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Adam Fletcher
Reflections on a Long Day's Work
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On an average school day I sit through 4 or 5 meetings or trainings or some other event, everyday. I learn concepts and listen to grievances or struggle with challenges or pose critical questions, and sometimes- often- I simply listen when folks don't have other places to turn. My job is mostly about hand-holding, trying to encourage territorial creatures to lower their boundaries and systematic thinkers to be organic. Legislative policy and school building policy and everyday procedures that would seem to be human in their nature and human in their implementation seem to take on the weight of 1,000 elephants, each one trying to nudge the other from the room. I work to ensure they feel their place at a common conversation, one centered on the health and well-being of students themselves, rather than the social, political, cultural and economic agendas adults have for students.
I understand that a single jangle does not make a sound, so I work to help others understand this, as well. It is a struggle everyday to ensure that everyone feels their place at the table, finds common ground with their opposition, and builds commonality and trust around a common agenda. I try to convene, interpret, translate, and explore people's personal sentiment about their professional endeavors in order to help them find their individual benefit in collective action. Work styles and mandated goals be damned, as they often pose themselves as insurmountable obstacles along the way. Each has to arrive at their own paces.
The other week my dad told me there is a difference between the hungry man running after a rabbit in a field and the one sitting quietly in the bush waiting to pounce. My occupation today is teaching me to sit quietly.
This is my reflection on a long day's work.
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Learning About Learning
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You spend 10, 13, 17 years in school or more and you'd think everyone would learn exactly what they need to know in order to learn anything they needed to for the rest of their lives. Instead we're left feeling like John Lennon's "Working Class Hero" or the Dead Prez's "They Schools": resentment or cynicism about compulsory schooling fogs the minds of some, while numbed out superficiality claims many of the rest. Left somewhere else along the way are the few who learned to learn, for better or worse. Unfortunately they're the exception to the rule. Learning about learning isn't about the mechanical functioning of cognizance - but that's part of it. It isn't about multiple intelligences or social relationships or even student engagement - but they're all part of it. Learning about learning is a multifacited experience including self-evaluation, planning, learning through doing, reflection, and critical self-examination. Integrating this process into our programming for young people and our schools can only call out the higher purpose of education. Our future demands nothing less. -- This is Adam Fletcher's blog originally posted at http://www.YoungerWorld.org. For more see http://www.bicyclingfish.com
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Why "Youth Empowerment" Fails Us (for Maggie)
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A while back I wrote a post called Youth Involvement as a Kludge where I described how youth involvement programs can actually become bigger problems than they are solutions. My friend Maggie responded with the following question: I don't know how to become an equal [with youth] without losing my authority; how to give youth their power, without giving too much- is it even possible? Well, its been a month of Sundays, but I'm able to respond this morning. Let me start by saying that I think you've asked a valid question that's in the hearts and minds of many youth workers, Maggie, especially when we hear the drumbeat of Youth Voice and the call for youth involvement so frequently.
When I was young the youth workers in my neighborhood often talked to me about youth empowerment, and as I got older I explored the assumptions behind youth empowerment. I came to conclude that there is an ambiguity built into calls for youth empowerment that is inherently disenfranchising, both to the youth and the adults who are involved. "Youth empowerment" fails youth because there is no standard for it. I wrote a definition of it for Freechild's Guide to Social Change Led By and With Youth, stating that, "Youth empowerment is an attitudinal, structural, and cultural process whereby young people gain the ability, authority, and agency to make decisions and implement change in their own lives and the lives of other people, including youth and adults." But there is no consensus about the definition, as several different organizations, researchers and young people have put out their own definitions. Basically, the term means too many different things to too many different people. Many people will challenge that the intention is the same, and that's what I tried to capture with my own definition.
