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Adam Fletcher
Youth Voice at Home
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I am continually amazed by the inherent power of talking about Youth Voice at home. Whether I'm getting into a heated conversation with my own mother, talking with other parents, or pondering the idea with youth workers or teachers, conversations continuously pack intensity, presence and possibility. Almost everytime I've began this talk the talk has become intensified, as there are a lot of loaded issues, passionate perspectives and impregnated experiences that occupy the closets of each of our imaginations, memories and ideas. Mmm, mmm, mmm.
When I talk about Youth Voice at home I am talking about changing the roles of young people within the house. Its not as easy as giving children and youth a place to sit at the dinner table or a say over where, how, when and why their money is spent, although each of those is a component of changing the roles. Rather, I'm talking about a comprehensive re-imagining of the roles, responsibilities and rights of young people throughout the households where they live.
This is a practical consideration more than a philosophical or theoretical one. After these most recent of years of working intensely with a wide range of communities across the US and Canada, I have come to believe that our society is facing a dilemma. More rapidly than ever before in the history of our society the technical and social skills of young people are evolving. This isn't intended to be a value judgment about the value or deficit inherent in that evolution; rather its simply an observation. That evolution was carefully constructed with both the sociological and technological developments of the 1960s: protest became reaffirmed as a right and laptops became realized as a reality. With this evolution is a growing gap between young people and adults. There is only way we, as a society, can bridge that gap: by transitioning the roles of young people throughout society from that of passive recipient to active partner.
So far the Youth Voice movement has carefully examined a number of different institutions in our communities, including government, schools, community organizations and churches. However, we have largely neglected the home setting. There have been other agents calling for familial change that looks conspicuously similar to the Youth Voice movement, but none from within our ranks.
In the next year I'm going to move my analysis in that direction as I continue to work on book proposals for publishers. Stick with me, share your ideas and lets see how deep we can take this work.
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| December 25, 2008 | 10:12 AM |
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A Seat at the Dinner Table?
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 For a long time there has been a group of Youth Voice advocates in the U.S., Canada and around the world who call for young people to have a proverbial "seat at the table." This has meant a whole lot, from being on boards of directors and having leadership roles in nonprofits to being able to raise issues in town halls and sitting on the editorial boards for newspapers. Well, as the holiday season bares down for me and my family I'm thinking about seats for children and youth at the dinner table. That may seem kind of blasé or passé to the sophisticates who read this blog; I guess this entry isn't for you.
Why the Dinner Table  I believe the most significant road Youth Voice advocates can walk is the family way: the majority of any young person's time, the depth of influence and the sustainability of instinct and behavior from the home setting cannot be matched anywhere else in society. If we can change the way parents treat children and youth, and transition the ways young people behave and believe, we can change the world. And the simple fact of the matter is that adultism informs the most basic of household decisions during holidays, from the ornaments on Christmas trees to the rules for playing the dreidel to the crafts made for Kwanzaa. Right now I want to consider that seat at the table.
Let's think about what that looks like: Its a holiday meal anytime of year where a family gathers to share food, tell stories and connect as blood in the same brood and from the same genetic pool (generally). Its an important time that religion, culture, and popular media reaffirms as important to our society. Routinely that mealtime includes immediate and extended family, close friends, neighbors, workmates, and others who are in our hearts or minds, who matter to us in some way.
Why is it, then, that we routinely segregate children from the "main" dinner table with a specially-designated "kids table"? Whether the breakfast nook in the kitchen, a card table in the living room or a picnic in the family room, the simple reality behind this routine differentiation can seem more than convenient to young people: instead is can be demeaning and alienating, serving as an indictment of age. There are disguises and tricks families can use to lessen the blow of being sentenced to the kids table; however, none of these eases the perception of young people who are aware of this differentiation. You might cite some of the litany of reasons: " some peace and some time to catch up without constant interruptions," " adult talk," manners or tradition.
Four Types of Tables
One part of my family lives in rural Alberta, where they all gather annually for Christmas dinner. My mom says one regular phenomenom there is the "kids choosing to sit wherever they want, and they all sit at one table." This is self-segregation, which can be seen as an expression of strongly internalized oppression, or conversely a strong statement of self-empowerment.
My friend Danny told me that some of her most fond memories are from family dinners with kids' tables, where good times were had. She's not alone, as this writer says, "I loved the sense of connection it gave me with my cousins, some of whom I only saw a few times a year." Built into that were lessons about appropriate age relations (read: pecking order?) and other forms of familial bonding. There is a sense of relief from having to "act your age" that is tangible at many kids tables, as well.
