Just because they are not adults, children and youth can be:

• ...listened to, read, or viewed without permission in all their private communications. 


• ...restricted in their communications. 


• ...sent to their rooms.


• ...made to take time outs. 


• ...cut off from their money and credit cards without their permission.


• ...limited in their ability to drive.


• ...forced to drive.


• ...kept from their personal property.


• ...robbed of their personal property or have it damaged without compensation.


• ...prevented from leaving.


• ...searched at anytime, either through their belongings or their rooms searched.


• ...violated and have their privacy taken away.   


• ...restricted in their Internet use.


• ...restricted in their television use.


• ...restricted in their access to videos, CDs, books, or other media.


• ...prevented from getting a tattoo or piercing.


• ...forced to get a tattoo or piercing.


• ...made to cut their hair. 


• ...forced to wear their hair a certain way.


• ...prevented from wearing makeup.


• ...made to wear makeup or wear it a certain way. 


• ...stopped from using perfumes or colognes.


• ...made to use perfumes or colognes.


• ...prevented from wearing certain clothing. 


• ...forced to wear certain clothing.


• ...stopped from contacting or associating with certain people.


• ...forced to contact or associate with certain people.


• ...spanked, paddled, or hit you (other than in play).


• ...forced to lower the volume of your music or stop making noise.


• ...restricted in their social activities.


• ...made to participate in certain social events.


• ...made to have an abortion.


• ...prevented from having an abortion.


• ...prevented from smoking.


• ...made to smoke.


• ...prevented from drinking alcohol.


• ...prevented from using drugs.


• ...prevented from taking medication.


• ...made to drink alcohol.


• ...made to use drugs.


• ...made to take medication.


• ...prevented from eating.


• ...made to eat.


• ...made to travel.


• ...prevented from traveling.


• ...made to work.


• ...prevented from working. 


• ...made to get a job.  


• ...made to quit a job.


• ...made to shower or bathe.


• ...prevented from showering or bathing.


• ...made to cook.


• ...prevented from cooking.


• ...made to clean.


• ...prevented from cleaning.


• ...made to do household chores.


• ...kept from doing household chores.


• ...made to be silent.


• ...made to speak.


• ...subjected to a curfew.


• ...made to do yardwork.


• ...prevented from doing yardwork.


• ...made to go to bed.


• ...kept from sleep.


• ...restricted in their dating activities.


• ...made to date someone.


• ...made to attend school.


• ...made to stop attending school.


• ...made to quit school.


• ...made to get certain grades.


• ...made to take certain courses.


• ...made to enter a certain profession.


• ...prevented from entering a certain profession.


• ...made to see a therapist.


• ...prevented from seeing a therapist.


• ...forced to see a medical doctor.


• ...prevented from seeing a medical doctor.


• ...made to have surgery


• ...prevented from having surgery.


• ...forced to undergo an extreme medical treatment.


• ...forced to enter a treatment facility.


• ...prevented from entering a treatment facility.


• ...threatened with arrest.


• ...violated by having the contents of their computer or other electronic device examined. 


• ...made to participate in religious activities.


• ...stopped from participating in religious activities.


• ...forced to join a particular religion.


• ...prevented from joining a particular religion.


• ...made to exercise or play certain sports.


• ...prevented from exercising or playing certain sports. 


• ...prevented from getting into certain areas of their homes.


• ...restricted in their hobbies.


• ...shouted at.


• ...insulted.


• ...pushed.


• ...blocked physically.


• ...physically restrained.


• ...restricted in their diets.


• ...kicked out of their bedrooms.


• ...kicked out of their homes.


• ...made to live somewhere they don't want to live. 


• ...robbed of their money legally by parents or guardians.


• ...told how to spend their time.


• ...hurt physically.


• ...shouted at with orders.


• ...threatened.


• ...made to commit a crime.


• ...made to join or quit a gang


• ...stopped from joining or quitting a gang.


• ...made to join or quit a group or organization.


• ...prevented from joining or quitting a group or organization.


• ...forced to harm others.


• ...bribed to do things.


• ..."checked-in" on without permission


• ...forced to be in contact.


• ...spied on with electronic devices and Internet applications.


• ...forced to hurt themselves.


• ...prevented from helping others.


• ...forced to help people they don't want to help? 


• ...forced to marry someone.


• ...prevented from marrying someone.


• ...humiliated in front of other people.


