds is facilitating it, starting with the electronic transfer of communication, knowledge, ideas, and preparation for action. It is underway thanks to academia, where sociology and education have been on transformative bents for years in order to acknowledge authentic realities of young people, rather than their historically subjective judgments. It is underway in social settings too, including homes and neighborhoods and faith communities. 

There's an exciting future ahead, past these dark days. That's because the evolution of childhood and youth is underway right now, and that's because of you, right now. That's why you just read this blog. 

Why Adultism Must Stop

Just over 200 years ago, sociology was born. As a science, it hadn't existed before that in any substantive way. Within 50 years, sociologists had imposed their scientific conceptualization onto education, which emerged as a field in the late 19th century. Pedagogy, which is the science of education, didn't exist until then.

Both sociology and pedagogy are the driving forces of how our society "sees" children and youth today. Both were developed by adults for the purpose of perpetuating society. They inherently believe that in order for society to continue, young people had to be controlled. That means that society is based on adultism.

Adultism, which is bias towards adults, discriminates against children and youth. It insists that the ways adults "see" the world, including their ideas, experiences, actions, interactions, and judgments, are the only or most valid and valuable perspectives. In other words, only adults matter.

Adultism has structured families, communities, cultures, and societies for time immemorial. It isn't a recent phenomenon. The usage of social institutions to perpetuate adultism isn't new, either: Churches were long used to control the behavior of young people; which in turn allowed Church fathers to control the behavior of adults through patriarchy and paternalism. Adultism made their jobs easier.

Adultism makes the jobs of adults today easier, too. 

Without having to think about it, teachers, youth workers, and even parents can control young people. They dispose of wisdom, extol the virtues of manners, and enforce their conceptions of the world onto young people through education and punishment, legislation and rules. 

The question becomes whether, in a technologically and evolutionary progressive world, adultism is still an effective mechanism for perpetuating society. Particularly in these times when society itself is in flux, proving to be a malleable and subjective tool for social organization, we must question whether it's wise to continue to rely on adultism as a tool for social organizing, if only because young people have proved to be:

1. Dynamic actors rather than static audience (They DO things instead of just watch them);
2. Socially responsive instead of culturally deviant (They're making a better world instead of a worse one);
3. Highly effective creators instead of ineffectually passive consumers (Preaching doesn't working- making does.)

These realities provide an opportunity for adults to reconsider the ways we see and interact with young people. More importantly though, they challenge us to reconceptualize society's conceptions. Are we going to continue being driven by outdated modalities, or rise to the occasion we are faced with? Another way to say that is, Are we going to let old rich white guys who've been dead for a century or more control us today?

We need new realities starting today, and adultism must stop now. 

Adultism In Schools

This post is an excerpt from my forthcoming Complete Guide to Adultism on what adultism looks like in schools.

Adultism is the reason schools exist. When children and youth packed factories, farm fields, mines, and service jobs around the western world in the late 19th century, many adults could not find jobs. This caused adults to rally against child labor and for public schools. A lot of adults said they wanted to end children ending up on the streets without an “occupation”- especially after newspapers reported that was the case. Schools suddenly became popular as places where young people could have productive experiences throughout the day. In the early 20th century they were made compulsory in many Western nations. Moving children from compulsory labor occupations into compulsory learning occupations without their input, ideas, or contributions in any way paved the way to the state of education today. That was just the first effect of adultism in schools.  

In nineteen states across the U.S. corporal punishment is legal in schools. Corporal punishment is any physical punishment administered to students. This includes spanking, slapping, smacking, pulling ears, pinching, shaking, hitting with rulers, belts, wooden spoons, extension cords, slippers, hairbrushes, pins, sticks, whips, rubber hoses, flyswatters, wire hangers, stones, bats, canes, or paddles. Corporal punishment also means forcing a child to stand for a long time or forcing a child to stay in an uncomfortable position. It can mean forcing a child to stand motionless or forcing a child to kneel on rice, corn, floor grates, pencils or stones. Corporal punishment can also mean forcing a child to retain body wastes; forcing a child to perform strenuous exercise, or; forcing a child to ingest soap, hot sauce, or lemon juice. In schools where students received corporal punishment, students often have no format to appeal such punishment. They frequently do not have the ability to raise concerns over the legitimacy of the claims made against them, and they may not have the ability to raise concerns over the severity of the punishment being administered for their presumed violations. 