All the same, with that uncertainty comes a lot of room for interpretation. On one end of the spectrum are folks who attribute any amount of power-sharing with young people as youth empowerment. This can look like youth chosing the colors of their bedrooms, students planning homecoming dances and teens "getting" a new basketball court in their neighborhood. All these things have been labelled as youth empowerment. On the other end of the spectrum is the absolutism represented by the youth liberation movement: young people completely able to control their own destinies, with economic, spiritual, educational, politicial, recreational and social "freedom" to do whatever they want, wherever they want, whenever they want. I learned early that these dicotomous understandings aren't necessarily in opposition of each other; instead, they're locations along a spectrum. All that said Maggie, I think your question ultimately asks how you can find the balance, the midway point along that spectrum. The good news is that I don't think you have to chose - the challenging news is that I don't think the question you asked is an honest choice that anyone should have to make. Now I'll answer your questions within a question directly.
Let me say this unequivocally: Adults and youth cannot and should not be equals. There are practical reasons why nature has provided us with differences in our phsyco- and social metrics, with the child/parent/elder relationship intact in my thinking. This is a challenging thing for me to write, and if asked I'll provide some gray spaces and exceptions to the rule. However, for the most part I believe that all children and youth should be granted the permission, ability, resources and opportunities they need to be children and youth. Likewise, I believe that all adults should receive what they need to be adults, as well . In my reading of the literature, those definitions have been changing throughout modern times, from the European colonization of the Americas onwards, and those changes should be acknowledged and embraced for their inevitability and validity. I am a proponent of changing those roles myself. However, as our society stands today youth and adults should not be equals. I do believe there should be equity between youth and adults.
The authority adults have in society is assumed and granted by social custom and political institution. It is a false, yet logical, authority that grants power, access and reign simply because of age, rather than ability, knowledge, strength or widsom. The question of whether adults should ever lose their authority isn't necessarily the right one, because of the political/judicial systems that reinforce our social norms, customs and expectations. Courts hold adults responsible for the interest and well-being of youth, and no adult should be expected to sacrifice their legal compliance to meet the demands of a moral or ethical high ground. If an adult wants to do that it raises the question of appropriate adult allyship and the role of youth/adult partnerships; however, these are questions of gradation rather than absolutism. You don't have to lose your authority Maggie; instead, you have to recognize where the possibilities for power-sharing are possible. My Cycle of Youth Voice is designed for adults who want to do that.
In a new song U2 sings that, "Every generation gets a chance to change the world. Pity the nation that won't listen to your boys and girls - cos the sweetest melody is the one we haven't heard." Maggie, I think you are on your way to listening to this melody. But I want to make sure you're not overwhelmed by the chorus singing in the background. Do what you can for you, and what you can for Jenna, and everything will turn out exactly the way its supposed to. Good luck, and remember I'm here if you want more.
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Youth Voice Has No Limits
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- The tech-saavy girl at school builds a website about how students can run schools.That punk kid pulls out a marker and tags a locker on his way down the hall.
- Two fifth grades classes at the local elementary band together to replant the native vegetation down by the lake.
- A 16-year-old testifies in front of the state legislature against raising the driving age.
- Three teens protest the site of the new gravel plant in their rural community; within an hour 15 youth and adults join them.
- Brandy and Levon call the police when they witness a shooting.
- Miguel and Alejandro start a new hip hop band to speak out against youth unemployment.
Youth Voice has no limits - it simply exists. I have heard many advocates make the argument that we need more Youth Voice or that youth need to be at the table. On the other side adults complain that youth just don't care and that youth already have all the opportunities they need to be heard. Neither is exactly right, no matter what the situation.
In reality I believe that the efforts of individuals, organizations and communities designed that want to actively engage the "distinct ideas, opinions, attitudes, knowledge, and actions of young people" need to look no further than the ends of their noses. For me this gets to the very crux of the Youth Voice question: How can we meet young people where they are rather than insist they come to where we want them to be?
For as long as there has been a conversation about engaging Youth Voice, civic engagement organizations and community development programs and political parties and national service projects and government agencies have sought nothing more than to bring youth to where they want them to be. Voting booths would be full; trees would be planted and trash retrieved; town halls would be filled with youth, and; committees would have young representatives speaking on them. These familiar actions are complimented by the familiar issues addressed by youth. They'd talk about subjects we're familiar with in ways we're familiar with them, only with that particular enthusiasm adults easily attribute to young people.