• ...ignored when they speak. 


• ...blamed for things that weren’t their fault. 


• ...subjected to decisions made for them without them every moment of everyday.


• ...forced to move a certain way.


• ...made to feel inferior.


• ...subjected to rumors spread about them.


• ...corrected.


• ...manipulated


• ...criticized.


• ...forced to feel guilty. 

A student wrote today to ask the following:

Since you are involve in youth orgs I would like to ask you how traditional politics affect them? 

Your question could have two kinds of answers: One about youth orgs in general, and one about young people specifically. 





Politics affect youth organizations in a lot of different ways. Here in the U.S. politics are currently tearing at the fabric of a lot of youth orgs, as local, state, and federal governments are cutting budgets to a variety of programs, and often making choices not based on constituents' desires or research, but rather on the delicate game of political roulette they so often play.





Politics affect young people directly in a variety of ways. As the objects of political decision-making, the entirety of all young peoples' lives are affected from birth to death. Birthing, early childhood education and childcare, schooling, after school programs, social service programs... all of these are determined by politics... Politics is endemic throughout the lives of all young people, any age, any social class or economic state, or educational background. 

What values do you see they acquire from traditional politics and how does participation affect their political leanings?

Traditional politics, meaning the government structures and political climates that predominate our societies, have demonstrated to many young people the ineptitude and inability of government decision-makers to affect positive social change. In my experience working with young people of color and low-income youth in the U.S. and Canada, a growing number of young people are feeling disenfranchised with those inabilities. There are positive lessons in politics, at the core of the process: democratic participation can positively shape the core value of every person living in a society. However, the lessons many young people learn through their routine exclusion from voting and holding elected positions is that the government does not care about their voices. Worse still, by defunding and eliminating many programs for young people, the government is showing young people that they do not care about them personally. This will arch the curve of young peoples' "political leanings" for generations, and the outcomes still have to be shown.





Thanks for writing with your questions - please feel free to ask me any others!

I'm sitting in the cold steel and glass of another city hall somewhere out here in America. There have been dozens of these types of visits for me over the last decade, working and participating in meetings, forums, panels, and workshops held by well-meaning government workers. I have cringed at many of these; enjoyed a few; scoffed at a couple.

There are people for whom these environments are perfectly suited. They may be list-makers or note-takers; policians and wheeler-dealers; doers of all stripes. They may be career government workers, or movement-driven activistas. These are the folks occupying a lot of goverment positions, as elected, appointed, and hired employees.

Admittedly, at this point in my life I know I'm not so well-suited for government work. For all the time I've spent working in and with the system, I've come to understand that I find the machinations of government to be restrictive and confining of the energy I have.

All that said, this is how I've come to understand youth involvement over the last ten years: there are some young people for whom the rigamorol of traditional youth involvement is perfectly suited. The youth advisory committee meetings and youth forums work well for these youth; service learning programs and youth philanthropy activities just make sense.

But just like me as a government worker, for a large group of youth these activities just don't work. They are too restrictive and binding. Does that mean they should simply be excluded from youth engagement outreach activities? I'd suggest otherwise. Instead, these youth should be appealed to even more so than their cooperative peers. It's their voices that are routinely excluded or repressed, and their actions that could make all the difference in our community-building efforts.

Rachel Jackson, an organizer with the Ella Baker Center in California, once said, "Our youth are not failing the system; the system is failing our youth. Ironically, the very youth who are being treated the worst are the young people who are going to lead us out of this nightmare." She was right. Let's bring them in now, and let them lead. Our world cannot wait any longer.


-- This is Adam Fletcher's blog originally posted at http://www.YoungerWorld.org. For more see http://www.bicyclingfish.com

Since 1979, Roger Holdsworth has published a bi-monthly magazine in Victoria, Australia, called Connect. Connect aims to support active student participation in school leadership and throughout classes in primary and secondary schools throughout Australia. The stories throughout the magazine are excellent, and regularly provide me inspiration for continuing on in this hard journey we are traveling on this side of the Pacific. Roger has even been so kind to include an article I wrote and to promote several of the publications I've written.



Today I received my February 2010 edition, and as usual my imagination is alighted with all the great stories throughout it. (I usually read each issue twice, devouring it when it first arrives and then picking through it until the next one arrives.) However, of all the articles it was the cover this month that caught my eye. The following questions that can help educators connect with students, from Connect. 