Corporal punishment may be one of the most obvious physical impacts of adultism, but it is not the only one. One hundred years ago, because of the influence of Italian educator Maria Montessori, educators began paying attention to the physical apparatuses young people were expected to learn with. Their desks got lower, the chalkboards were holdable, and drinking foundations were built at their height. These types of accommodation ended where young people were expected to stop interacting with adults. School board meeting rooms were built for adults; school counselor offices were built for adults; cafeteria food preparation areas were built for adults. Even in high schools students are expected to be "of average adult height" in order to operate learning instruments such as microscopes, computers, and other devices. Research suggests that within in school students comprise an average of 93% of the human population, with adults accounting for the other seven percent. There is an awful lot of accommodation of that  seven percent!    

Adultism is apparent when large numbers of young people of any age are not allowed to congregate, cooperate and coordinate. Schools today are rooted in age segregation that disallows young people from socially and educationally interacting with each other. With few formal opportunities to socialize, young people may learn to distrust their peers and seek the approval of adults only. Some adults in schools lose the ability to distinguish between conspiracy and community, and they make continuous efforts to keep students from interacting with each other in schools. 

Adultism drives adult behavior throughout schools, as well as a lot of student behavior. Teaching styles frequently represent adults’ values and skills rather than young peoples’ perspectives and capabilities. Adults determine what is valuable for students to learn and how young people need to demonstrate their learning. They enforce inequities between students and teachers in everyday behavior, too: When teachers yell at students, they are controlling classrooms; when students yell at teachers, they are creating unsafe learning environments. Ultimately, students in schools are subjected to their parents’ and their teachers’ assessments of their performance in the classroom, and have no formal input into grading or graduations. Searching for adult approval in order to receive the most praise or achieve the best grades, students routinely appease adults with sufficient class work without actually engaging in the content being taught. They find solidarity with the adults who control their classrooms while betraying the trust of their peers as they tattle and compare each other.  

Finally, and perhaps ultimately, adultism undermines the very purpose of educating students in schools. Student engagement has been shown to directly affect academic achievement. When students experience adultism, their engagement is severely affected in negative ways, no matter the environment. Classroom management, learning activities and student discipline are all affected by adultism, in all grade levels. In response to all of the bias towards adults throughout their educations, some young people completely acquiesce to adult expectations. Others completely abandon or apparently rebel against these expectations by routinely performing lowly in school through behavior or academic achievement, and through dropping out. Dropping out of school is the ultimate impact of adultism in schools.  

In addition to those such as Montessori, who was almost uniquely oriented against adultism in schools, educators have rallied against adultism in schools without naming it as such for more than a hundred years. Massively influential, thought often misunderstood, American school philosopher John Dewey constantly promoted a curriculum for schools that was footed in student realities instead of adult conveniences. He once wrote, "Nature wants children to be children before they are men... Childhood has ways of seeing, thinking, and feeling, peculiar to itself, nothing can be more foolish than to substitute our ways for them." This situates him squarely on the side of anti-adultist teachers. Paulo Freire, a Brazilian educator whose theories on teaching oppressed people continue to inform school change, justly sought authentic learning for students, too. His attitude could be summarized by his singular belief that, "the educator for liberation has to die as the unilateral educator of the educatees." This positions the student as the holder and determiner of learning, and that is anti-adultist. While some theories address students' roles indirectly, and others head-on push against the overbearing domination of adults, in schools, all are valuable as allies in this struggle.

It is because of all these realities that adultism makes schools today ineffective in every way.

Is there anything you'd add, take away, criticize, or expand on?

The Rough Moments

Life ain't a box o' chocolates sometimes. For a lot of people, The Struggle isn't an ethereal beyond, fighting against The Man, or deriding obscure social injustices they may never have experienced. Some folks live in The Struggle in a way that is real and tangible for themselves every single day. This post is for you.

When The Moment looks worse than ever and when The Struggle seems endless, that is the very best moment to find your Heartspace, and to engage there deeply. Whether you're dealing with the loss of a loved one, with the end of a job, with the transition of a life style, or with all of the above and/or so much more, the very best thing to do is dig in and engage with life. There is gold in this moment, and you can find it through connecting deeply and sustainably in this time.

I don't speak of this lightly, because I have lived through The Struggle at many points in my life. Recently, I learned that The Struggle even has a darker side than I've acknowledge before. St. John of the Cross, a Catholic monk and mystic in Spain in the 1600s, wrote a poem called "The Dark Night of the Soul."

Upon a darkened night the flame of love was burning in my breast
And by a lantern bright I fled my house while all in quiet rest.
Shrouded by the night and by the secret stair I quickly fled.
The veil concealed my eyes while all within lay quiet as the dead

This house is a deception, a trick of comfort that alludes to our lives: What we're engaged with outside of ourselves is fleeting, small; what we engage with within ourselves is enormous and everlasting. We can have all the experiences of wealth, physical love, food, and clothing as we want. However, as long as we're disengaged with ourselves The Struggle will remain. In the dark night of my soul I have learned that The Struggle is optional because of this reality; your dark night may teach you something else. Whatever that may be, we are challenged to engage in rough moment because they hold the deepest lessons for us.