Maternal-ish figures sitting correctly and men waiting to watch football and kids getting their fingers smacked for smooshing the whipped jello are a reality in many homes, too. These age-inclusive tables may be experienced as oppressive, too, as the young people sitting there may be expected to be "seen and not heard" or to behave like "little adults."
There are other tables where children and youth are treated with respect. I can remember plenty of times in my own house when my brother and I shoveled the mashed potatoes higher than the tallest guests' head at holiday dinner, and my parents permitting our age appropriate behavior within reason. And the adults at our table, parents and their friends included, were generally cool. That's what I'm aiming for in this post: appropriately age-inclusive behaviors in an age-inclusive environment.
And there are clearly anonomolies and other oddities. It seems there is a " cultural lag from the 1950s" childless adults and singles are forced to sit at kids table. There are also a lot of stories about precocious youth who "earn" their ways to adult tables by talking "like a grown-up" or otherwise behaving differently than their peers.
Challenging Adultism at the Table  There is a quote from Malcolm X where, referring to the Civil Rights Movement, he says something to the effect of, "We don't want just a seat at the counter - we want to own the counter." I am a fan of this particular sentiment for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is the self-realization inherent in the idea: "we" could mean children and youth, and "the counter" could mean their lives. But I'm not calling for young people to take over the holiday dinner table. Instead, I'm asking that we reconsider and reconcieve of what form that place takes in our households. Ultimately the question of where and how and who and why a households sit together for holidays have to be answered by each family for themselves. Culture, heritage, obligation and pride are powerful forces that each adult needs to recognize and acknowledge, as do young people. However, none of those should be used as a crutch to lean on when it comes to adultism. As other people have suggested, adultism may be a "base" form of oppression that is learned from our infanthood, internalized and perpetuated through the rest of our lives. Creating safe and supportive familial environments is elemental in challenging adultism, and any committed Youth Voice advocate may find these steps elemental to challenging adultism at the table: Integrate young people one your collective terms. Everyone comes to the table to eat, celebrate, be observant or otherwise comingle. Young people should be taught the value of that from the youngest age, and encouraged to contribute to the tradition however they seat fit, as well as how adults see fit. If they suggest they make place settings like at school, or make a dish, or tell a few jokes, or simply participate in conversation about their favorite topics, then make it known to everyone at the table that is what and how and who your table is. Identify why you want young people to have a seat at the dinner table. It can be enough to simply say, "Pull up a chair" and make a space for a young person at your table, if you have a small dinner and simple gathering. However, if you are seating for forty and looking at integrating every an adult among every third child then perhaps you should be more deliberate when introducing that integration to the rest of the family. Have a clear goal in mind, and before the meal starts share that reason with your dinner table. That way people cannot deride you for being tricky or dumb. Sustain the seat. Don't let integrated tables end at the holidays. Instead, work to make them a fixture at all large gatherings your family or community has every year. This can lead to powerful connections being made beyond holidays and throughout the rest of the lives of young people. In turn, this gets back to the necessity of having a seat at the dinner table: it reinforces the notion that young people are significant enough contributors to society to be acknowledged everyday. These steps provide a start. Let's go there, and please share your stories related to young people having a seat at the dinner table!
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| December 22, 2008 | 5:12 AM |
| December 20, 2008 | 1:12 AM |
| December 19, 2008 | 3:12 AM |
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US Students Take Over College
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The following is reposted from my ally and friend Dana Bennis's blog on Democratic Education. The student takeover of The New School in Manhattan is an important development that we all need to give our attention to. I will write an analysis soon. Students at The New School are taking action as I write this (Thursday evening, December 18, 2008) to raise the profile of their objections to The New School President Bob Kerrey and other university leaders, and to call for greater student voice in decision-making. The students have taken residence in the school cafeteria and have quickly put together a website called New School in Exile,” a New School in Exile blog (which is being updated several times an hour), a Facebook group, and a document (PDF) outlining their position and what they are seeking. Students are apparently coming and joining from other institutions as well.
I’m still trying to learn the background to this situation and what the issues are. I’ve generally thought highly of Bob Kerrey, the little I knew of him as a politician and President of The New School. And while I can’t say I support all the various wishes of the students without learning more, those advocating for democratic education can strongly identify with those that call for greater student voice and socially responsible actions, specifically: - Students, faculty, and staff elect the president, EVP, and Provost.
- Students are part of the interim committee to hire a provost.
- Intelligible transparency and disclosure of the university budget and investments.
- The creation of a committee on socially responsible investments.
- Money towards the creation of an autonomous student space.
- Money towards scholarships and reducing tuition.
- Money for the library and student life generally.
Rich Gibson of The Rouge Forum provides some interesting perspective in an email message sent out this evening as an “extra edition” to the regular Rouge Forum Update:
Students at the New School in New York City seized their buildings and are holding out for the demands listed below.