• How would you do things differently?


• What do you think engages and disengages students?


• What level of choice do students have in classes?


• How can students be more involved in planning learning experiences?


• Who are the experts on disengagement where you are?


• How would you measure the engagement of students?


• How could you encourage others to learn more about engagement?


• What other ways could you change engagement?


• How would you run a research project looking at engagement in your school?


• Are there engagement patterns in your school and classes?


• Do students have a voice in the structure of the school?

These are all questions answered by Connect's booklet called "Switched On to Learning: Student Initiatives in School Engagement." Written by students in primary schools in Australia, the book uses cartoons to teach readers about what engagement is, how it can be measured, and why it is important.



All this is to say that these efforts are truly global. In my own research I've found work focused on student voice and student engagement from more than two dozens countries. Want to learn more? Send an email to adam@soundout.org - and watch this blog - more coming soon!

I am going through notes from workshops over the last few years. One of the questions I ask in youth involvement workshops is What pitfalls are there to youth involvement? Following are several of the answers that have been shared repeatedly over more than a dozen workshops with hundreds of adults across the country.

• Potential to get off topic


• Increase in upfront planning time


• More time needed for ongoing operations, including reflection


• Additional time to plan with youth needed for staff


• Difficult to find planning time that works for youth


• Stigmas about youth involvement


• Adultism manifesting itself as tension between youth and adults


• Adults not sensitive to youth readiness for involvement


• Adults uncomfortable with youth involvement


• Adults not wanting youth to be involved


• Youth fearful of formal meeting setting


• Youth who manipulate the planning processes


• Youth involvement becomes negative

In the last few years I've been asking a lot of young people what it is they want in order to be ready for youth involvement activities. Following are some of the points I've drawn out from my notes to share how to prepare youth for youth involvement. 

• Discuss youth involvement with youth


• Discuss what youth need and want to work on


• Review information with youth to identify actions, goals and outcomes


• Discuss modifications, accomodations and supports youth need with youth


• Prepare youth for what will happen during the activities


• Mutually decide the level of involvement with the youth


• Role play youth involvement with youth, and provide practice as needed (individually or in a group)


• Give explicit instruction on youth involvement activities (Individually or in a small group)


• Teach skills such as communication and presentation, leadership and management, marketing, training, project and time management, active listening, team building, and personal development


• Plan together for when involved youth become adults


• Support youth with a scaffold for involvement, and as appropriate remove supports for individual students.

These are steps young people have identified for themselves. What do you think needs to be added?

Yesterday I had the opportunity to talk with a colleague whose youth involvement program is being devastated by funding cuts. In addition to forcing her to leave her job, this is also going to directly affect the dozens of young people she works with and the community they serve through their youth involvement activities.



This forces me to think about the reciprocal effects of youth involvement: Involved in a prevention/intervention program for at least a year now, these young people serve as social network hubs who, in addition to reducing or eliminating the impacts of drugs and alcohol on their own lives, are working to promote increased awareness among their peers through media campaigns, training, and direct interactions with young people their own age. They are learning the skills of youth involvement along the way.



Without this activity these same young people, who generally come from homes that are highly impacted by addictive behaviors, loose their connections to the safe, supportive and empowering environments they've come to expect through this youth involvement activity. Their positive connection with the larger social message of impacting their peers and helping society is severed. The meaning-making they participated in constantly with powerful adult allies is unfortunately negated, as they are turned back towards the society they sought to assist with the hyper-exaggerated message that, "Whatever you were doing wasn't valuable enough to us to continue."



All of this speaks nothing of the actual impact the program itself had on the larger community, where impact assessments had shown substantive change in these behaviors over the previous ten years the program had been operating. All this speaks nothing of the impact of the program on the host organization, which has been forced to face the adultism inherent in it's everyday operations because of the significant impact this program had on overall agency culture and the staff's commitment to addressing adultism.



Now, in the face of budget cuts at the local, state, and federal levels, we are seeing the brutal elimination of funding for youth involvement programs of all kinds. Simultaneously, we're seeing the broad divestment of foundations from youth involvement initiatives, as well. Surely these aren't targeted at youth involvement specifically; instead, the active disengagement of young people is a bi-product of cuts that have to be made. Unfortunately, the limited vision of the decision-makers involved and the inability of funding advocates to clearly iterate the crucial necessity of youth involvement specifically is going to impact far more than a few well-meaning, but overly ambitious efforts here and there. Instead, these cuts are laying a foundation for the future of civic, cultural, and social engagement throughout the U.S. and around the world. Without programs that deliberately set about changing the dominant paradigm of adultcentrism our society is going to continue on its negative patterns of disconnection, cynicism, and utter disabling of young peoples' interest and ability to affect the families, communities, cultures, and societies they belong to.