Dr. King, who was a loving family man living on the road the majority of his life, was followed by death threats and pounded by The Struggle wherever he went. During his 1963 acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize he said,

"Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols called words. Their meanings can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart."

The rough moments in life are actually calling us to the depth of our Heartspace. Go there, warmly and boldly, especially when you are having a hard time. The connect you make to yourself will be stronger, more tangible, and longer lasting than any other in your life. This is the better way.

Anti-Adultism Parenting Resources

Ten years ago, when I began full-time training and consulting about adultism, there were four publications about adultism. Anywhere. None of them were written for parents, and only one of them mentioned parenting. Eight years ago when I became a parent I became determined to teach my peers about adultism.

You can find the list I began compiling about anti-adultism in 2002, including a couple articles focused on parenting, at http://freechild.org/adultism.htm.

Following is an exclusive collection of anti-adultism parenting resources. I am glad to share this list with you. I think it represents a fair scan of resources available to parents who want to stop their own adultist ways, and help others who do, too. Let me know what you think, and what you would add to this list.

Lefty Parent - I met Cooper Zale at the International Democratic Education Conference in Vancouver, British Columbia in 2008. In 2010 he picked up the topic of adultism on his blog, and has written steadily about different aspects of it since then. This link goes to his most recent, which is addressed "Adultism vs Legitimate Adult Stewardship of Youth". He's also written extensively about adultism on Daily Kos.

Mommyish - Bolaji Williams shares a tremendous analysis called, "Adultism: People get over your hatred of children." In reward for her bold assertion that, "It’s like racism, except the target/victim is children," Williams garnered more than 120 comments on her post.

Power to Control - In her Life Learning Magazine, Wendy Priesnitz has shared The Freechild Project's posts on adultism for a while. In a post called "Defeating Adultism" she writes about the inherited nature of adultism, and exposes what can be done.

"Good Job!" And Other Things You Shouldn't Say - I'm tremendously excited about this smart, sophisticated approach to advocating against adultism. The word is all over the blog, starting here. Enjoy.

Teresa Graham Brett - From her organization committed to Parenting for Social Change, Teresa has been developing a powerful position to take a stand from. In several posts she writes about adultism, including this recent piece.

Other recommending reading...

• Has Covert Adultism Made Feminists Forget Adopted Women? - Challenges many parenting assumptions.
• Adultism and Cultural Competence - Posted by Adoptions.com, this article presumes the need to teach parents about adultism and new ways to treat children.
• "A Mother Asks How Mature We Are With Children"
• 
  

Helping Adults Remember Our Youth

‎"There is in you what is beyond you." 

—Paul Valéry

Every one of us was a young person, and from that place we can all relate to children and youth better than we do right now. Just as there is not a young person in this whole world who cannot be engaged, there is no adult in this world who is wholly and completely incapable of becoming engaged with young people.

This is because of the same reality French poet Valéry was alluding to above. All young people and all adults, everyone in this world, is inherently engaged in an eternal dance of society, propagating and critiquing and expanding and evolving the infinite potential of the world we share. Martin Luther King, Jr. talked about this, too, when he said, "We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny." 


The opportunity of our lifetimes is to learn and build ways to consciously, creatively, and meaningfully grow this "inescapable network of mutuality" throughout our society with purpose and intention. Helping ourselves become conscientious of the threads we sew in the "single garment of destiny" is the large part of this learning. After we've done that we can begin to help others do the same. All children and youth can help their younger sisters and brothers, siblings, and adults learn about the "single garment of destiny". All adults can learn about that garment, too, and help others learn about the "inescapable network of mutuality" we are all part of.


We all share this responsibility, which is one of the greatest we have in our lives. What are you going to do today?


Here's a reflection activity I use to help adults reconnect with their experiences as young people. 

Remembering Our Youth

Time required: 20-45 minutes

Needed: Quiet room

Before you start. I've found this guided reflection to be done best with participants age 12 through elder. As with any good learning activity, adjust as needed. Begin the reflection by reading the following at a comfortable, relaxed pace. Your tone should be quiet and calming, and you should give people time to bring up the images in their heads and really remember them. You can add to or subtract from this script as needed.