This direct action follows student uprisings in Greece and France in the last ten days and parallels the sit-down action by workers at Chicago’s Republic Works.
The building seizure is precisely along the lines that the Rouge Forum urged for a decade and shows, once again, that student action can spark social resistance–and reasoned analysis– involving poor and working people who hold the power to bring real transformation.
You can find links to coverage and videos of The New School in Exile group at their site and blog, and I’ll look to add updates here as they come.
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| December 19, 2008 | 2:12 AM |
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The Sidewalk Analogy
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Anyone who has sat in any of my workshops in the last five years has heard this. I have used it to open workshops, encouraging folks to interpret it and how they see it applying to Youth Voice.
One day late in his life an eccentric and famous designer took a contract with a major university in the middle of New York City to redesign their sidewalks. The university's construction committee wanted a modern design that wasn't like their old stodgy layout. In taking the contract the designer told the committee he needed to do things his way, and they agreed. They only needed sidewalks by the next school year. It was April.
So the designer ripped out the old sidewalks. But rather than hire laymen and put down frames and everything you'd usually do for sidewalks, the designer threw down grass seed and walked away. He covered all the old trenches and wasn't seen on campus again for months. In the meantime a field of grass covered everything.
Well, the committee got its druthers up because they didn't have sidewalks, but tried waiting. In early August they couldn't wait any longer, and the committee chair called Bucky. "Where are our sidewalks?" The designer explained that he needed two more weeks because it was supposed to rain soon - that summer was particularly dry. Nobody knew what he meant, but they waited patiently.
The storms came, and as folks went about class they trod across campus and into the halls, dragging mud and plying their own ways. After a few weeks the designer walked the committee chair around campus, following the paths students made on their ways through campus. They followed new paths everywhere as they zipped directly between buildings and wove around interesting places. Students didn't follow any of the 90 degree angles of old sidewalks, and they generally didn't move parallel or perpendicular to each other in any orderly fashion.
The designer walked the committee chair back to a conference room, and the chair was perplexed, saying, "I didn't see any sidewalks there." The designer explained that the trails that were widest and deepest were the ones where he would lay sidewalks.
So how does that story relate to Youth Voice? Share your thoughts below!
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| December 17, 2008 | 12:12 PM |
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Federal Youth Coordination Timeline
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This is a bonus for anyone interested in what is being done on the federal level to coordinate services for young people. I'm currently working with the illustrious Jonah Wittkamper on his initiative focused on creating a Presidential Commission on Youth and Intergenerational Partnerships. While I won't go into that here, I will say that there is a lot of work to do. Here's a timeline I created of Federal youth coordination activities in the U.S.
1909 - The first White House Conference on the Care of Dependent Children is held. 1919 - The White House Conference on Standards of Child Welfare is held. 1929 - The White House Conference on Standards of Child Welfare is held. 1935 - The National Youth Administration is created.
1936 - The Declaration of the Rights of American Youth is presented on the floor of the US Congress. 1939 - The Conference on Children in a Democracy is held. 1943 - The National Youth Administration is ended. 1950 - The White House Conference on Children and Youth is held. 1960 - The White House Conference on Children and Youth is held. 1970 - The White House Conference on Children and Youth is held. 1974 - The Coordinating Council on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention is created.
1990 - The Claude Pepper Young Americans Act is passed. 1995 - The Youth Community Development Block Grant is created. 2000 - The Younger Americans Act is passed. 2002 - George Bush created the White House Task Force for Disadvantaged Youth, including the Shared Youth Vision Initiative. 2005 - Helping America's Youth initiative is created. 2006 - The Tom Osborne Federal Youth Coordination Act is passed. 2006 - The Task Force for Disadvantaged Youth is created. 2006 - The Federal Youth Coordination Act is passed. 2008 - The White House issues an Executive Order lauding the success of the Helping America's Youth initiative and the federal coordination resultant from it. 2008 - The Federal Youth Coordination Act of 2008, HR 7004, was proposed to amend the Tom Osborne Federal Youth Coordination Act.
There are other national efforts, including the National Commission on Resources for Youth and the National Youth Alternatives Project.
Let know what you think!
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| December 17, 2008 | 2:12 AM |
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Generations are Fictions
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 In 2005 writer Jeff Chang published Can't Stop Won't Stop: A history of the hip hop generation. This book was a landmark in the community for many reasons, including its unique and powerful insights. Tonight I want to share the Prelude Chang wrote, which serves as a great introduction to the book and provides a wonderful reason for any of my readers to go out and buy a copy of the book.