I first started working with schools almost 10 years ago I spent a few years talking with teachers about engaging youth voice in the classroom. Almost immediately I ran into a core of teachers who always reported that they already did that. Not knowing any better, I easily dismissed them out-of-hand because I thought they didn't understand what I was trying to explain. Today I think I know what they meant - and it only took me 10 years!
I want to see this notion of Youth Voice better understood, and the only way I can think to demonstrate that is through my writing and training. What can you do?
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Wikipedia is Our Friend
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More than five years ago I registered on Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia that anybody can edit. Since then I have created more than 500 articles there, with more than 100 being featured on the front page of the website. I frequently refer to Wikipedia, not as an expert source of information, but as a source for potentially complex perspectives regarding some of the issues that are primary to the work of engaging young people throughout society.
I became fascinated with the potential of Wikipedia when the page I created on adultism became more popular than the page I created on adultism at the Freechild Project website. After that I started gunning at Wikipedia, writing dozens of articles, eventually leading me to create more than 100 articles on Wikipedia about youth-related topics, and collaborating with many other editors to edit 100s of others. I wrote about young people and adults I admired, organizations I was familiar with, and events that made a difference in the social history of young people in the U.S. and abroad. I spent hours and days laboring away, finding the research and other citations to support some of the basic assumptions I had about the key topics I was interested in, and learned a lot of new information about things I thought I already knew a lot about.
In these hours and days of research I found a new interest within me, one focused on the translatory capacity of Wikipedia: absent any other mainstream avenue for people to learn about the particularly advanced concepts in this area, including adultism, adultcentrism, ephebiphobia, children's rights, fear of children, evolving capacities and youth-adult partnerships, I decided to use Wikipedia as the way as the an access point. This led to a particularly pointed increase in Internet-wide traffic about these topics, as hits on the Freechild Project and SoundOut websites increased, and as the frequency and higher numbers of recent postings to blogs and other websites showed me.
This causes me, yet again, to encourage everyone to edit Wikipedia. We have to expand the knowledge base about this movement, field and culture we engender throughout our work, research, writing and activism. Wikipedia is our friend - let's do it right.
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Responses to "Youth Voice Movement"
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Several years ago I was asked to write an article for the National Youth Leadership Council's magazine. I posed the question of whether the Youth Voice movement was reality or just a fiction. A few months ago Tim Ladd, a consultant and media guru, posted a video to YouTube as a reply to my call for responses via Twitter.
I'd love to hear your response, either to Tim or the original article. Thanks!
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Examples of Meaningful Student Involvement
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I like to think that my radar is wide. A few years ago my colleagues at Youth On Board in Boston asked me to research the following information, and this morning I decided to share it here. There are descriptions of specific ways that schools can involve students in policy, curriculum, governance, and other aspects of school life.
There are several levels of decision-making that happen in schools, including those affecting individual classrooms, whole schools, citywide and regional districts, state education agencies, and the nationwide education system. Nationally there are a growing number of local schools where student involvement in decision-making is becoming the norm. Many districts have had policies that support student involvement for decades, although few are deliberately enforced. Almost half of all states have some form of student involvement in that level of decision-making, while there are few opportunities for students to be directly involved in national decision-making. I have identified two main approaches to student involvement: - Involve students directly in an existing adult activity, such as a special task force, school site council, or instructional leadership team.
- Set up an activity just for students, such as a student advisory board or a peer mediation group.
In some cases, you can incorporate both approaches: for example, have students on an adult task force, but also have a student action forum where students identify important issues the school should address. Remember that there is no “right” approach; you should consider what will work best for your school or education agency. Let me know what you think!
By working with education decision-makers, student advisory boards provide a direct way for adults to access the opinions, ideas, knowledge, and experiences of young people. In Boston, Massachusetts, the Boston Student Advisory Council, or BSAC, is a citywide body of student leaders representing their respective high schools. It serves as the voice of students to the Boston School Committee, the equivalent of a district school board. Student participants offer their perspectives on high school renewal efforts and inform their schools about relevant citywide school issues.