To start: Begin by asking each group to sit down and get comfortable. Explain that you will lead them through a reflection activity that sends them back in time to when they were teenagers. Ask them to close their eyes. Then ask them to imagine that its [today's date] during their ninth grade year in school. If the group consists of people who work primarily with one age group (e.g., fourth graders) use that school year. Otherwise chose a year in school for them. A year in middle or high school works best.

Questions to ask: Continue by reading the following, slowly:

• "Think about getting up in the morning.
• What time is it?
• Does someone wake you up? Who?
• Do you get up easily or is it a pain?
• What is your morning routine? Do you take a shower, bath, or do your hair?
• What do you wear?
• Are you ready in a few minutes? An hour?
• Who else is around in the morning? Do you have to help anyone else get ready?
• When you leave for school, how do you get there? Bus, drive, get a ride, walk, bike? Do you go with others?
• What does the school building look like? How do you feel about the place?
• What do you do when you first get inside? Do you go to your locker? Hang out with friends? Who are your friends? How do you feel about them?
• What is your first class of the day? Who teaches it? Do you like the subject? Do you like the teacher? What are your favorite classes?
• What classes do you dislike? Why?
• What about lunch? Where do you eat? What did you eat? Do you have any meetings?
• Now it is the end of the school day. Do you play a sport, have an activity, have a job, do your homework, hang out with friends?
• What adults do you encounter after school? coaches, advisors, administrators, or bosses?
• When do you get home?
• Do you eat dinner with your family?
• Do you do homework, or pretend to do homework? Do you watch TV? Talk on the phone?
• What time do you go to bed? How do you feel at the end of the day?

Reflection: After a long, deliberate pause, ask participants to return to the present and open their eyes. Tell them you understand that the exercise may have reminded them of some painful or personal memories, and perhaps of some humorous ones, too. Reassure them that no one will be forced to share, but that you're going to ask them to join in pairs and take a moment to share general reactions. 

Asking questions: When they are in pairs, give them 2-3 debriefing questions they can discuss with their partner. They can include:

• What do you remember most vibrantly from this reflection?
• What do you think is the greatest difference between your ninth grade year and the experience of a ninth grade student today?
• What do you think is most similar?
• Who were the adults in your life after school?
• What are your best teacher like? Worst?

When each pair is done, have a large group conversation about the activity and ask participants to share what they've discovered. When you are finished, if time permits allow participants to journal alone for a moment on the following questions: 

• What was good about being young? 
• What was not good about being young? 

Close the activity by reminding participants that we all have different experiences, and none are better or worse than others- just different.

Infinite Ripples, or, Standing WITH Other People

This is a story of how I came to understand the infinite nature of the ripple effect.

When I was a teen I lived in a "disadvantaged" neighborhood in North Omaha, Nebraska. The big old Methodist church on the corner, Pearl Memorial, hosted afterschool and evening programs for kids. I attended on Sundays. Each summer the activities in the church ramped up all week long, and I worked for a nonprofit in the basement during those months each year, too. I spent a lot of time in that gothic throwback, with it's towers and faux parapets, gigantic sanctuary ceiling and bright, sunny classrooms.

It was here that I first consciously learned about missionary perspective, community engagement, and social change. The well-meaning Methodists who attended the church were mostly older whites from the surrounding neighborhood where White Flight drew generations of middle class white people away. In the meantime a new generation of working class and lower class African American families moved in, and lower class whites, like my family, lived there, too. I was 16 when I first read Enlightenment thinker Charles de Montesquieu's grand declaration, "To become truly great, one has to stand with people, not above them," and I felt I was growing up in this reality.

Every summer I was there the church experienced a "Running of the Volunteers". It seemed like dozens of strangers would fill the building all summer long, fixing it up and playing with kids in the outreach programs, every day between 10am and 2pm. In reality the whole process probably only happened a half dozen times in the four years I attended the church, but it seems like dozens in my memory. The building seemed to hum, filled with the newness of clean work clothes and propped up by shiny white 15 passenger vans that came from another part of the city, or another part of the country. These were exotic people to us, with their shiny faces and new stuff. Their very presence confused me.

My friends and I would stalk the work zones where these people had set up shop. More than once we asked if we could help, and every time we were asked to leave "their" work spaces, and asked to leave the volunteers alone. Oh, the confusion!

It took me years to learn what this situation taught me. I found a fast friend when I discovered Australian Aboriginal Lila Watson's quote in which she said, "If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. If you have come to because your liberation is bound up in mine, we can work together." Her rejection of horizontal need-oriented relationships spoke to my center. I wanted servers to acknowledge the inherent benefit they receive from serving others; I wanted those served to see they give something in addition to receiving. Soon after I read a speech by revolutionary Ivan Illich in which he skewered volunteerism overseas called, "To Hell With Good Intentions." I knew I was on a right track.