We need more than money for youth involvement. We need to tell our story better. We need to tell the truth more often. We need to get real.

In 2003 I was interviewed by a doctoral candidate at an Ivy League school for her dissertation on youth involvement in social justice movements. Following are some thoughts I shared with her worth sharing.

Question: So many of a person’s ideas and opinions about the world change- sometimes radically- over the course of childhood and adolescence. In your experience, how old does a person generally need to be before their understanding of issues is “sound”? Have you known children who were, say, younger than 8, who you felt had firmly-grounded and informed opinions of social justice issues?

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

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

Regarding your question about denoting an age of understanding, I think that there is a particular danger in saying, “[X] is the age.”  That would give many adults permission to continue bombarding young people with the purposeless and meaningless activities that fill so much of their time already.  I have seen extremely young people with extremely intelligent perspectives about social change; and again, I’ve seen many adults with extremely shallow understandings.  Age shouldn’t be the determining factor for engaging people in social change work; interest and investment should be.

Question: It’s very common to see young children holding signs or shouting slogans at all sorts of social and political actions -- from KKK rallies to pro-life demonstrations to anti-war marches. How would you distinguish between adults allowing and encouraging children to share their voice, and adults using children as propaganda for their own causes?

Adam: I think that by focusing on the whether young peoples’ involvement is authentic, a lot of adults are let “off the hook” because they don’t know how to give children and youth their own space to speak, or how to engage them in community space.  This is a form of scapegoating that easily reinforces the supposed “enigma” of involving young people.

The real questions here may be, “Do we really want to hear the voice of young people?” and “Are we really looking for young people who take risks and make decisions?” 

After all, getting our adult ideas out of young people’s mouths is a ventriloquist’s trick, not a sign of meaningful involvement and young people’s autonomy.  As a whole, society has so many attitudinal and structural barriers to young people’s participation that the question of whether or not young people participate at all needs to be answered first. 

Another question that should be asked is why are we considering young peoples’ involvement in protests and rallies, and not their further infusion throughout the “movement” as a whole?  Where are young people in the planning and decision-making processes?  In the recruitment and training of organizers and participants?  My experience has shown me that it is vital to young peoples’ participation to move beyond tokenism and decoration, and their further involvement as leaders, teachers, and organizers throughout social justice. 

I have found that youth involvement in activism is regularly trivialized by well-meaning adults who, without conscious effort, often perpetuate discrimination through “ageism,” patently denying young people the opportunity to participate meaningfully simply because of their age.  The movement for peace and social justice must move from seeing children and youth as decorations and start seeing them as partners.

The Freechild Project’s webpage at http://freechild.org/SIYI is packed with useful tips on how to involve young people throughout organizations and activism.

 Question: When the U.S. underwent school desegregation, armed guards sometimes had to escort children into school lest they be attacked. During anti-apartheid demonstrations in the 1970s, white anti-riot police were photographed beating child protesters with clubs. Even in non-violent demonstrations, people are often injured by objects thrown by counter-protesters, or merely because of crowding. So children involved in actions have, in some instances, faced real threats to their safety. Do you think that it’s appropriate for children’s safety to be put at risk by involving them in marches, picketing, and similar actions?

Adam: As a way of re-envisioning this question, let me ask: Is it appropriate that in the richest country in the world, every night tens of thousands of kids go to sleep without a roof over their head?  Is it appropriate that there are sweatshops across the U.S. that rely on child labor, 60 years after it was banned? Millions of young people across the country routinely attend schools that are falling apart, go to classes with teachers who are apathetic to their students and underpaid for their work, and rely on leadership from politicians who attend to their highest bidder instead of their constituencies.  Are any of those situations appropriate?  In many cases it has been up to young people to bring adults’ attention to issues of injustice. In one particularly poignant example, young people in the Philadelphia Students Union have led their communities in organizing for increased school funding, alternative school curricula, teacher pay raises, and more.