The responsibilities of local school site councils vary across the nation; however, many are responsible for creating and reviewing school improvement plans, making funding decisions, and hiring principals and administrators. Many have regular voting positions for students; some have representative non-voting positions only. In Gonzales, California, students on Gonzales High School’s Site Council have full voting rights, often making decisions on curricula, services for special needs students, teacher training, and more. There are 2 students on an 8-person board.
Most schools nationwide have some form of student government. It’s important to give students a voice in school issues and a chance to learn leadership and organizational skills. However, it is also important to give student governments real responsibility, and to remember that students can address education issues beyond those that students specifically. In Oakland, California, Oakland Unified School District has a unique program called the All-City Council Governing Board (ACCGB). It is comprised of eight student-elected student representatives and represents six different high schools. The students coordinates district-wide events, and represents OUSD students at various community and district events. Currently, student representatives on the ACCGB meet regularly with the state administrator to propose school improvements, and position themselves on district-wide decision-making committees.
The education reform movement has encouraged many schools to develop sustainable, effective methods for engaging a variety of partners in formal school improvement teams. These teams are increasingly recognizing the value of including students as partners. In Portland, Oregon, the Northwest Regional Education Lab, or NWREL, has piloted a powerful programs in schools in California and Oregon that promotes student voice in school improvement teams. Students contribute powerful, effective feedback to adults through structured student-led conversations, and students and adults work together to analyze the feedback and incorporate it into school improvement plans.
Student advisory boards have no governing authority but serve an official advisory capacity within a school or education agency, offering regular feedback and advice on student issues. In Arlington, Virginia, the Arlington Public School District School Board actively seeks input from students through the Student Advisory Board. The Student Advisory Board consists of high school students who provide a student voice on matters of importance to the School Board. They study important issues and make relevant recommendations to the School Board.
Task forces are short-term entities created to complete a special project (such as renovating school facilities) or to address an urgent problem (such as violence at school). Often task forces are organized when a school is given funding to be used for a specific purpose. These can be student groups or mixed groups of students and adults. In Bothell, Washington, students at the Secondary Academy for Success, a suburban alternative high school, facilitated a forum for 100 of their peers and students at other schools who wanted to contribute to the physical and philosophical restructuring of their school. Students led an all-day forum, with assistance from adults, and discussed the most relevant issues on their minds. They submitted a concise report to guide future efforts, and have been installed as permanent members on the school improvement team.
Students can take part in advising school policy committees regarding curricula, academic codes, hiring, budgeting, or other pertinent issues. Like student advisory boards, policy committees have an official, institutionalized role even though they do not necessarily create or implement policy. In Seattle, Washington, NOVA Project is a small alternative high school in the Seattle Public School District, created in 1970 by students and teachers. Committees addressing every policy-related issue govern the school through consensus based decision-making. Membership is voluntary and includes both staff and students, each of whom have an equal vote. Teachers serve on one or more committees, and model leadership skills. Student participation in committees gives young people a stake in their education, and encourages responsibility in their personal lives as well.
If you’re a headmaster or principal, you can form an Principal's Advisory Board by asking 6 to 10 students whom you respect to help you process the issues you encounter in your position. Ask them to give you good advice about how things are going in the school and how you can do your job better. Lead teachers or other school leaders can also form personal advisory boards. In Bethel, Connecticut, the Principal’s Advisory Group at Bethel High School launched in February 2000. It started out with 12 participating students, and in just three years, this decision-making group has grown to include more than 186 students and 13 sub-committees. This is a non-elected student body that will look at all aspects of life at Bethel High School. They will make suggestions and recommendations to the principal and Student Congress. Students address a variety of issues, including teacher hiring, the yearly master schedule, and planning key events at the school.
Students can be great staff members. Think about how your school can hire them. Students can be given the responsibility of planning an event or program, or acting as peer leaders in school activities. In Olympia, Washington, a national education program called Generation YES has engaged more than 100,000 students as teachers. Students in the GenYES program receive credit for teaching teachers how to use technology in their classrooms. Students also teach their peers and younger students to use technology in safe, effective ways.