I began developing teaching models to explain this, first creating a Ladder of Volunteer Participation that named the different ways volunteers engage in the communities where they serve. It intrigued me to consider there were different positions in this inherently hierarchical perspective. I taught this model actively for a few years, and received considerable interest from AmeriCorps volunteers and others who wanted to understand their own assumptions and beliefs about why they were doing what they were doing.

However, I grew uncomfortable with the ease with which learners would read through the piece and then lob it aside. This was pushed further when I read an article in The Atlantic magazine by the great  Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano, who wrote,

"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 from Galeano that I began to understand that different people come to serve others through different motivations and perceptions of the people they serve. Reflecting on that, I came across the idea that there were a range of perspectives that informed our service toward others. In the mid 2000s I started teaching about these Perspectives, and in 2005 I created a handout called "Check Yourself: What’s Your Motive?" that alluded to my purpose in teaching people to examine their assumptions.

I continued to grow and learn. Toward 2008 I became increasingly interested in how these perspectives held true throughout our society in dozens of different kinds of relationships. In my continuing studies of the power dynamics between adults and young people, I found the model rang true. I expanded on the main perspectives I identified earlier, and created a page on The Freechild Project website called Perceptions of Youth. This allowed me to continue teaching the model, but with a quicker focus for students who wanted to learn specifically about how the perceptions of children and youth informed adults biases against young people.

Over the last year I have been further developing my own perspectives about serving others. I became interested in the reciprocal benefits of service, and how they affected the giver particularly. I discovered a rich vein of interest in the wider world focused on personal engagement, and my own interest in what motivated it was piqued. Last year I read an interview with Burmese democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who had been imprisoned by her own government for more than a decade because of her leadership. In the course of that confinement she was asked by a reporter about the sacrifices she made, and she replied,

‎"I do not believe that I’m sacrificing. In fact, I feel very uneasy when others used the word sacrifice to describe my life. It sounds like I’m demanding returns for my investments. I chose to walk on this journey, because I solely believed in it and wholeheartedly decided to do so, and I’m willing and able to pay for the consequences…"

This spoke to the core of me. I continued my search, and have been writing about Heartspace for the last several months in response to what I have found. I have more to learn, but this much I know: There is nothing we do in this entire world that is purely altruistic. Every single interaction we have in this world is a transaction that imparts, imports, and exports, and you cannot give something to another person without receiving something in return. That is the basis of establishing a perspective of standing with, not for, other people: realizing that in every single interaction there is an exchange. That's the basis of the humongous web we are all woven into, relationship. Or if we all live in a gigantic pond, the endless ripples affected by every single one of us every single day in every single way. We live in an infinitely beautiful mosaic of connections, each equal to the other, none greater or worse.

Does that change the way you see the world? It has for me.

Full Self-Responsibility

While you're navigating Heartspace, take time to make sure it is your voice that is guiding you.

There are no distractions in the world- everything in our experiences is meant to guide and drive us in the exact directions we're headed. That means that none of the friends, technologies, adventures, or ideas you have ever had were the wrong ones. They are all right, every single one.

Living in our Heartspace challenges us to live in full responsibility for ourselves, calling us ever further on our walk towards deliberate and intentional personal engagement. As we rely more on our internal engage of personal engagement, Heartspace in turn asks us to get genuinely authentic with ourselves. That means allowing our most honest selves to speak to us in whatever way we're comfortable and capable of that. For some, that means meditation and prayer. For others that means partying and concerts. There are no wrong paths to finding your Heartspace.

A great American preacher and teacher named Howard Thurman once charged us with how to operationalize Heartspace in our lives. He wrote, “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” Those are the directions of Heartspace - come alive!

In turn, that is what we must do in order to engage our communities, as well- charge them with coming alive. We must work with everyone in equal measure to ensure that we all have the opportunities we need in order to find out what makes us come alive. But we can only do this with others after we've done it with ourselves- if that is what makes us come alive!


That's a formula at work here: We cannot ask others to do what we aren't doing ourselves. Do not encourage someone else to get their life on track if you are derailed yourself. Do not try to teach another person if you are not actively learning yourself. Do not teach your children to look inside themselves if you are busy looking all around you for answers. This is what Gandhi implored us to do with his simple saying, "We need to be the change we wish to see in the world."

Heartspace allows for that radical self-responsibility that can shake people out of the bed in the morning, even when they are 94 years old, and say, "I fairly sizzle with zeal and enthusiasm and spring forth with a mighty faith to do the things that ought to be done by me." That was American religious leader Charles Fillmore, and that can be you, too.