Another poignant example from the civil rights movement:  In 1963 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. explicitly allowed and encouraged young people to march along with him for the first time during protests in Birmingham, Alabama.  On May 2, 1963, over one thousand black children descended upon Birmingham. Close to nine hundred students were arrested, but a reserve army of close to twenty-five hundred demonstrated the following day. Bull Connor, who had up until this point "restrained" from violence against protesters, ordered firemen to use their hoses on the protesters and onlookers. As the youth fled from the power of the hoses, Connor directed officers and their dogs to pursue them.  Guard dogs were sent into the crowd.  Because people saw pictures on television and in newspapers, the whole world was horrified.  A month later President Kennedy said he was introducing a civil rights bill to Congress that promised freedom for all.  While no singular act moved Kennedy to take action, the images of children and youth being treated savagely pushed the majority of Americans over the edge.  For the first time the average white American saw that the ravages of racism reached beyond the grown African Americans of the South and into the youngest members of society.  Was putting those young peoples’ safety at risk worth it to the movement? 

And therein lies the crux of the issue – whether or not young people truly understand why they are protesting.  Similar to many adults, children and youth often believe that they are doing something for the “good” of doing it, often without exploring the meaning or purpose of their actions.  This is how missionary-style service work has grown so popular in the U.S.  Many community-based organizations actually exploit the oppressions of low-income communities and people of color in order to further their “service” work!  In many of these same organizations young people are used as “safe” volunteers, picking up trash, serving homeless people meals, coloring pictures for grocery stores and politicians to hang in their windows.  Is this meaningful activism?  No.  Is it “safe”?  Yes.  Are young people told that it is valuable?  Sure!  And these things do have value – to the adults who are leading the activities they reinforce their power over children!  To the recipients of the service they exhibit young peoples’ “proper” places in society (seen and not heard, etc).  While this sounds sarcastic, I hope you understand the point I’m trying to make: young people need to be seen and heard.  A youth-led organization in the San Francisco Bay area has a t-shirt slogan I love, “Young people can be the leaders of tomorrow – if we procrastinate.”  And that’s the truth.

There are several challenges to overcome when we're advocating youth involvement. Following is one way I've been examining those barriers for almost a decade, based on the work of Alfie Kohn.





Kohn says that structural impediments are a barrier to involving youth in decision-making. Adults working with youth frequently protest that they would love to open up the decision-making process but for the fact that a significant number of decisions are not theirs to give away or even to make themselves. Highly controlling organizations and programs may leave youth workers very little discretion about either programmatic or disciplinary issues. Often, adults subject to rigid directives from above may find it easier not "to resist administrators but to increase controls on the youth they work with."





Resistance by adults offers another barrier. While structural constraints are sometimes very real, they can also be used as excuses to withhold power from youth that adults in any case are not inclined to share. The traditional youth program model sees adults as the king or queen of the program, and the fact is that monarchs do not always abdicate gracefully. No wonder many schoolroom teachers who express relief at having "a good class this year" use the word good as parents of a newborn might talk about having "a good baby" -- that is, one who is quiet, docile, and little trouble to manage. Sometimes, however, the main barrier to giving young people choices is a simple lack of gumption. Parting with power is not easy, if only because the results are less predictable than in a situation where we have control. Asking youth to decide about even the simplest issues can be scary.





The last barrier Kohn addresses is resistance by youth. Most discouragingly, adults sometimes find that their willingness to let young people make decisions is met with an apparent reluctance on the part of the youths. This is really not so surprising, given that most of them have been conditioned to accept a posture of passivity at school and sometimes at home. After a few years of being instructed to do what you're told, it is disconcerting to be invited - much less expected - to take responsibility for the way things are. This resistance takes three primary forms. The first is simply refusing: "That's your job to decide," students may protest. The second is testing: offering outrageous suggestions or responses to see if the teacher is really serious about the invitation to participate. The third is parroting: repeating what adults have said or guessing what this adult probably wants to hear. (Thus a fifth-grader asked to suggest a guideline for class conduct may recite, "We should keep our hands and feet to ourselves.")





Of course, whether the last point is true - whether we really are looking for students who take risks and make decisions - is the first question that each of us must answer. The structural and attitudinal barriers erected by educators often seem impregnable, with the result that students continue to feel powerless and, to that extent, burned out. For decades, prescriptions have been offered to enhance student motivation and achievement. But these ideas are unlikely to make much of a difference so long as students are controlled and silenced.