Have students help you hire new teachers and staff members by making them members of the faculty hiring committee. In the final phases of the interviewing process, it’s very important to find out if a prospective teacher can relate well to students—and who better than students themselves to rate a candidate’s abilities in this area. Students don’t have the final say on hiring decisions (unless you want them to), but they can offer invaluable input. In Federal Hocking, Ohio, the local high school regularly includes students as members of teaching hiring committees as part of their commitment to building a democratic learning community. While the official mission is to help young people prepare for flexible career choices, active democratic citizenship, and lifelong learning, students understand what they are trying to accomplish in school, and they are making real choices about how to get it done.
Students can be powerful advocates for student involvement, as well as for other changes that students want in policy or governance. It makes a big difference for a student to say what students think; adults tend to listen to student advocates in a different way than we listen to each other. Student advocates can attend School Committee meetings and make presentations or proposals about their ideas. In the Bronx, New York, high school students with Sistas and Brothas United, a youth-led community organizing group, created an agenda for school change, and advocated for change at local school board meetings through presentations and rallies. Their work paid off: a small school has been established that is dedicated to the students’ social justice agenda.
Student trainers can be effective trainers for other students and/or adults. For instance, students can lead trainings around a special curriculum, such as interpersonal violence or environmental issues. On Vashon Island, Washington, students from StudentLink, the local alternative high school facilitated a service learning training event for teachers and youth workers from their community. Over two days student trainers taught about the basics of service learning, implementing a project, and assessing youth voice.
All of these approaches are tried and true, and assure that student involvement isn't just another tokenistic or simplistic process; rather, it is a powerful, effective avenue to assuring learning through school-focused action. Greater goals can occur, too. Let's find out what they are!
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Sustaining Youth Voice
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The keys to sustaining Youth Voice in schools, organizations or communities is complex - but impossible. Research shows the following elements as central to creating change that lasts. Policy- Create and foster systematic and sustainable engagement of Youth Voice. These policies can be community-wide and program-specific. Systems - Create or transform positions that embrace and promote Youth Voice. Regular staff positions, board membership or adjunct opportunities DO matter. Instruction - Teach your adults (and children and youth) well. Provide sequential, developmentally appropriate and constructivist training activities about Youth Voice, barriers to meaningful youth involvement, and taking action. Climate - Actively work to transform the way your community or organization feels. Key messages and healthy behaviors focused on engaging Youth Voice are important. Funding - Don't short change Youth Voice. Providing adequate support demonstrates commitment to young people and adults. Evaluation - Youth Voice is often relegated to the bins of "feel good" and "interesting" by decision-makers. However, research by Zeldin, Camano, Mitra and others clearly shows the significance of engaging young people. Advocates must grow comfortable using this data to demonstrate the substance of Youth Voice. Ongoing Support - Youth Voice isn't a one-time or coincidental thing. Instead it must be a deliberate and ongoing process that must be expansive and adaptive, responding to the urgencies and needs of everyone involved. I'm excited to help schools, districts, organizations and government agencies as they embark on this work. I also regularly share my partners, colleagues and allies' info, too. Let me know what YOU need to succeed! -- This is Adam Fletcher's blog originally posted at http://www.YoungerWorld.org. For more see http://www.bicyclingfish.com
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8 Keys to Sustaining Youth Voice
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Sustaining Youth Voice in schools, organizations or communities is complex - but not impossible. Research shows the following 8 keys are central to creating change that lasts in any organization's climate. - Policy- Create and foster systematic and sustainable engagement of Youth Voice. These policies can be community-wide and program-specific.
- Systems - Create or transform positions that embrace and promote Youth Voice. Regular staff positions, board membership or adjunct opportunities DO matter.
- Instruction - Teach your adults (and children and youth) well. Provide sequential, developmentally appropriate and constructivist training activities about Youth Voice, barriers to meaningful youth involvement, and taking action.
- Climate - Actively work to transform the way your community or organization feels. Key messages and healthy behaviors focused on engaging Youth Voice are important.
- Programs - Develop and maintain specific programs designed to emphasize and encourage Youth Voice within your organization and the larger community. Encourage that program to act as the vanguard for Youth Voice in your community, and constantly demonstrate their relevance to larger organizational goals.