Engaging With Other People

“Understanding of the self only arises in relationship, in watching yourself in relationship to people, ideas, and things; to trees, the earth, and the world around you and within you. Relationship is the mirror in which the self is revealed. Without self-knowledge there is no basis for right thought and action.” - Jiddu Krishnamurti

I stopped working for state government almost two years ago now. Since then I have walked an increasingly narrow path, studying and teaching and writing and parenting with all my time. Occasionally I make time for friends. In the absence of a regular 9 to 5 job, I fin a great release in learning and growing, and it's been a tremendously refreshing time for me. This is how I have discovered Heartspace, the engine of personal engagement.

After exploring the issue of how to connect people throughout their communities in the most meaningful ways for more than 20 years, I came to understand that the most powerful way to do that was to connect people within themselves and outside themselves in sustained ways. In order to sustain engagement, it must be meaningful, effective, and reciprocal for both the engaged and the engage-r. Sustainability matters.

The quote above from Jiddu Krishnamurti illustrates for me the significance of engagement a person sustains for themselves and with those around them, including other people and our environments. Krishnamurti implies that we sustain engagement for ourselves, and this is exactly where Heartspace emerges in our psyches and throughout our lives.

Heartspace does not require people to do what I have by rejecting the traditional work world. It doesn't require stepping out of ill-functioning friendships or having study times for yourself throughout the day. It does mean that a person engage with themselves and the world in a deliberate way, conscientious and meaningfully. While this can be challenging, it is not impossible. While we engage with the world we get to see the mirror that our lives provide us. This mirror can show lovely and ugly things, sometimes within the same breath. That is the point.

When we earnestly connect to the things within and around us that ignite our souls, our Heartspace becomes ignited, too. This means engaging with other people, building community and nurturing family. It means falling in love, smiling at children, listening intently to elders, hugging everyone a little tighter and longer, and holding the hands of lonely people. It means being authentic and vulnerable and real with other people. It means being real with yourself.

This being real with myself has been challenging for me at times, as I've faced some things I thought were long gone, and addressed people who I didn't want to affect me. I have called out names in the night and let go of people who I was close to, buried the ghosts of friends and relatives, and released the stresses of the past and future that insisted I spend time with them. They're gone now.

I believe that all of this is what Krishnamurti referred as right thought and action. When you move through your Heartspace you have all the right thought and action you need. I have all I need, right now.

20 Steps Towards Youth Engagement

Are YOU concerned about disenfranchised youth? Do YOU believe young people don't have enough power throughout society? Do you think YOU can help make the world a better place through youth engagement?

Here are 20 steps towards youth engagement right now. These are for all people of all ages in all locations at all times, always in all ways.

1. No matter what age you are right now, reflect personally about your experience being young. 
2. Examine your personal experiences with youth engagement, no matter what age you are. 
3. Identify what your beliefs about young people are , no matter what age you are . 
4. Examine your beliefs about young people. Why do you have them? How do you act them out? 
5. Stop discounting people because of their age right now, no matter what age they are. 
6. Stand up to others that discount people because of their age, no matter what age they are. 
7. Identify an adult to have honest conversations with about being young, no matter what age you are.  
8. Identify a young person to have honest conversations with about being young, no matter what age you are. 
9. Have honest conversations with everyone about being an adult, no matter what age you are.  
10. Read books, websites, blogs, and other forms of expression by young people about topics you are interested in, your job or profession. 
11. Start a group, join a group, or offer personal support to a group of young people promoting youth engagement in your community, school, or organization. 
12. Contact current youth engagement activities in your neighborhood and learn about them. 
13. Evaluate your organization using the evaluations in my Freechild Project Youth Voice Toolkit. 
14. Contact local officials and write a letter to the editor to advocate for youth engagement. 
15. Explore books, websites, blogs, and other forms of expression about society, youth engagement, and advocacy. 
16. Provide free training in your community using The Freechild Project Youth Engagement Workshop Guide. 
17. Learn about issues that are important to people throughout your community by having conversations with people you want to know. 
18. Join a group that is not focused on youth or youth issues. 
19. Consistently represent the interests of young people or your community in personal, professional, social, and other parts of your life.
20. Create a conscious critical relationship with a young person or adult, right now. Allow them to call you out for your behavior, attitude, or actions that do not promote youth empowerment.

Why are you still reading this article? Stop, and get to work, right now. Young people and adults everywhere thank you!

Every Young Person Engaged

"We can engage every young person in every community around the world. Don't ever doubt that."

Recently, after a keynote speech in which I shared the above, an obviously upset person came up to me wagging their finger while I was talking with attendees in the hallway.

"You don't actually believe everything you say, do you?"
"Well, sure I do!"
"That cockamamie you said about engaging every youth is bullarcky, and I simply don't think it is true, and I can't believe that an intelligent man like you would believe that, either."
"I do believe it. I live it. When I was a young person I there were adults in my life who simply give up on me. I won't do that to any young person, ever."
"Well, there are just some kids out there you can't reach. None of us can."
"Sure there are, kids you can't reach. But that doesn't mean another adult can't."
"Huh."

And with that, they stormed off.

It is a fragile line I walk at times. I speak of the very best positive, powerful potential of children and youth, and I mean every single thing I say. No part of me doubts that every young person has the potential to become engaged throughout their community. No part of me gives up on any youth, no matter how privileged or under-resourced they may be. And no part of me thinks I'm going out on a limb, either.

We live in a society where adults have assume managerial control for every aspect of a young person's well-being through a certain age. That managerial control extends from home to school to after school to weekends to summer, and so on. However, that same society seems to accept, en masse, that there are some young people that it simply cannot expect to become sustainably connected in society past a certain point, throughout a particular community, or by deliberation or intention. Its as if its okay to just give up on some children and youth.

That is not right.

As a society we need to make a wholesale commitment to every young person in every community around the world that we, as adults, will ensure that they are engaged throughout their lives. This must start in the places where children and youth live, extend to the places they learn, and travel with them throughout the places they place, socialize, entertain, buy things, govern, and on and on. Every single part of our society needs to create fresh, distinctive, dynamic opportunities for every single young person to become engaged - not someday, but right now.

Surely we will make mistakes. Surely there will be grave injustices and disappointments. Adults will continue to be adultist, and young people will feel dismissed, oppressed, and disengaged at times. But we must try, regardless, every single one of us. 


Right now, if you are a parent, go engage with your child.
If you are a teacher, reach out meaningfully to your students.
If you are a youth worker, connect with your young people.
Social workers, ministers, mental health counselors, elected officials, cops, government administrators, poets and artists, professors, tradesmen and tradeswomen, community leaders, neighborhood organizers, nonprofit staff, business owners, foundation staff, camp counselors... All of us, in every single community, can take these steps right now.

We need every young person engaged, right now. What are you going to do today?

The Developmental Reasons for Adultism

Over the last few years I have spoke and trained extensively about adultism, which is bias towards adults, and subsequently, discrimination against young people. Here I explain the roots of adultism, and how they relate to changing the world. Note: All of this is based in broad generalizations, and those are inherently discriminatory. All models are flawed. My bad.

Adults are pretty biased. Developmentally speaking, as we get older we like an increasing amount of predictability and sameness. As we age, the human brain generally loses capacity for retention. This causes us to rely on predicable patterns of familiarity and a deepened sense of similarity. In other words, adults want things to stay the same. This happens unconsciously at first, with it becoming an emerging concern on the part of adults as we grow older.

Adults codify predictability. Our laws and rules and policies and regulations enforce commonality, consistency, and conformity. This is neither inherently good or bad; it just is what it is. For time immemorial, adults have used religions, governments, occupations, and schools to ensure that young people succeeded them accordingly. That is how societies and technologies have spread through the ages, and more than one sage has declared that the treatment of youth shows the priorities of a society, and can predict its downfall.

Predictability, sameness, familiarity, and commonality are some of the developmental reasons for adultism. 

Juxtaposed against this developmentally is the experience of youth. As teenagers, young people strive to do several things in the course of growing: Youth push against the rigidity of their childhood in an effort to explore the larger world beyond their homes and neighborhoods. They react against social conformity as they test the boundaries of behavior, language, appearance, and more. 

Generally, that is the developmental pattern of all youth. It is enforced through broad cultural promotion, acceptance, and retention. This means adults think that's the way it should be, we encourage it, and we make sure it exists for succeeding generations. It is not generally codified and formalized, insomuch as unspoken cultural norms ensure that young people have the room they need to become who they are.

Couple this with the reality that young peoples' experiences of time is elastic. Learning to appreciate both the past and the present more, the future appears limitless in its ability and potential, and with that in mind anything is possible. They do not generally see the future in the long arc of adults, and this enables them to focus directly on immediate outcomes. They also do not feel the burden of the past so heavily, either. The inheritances of the ages are generally lost on young people as they experience what simply already exists, rather than understand where it came from. 

Propagating society, transmitting culture, and developmental milestones are some of the other developmental reasons for adultism.

If we are to successfully challenge the prevalence of adultism throughout society, we have to become fully aware and focused on the developmental reasons behind it. That prevalence is negating the effectiveness of our family structures, youth work, education systems, social services, and more. Let's do something about it, right now.