- Funding - Don't short change Youth Voice. Providing adequate support demonstrates commitment to young people and adults.
- Evaluation - Youth Voice is often relegated to the bins of "feel good" and "interesting" by decision-makers. However, research by Zeldin, Camano, Mitra and others clearly shows the significance of engaging young people. Advocates must grow comfortable using this data to demonstrate the substance of Youth Voice.
- Ongoing Support - Youth Voice isn't a one-time or coincidental thing. Instead it must be a deliberate and ongoing process that must be expansive and adaptive, responding to the urgencies and needs of everyone involved.
I'm excited to help schools, districts, organizations and government agencies as they embark on this work. I also regularly share my partners, colleagues and allies' info, too. Let me know what YOU need to succeed!
-- This is Adam Fletcher's blog originally posted at http://www.YoungerWorld.org. For more see http://www.bicyclingfish.com
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Minority Youth Voice
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I am well aware that "Youth Voice" is a misnomer. About a million years ago I started complaining to my work allies and friends that the phrase means absolutely nothing, because its so grossly homogenized, bland and common. After more than 5 years sitting in that frame of mind I decided to adopt the phrase, mostly because of it's commonality among programs. Youth-led media programs, meaningful student involvement programs, participatory action research programs and youth activism programs all talk about Youth Voice, and who am I to go against their hard work? The research literature that surrounds this work also concentrates on Youth Voice, and the good efforts of my allies who do that work matters to me, too. I respect all of this work.
That said, I want to talk about minority Youth Voice today. The reason why I begin with an explanation of my opinion about the phrase is that I believe that refering to "the distinct ideas, opinions, attitudes, knowledge, and actions of young people" as a collective body inherently disenfranchises the minority opinion among those young people who are being refered to. And I wrote this definition of the term, so my work inherently disenfranchises young people.
The reason why I say that is that in this sense Youth Voice serves as a form of r epresentative democracy, actively engaging those who care and deliberately neglecting those who do not care. That's a tough pill to swallow for some folks, but it doesn't take much to see how this plays out in the United States. And I believe the consequence of this neglect is a type of imposed apathy. This is true with Youth Voice.
Now, the danger of this line of thought is that it may appear to relegate minorities to being apathetic, and that is simply not true: sometimes it is the smallest sectors of a population that are most engaged in the decision-making that affects them. I may also risk seeming like I'm equating democracy and Youth Voice to a popularity contest or a shouting contest, and that, well, that may be true. I just don't want to sound too cynical, because its important to me that readers understand I believe in democracy - its just that I believe in a much more radical form that what we're currently acquainted with, which perfectly segues into the next point.
"Minority" isn't simply about race, although that is a part of the equation. Instead, the phrase "minority Youth Voice" refers to any instance when difference and dissent go against the grain of popular culture. Young people themselves are a minority in the United States. While African Americans, Hispanic/Latinos and American Indians are a minority, there are minorities within those populations as well. Even within a racially homogeneous school there may be gender, cultural, religious and educational minorities. There are oppressive relationships between majority and minority populations everywhere, and the active engagement of Youth Voice should be a tool in the toolbelt of every responsible adult who is committed to defeating oppression of all forms.
Engaging Youth Voice encourages young people to come to the forefront so that their "distinct ideas, opinions, attitudes, knowledge, and actions" can challenge and be challenged in the open forums of democracy, whether in classrooms, homes, governments, nonprofit agencies, or other cultural transmission sites throughout our society. This may be the most important thing I've written in a long time, because that is why Youth Voice matters. By actively challenging and being challenged in those forums, young people become acknowledge as the civic actors they are - particularly when they represent any form of minority Youth Voice. On a base level this demonstrates to adults that the passion, excitement, commitment and energy of children and youth can serve the collective good; in a more sophisticated way, this action transmits to adults the core relevance of actively engaging minorities throughout the democracy which we all occupy.
I can expand on this further, and perhaps you can too, seeing how adultism and ephebiphobia play central to the defeat of democracy. Maybe later. In the meantime I hope we can all further expand on why and how minority Youth Voice matters in our own life. That's how we can make this real.
can be challenged.
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