Generations and Adultism

"We cannot wait to engage youth any longer, because they are not waiting for us. Whether or not we give them our tacit approval, they are moving ahead with the future right now, just as they always have, only faster."

When I launched into my keynote speech last month at a Raleigh, North Carolina, conference focused on youth engagement in rural economic development, I expected more hissing from the audience than I got. Instead, I heard a chorus of "Yes sur"s and "Teach!"s, which encouraged me to tell the truth I know.

"I want you to count five things that you're passionate about right now, that you care deeply about, that you're engaged in. If your work isn't on that list then I want you to stop trying to engage young people right now. Right now, finish, get done, put down the pen and step away from the conference. Because if you aren't engaged deeply in the work you're doing, you cannot, absolutely can not, ask young people to become deeply engaged in it. Do not ask something of youth that you are not doing yourself."

Over the course of my career I have learned in fits and starts, constantly absorbing information and occasionally digesting it enough to share with others. It has been marvelous to grow in my public speaking abilities, and in Raleigh I had the opportunity to share some of the recent knowings I have stumbled across lately in my brain.

I shared my Cycle of Engagement, and the Perceptions of Youth model I developed. I talked about young people taking action to make the world a better place, all around the world. I explored the possibilities and potentials of youth-led social change and how that could impact every young person in every community all around the world. I upset people, too, speaking boldly about the demands of society today in the ways that I do. I received more feedback from this statement than any other:

"Our judgments of youth reflect more on the status of society than they do any one generation."

Viewing any generation, current or past, and making unequivocal conclusions about them is adultism. If youth state things about "their generation", it's internalized adultism. When adults make any unequivocal conclusion, its cultural adultism. Because somehow we've managed to position adults, including sociologists and teachers and parents and politicians, to make damning and bragging statements about youth, to determine value and worth and position and status according to their birth years, which, like many other social demographic factors, are largely irrelevant in determining a person's worth. I believe that young people throughout the ages, and particularly over the last 50 years of the hyper-commercialization of Western society, have been routinely frowned upon for their inherent desire to be themselves in the face of society that would have them be nothing more than less-than-adult until they are fully adults. That's a shame. Oh, and generations are fictions. 

Oh yes. And out in the hallway after my speech I had dozens of people talking with me, sharing their approval and disapproval and questions and comments and concerns, and it was great. But my statement about generation judgments came up more than anything else I said. 

"Do you really believe that?" 

"You know, young people really are not as capable as they were when I was young."

"There are some things you can say that are always true about kids today."

The beat when on. I had folks drumming on me for opinions about "kids today", asking for ideas and celebrating their grand conclusions. I mostly smiled and nodded, but frankly, it drove me back to my computer. I don't think I've left this poor machine for more than eight hours at a time over the last two weeks since I've been home. 

You see, I'm pounding out a manuscript for a book I'm tentatively calling The Freechild Project Complete Guide to Adultism. Just over a decade ago I learned about the systematic, cultural, and internalized oppression facing young people simply because they're young. I soaked in material written by Jenny Sazama and Barry Checkoway, among the little amount of literature available on the topic at that point. I made the Freechild webpage on adultism, and I used language surrounding it regularly. Today I'm continuing to write, and expect to be finished with this by Christmas. Its an exciting time for me.

Somewhere in all of this I'm finding a bold strength in my words, and really relishing writing. I hope that you don't mind the increased frequency of the blog; writing seems to be mixed in my blood. 

In the meantime, keep your eye open for other stuff coming soon, including the adultism book. So much happening. 

Heartspace is Revealing

I'm learning that Heartspace is revealing.

As I gain my full time occupation in the engine of personal engagement, my energy comes directly from that space between my brain and my heart to compels my days and ways. As opposed to my old lying mind or my tricky heart, both of which failed my senses more than once, I'm finding that Heartspace only knows the truth and only operates from truth. This is very revealing.

My words and actions are increasingly earnest. I hug people deeper. I speak more plainly. I find myself writing in more certain tones these days, like the warm caccoon of deliberate unknowingness is shedding away. I am becoming authentically closer to the people who I care about the most, and allowing those  who I am not really close with to go to the wayside.

There's a song that proposes, "When the soul wants, the soul waits." Heartspace is soul, and has shown me that when I don't wait for something, I don't really want it. My actions give away my so-called best intentions, no matter what the issue.

Welcome, emerging wisdom. This is a warm reward from moving into Heartspace, and I'm grateful for the unexpected revelations. Heartspace reveals itself differently to each of us. What is it showing you?