"Prelude" from Can't Stop Won't Stop by Jeff Chang. Generations are fictions. The act of determining a group of people by placing a beginning and ending date around them is a way to impose a narrative. They are interesting and necessary fictions because they allow claims to be staked around ideas. But generations are fictions nonetheless, often created simply to suit the needs of demographers, journalists, futurists and marketers. In 1990 Neil Howe and William Strauss- both baby boomers and self-described social forecasters- set forth a neatly parsed theory of American generations in their book, Generations: The history of America's future, 1584 to 2069. They named their own generation "Prophets," idealists who came of age during a period of "Awakening," and their children's generation "Heroes," who, nurtured by their spiritually attuned parents, would restore America to a "High" era. In between were "Nomads" inhabiting a present they described as "Unraveling." What Howe and Strauss's self-flattering theory lacked in explanatory power, it made up for with the luck of good timing. The release of Generations intersected with the media's discovery of "Generation X," a name taken from the title of a book by Douglas Copeland that seemed to sum up for boomers the mystery of the emerging cohort. Howe and Strauss's book was pitched as a peek into the future. Cycles of history, they argued, proceed from generational cycles, giving them the power to prophesize the future. Certainly history loops. But generations are fictions used in larger struggles over power. There is nothing more ancient than telling stories about generational difference. A generation is usually named and framed first by the one immediately preceeding it. The story is written in the words of shock and outrage that accompany two revelations: "Whoa, I'm getting old," and, "Damn, who are these kids?" Boomers seem to have had great difficulty imagining what could come after themselves. It was a boomer who invented that unfortunate formulation: "the end of history." By comparison, everything that came after would appear as a decline, a simplification, a corruption. Up until recently, our generation has mainly been defined by the prefix "post-." We have been post-civil rights, postmodern, poststructural, postfeminist, post-Black, post-soul. We're the poster children of "post-," the leftover in the dirty kitchen of yesterday's feast. We have been the Baby Boom Echo. (Is Baby Boom Narcissus in the house?) We have been Generation X. Now they even talk about Generation Y. And why? Probably because Y comes after X... ...There are many more versions to be heard. May they all be.
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| December 16, 2008 | 12:12 PM |
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5 Ways You Can Help Youth This Holiday
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Want to help youth this year? There are budget cuts all over the country, crime against youth is rising, youth joblessness is booming, youth homelessness is rising, more young people are dropping out of schools than ever before... Reality shows that young people have a ways to go towards equity and parity with adults. Here are five ways you can help youth this holiday season.
5. Learn about youth activism. All young people have the power to change the world; unfortunately only a few are using it. Learn about them, what they care about, what they're doing and why they're doing it.
4. Discover new ways to show youth you care. Young people don't need more well-meaning, poorly-acting adults in their lives. Its not enough to care - we have to do something. Learn new ways that adults are helping young people right now.
3. Change the way you treat youth around you - right now. Every adult who considers themselves an ally to young people has an ethical responsibility to examine and re-examine the ways they interact with youth. This process is never complete, and requires deliberation, reflection and critical thinking throughout our interactions with all children and youth - including the children in our families, the students in our classrooms, the youth in our programs and the neighbors in our communities.
2. Make a commitment to a youth and ask them to keep you accountable. Everyday young people are made to pay attention to the will of adults: attend school, don't misbehave, turn in your homework, go to tutoring, graduate, go to practice, attend choir practice, finish your homework, mind your manners, get to bed on time. When was the last time a child or youth held adults accountable? The promises we make, the stories we tell, the deals, the attitudes, the ideas, the activities... all of these are done by adults, for young people, without young people being able to hold us accountable. Turn the tables and give them the opportunity - the power - to change our minds and keep us true to our words.
1. Ask young people how you can help them. Its an unfortunate reality that many adults think Youth Voice simply means talking about what young people think. We have an ethical responsibility to go out and connect with youth directly by creating honest and open environments where their sincere concerns, critical thinking, and powerful ideas can influence, direct, guide and lead the activities that affect them everday.
And that's it. Let me know what you are doing to help youth this holiday - and everyday of the year.
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| December 13, 2008 | 11:12 AM |
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Reclaiming Our Youth
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"Critical reflection on practice is a requirement of the relationship between theory and practice. Otherwise theory becomes simply "blah, blah, blah," and practice, pure activism." - Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom In completing my bachelor's degree in youth studies and critical pedagogy at The Evergreen State College I wrote a 190 page critical reflection on my then 9 years experience in the fields of youth development and community organizing. I called that document Reclaiming My Youth. After spending several years lamenting the continued decimation of the roles of youth across the U.S. and studying writing by Henry Giroux, Mike Males, and other authors, I decided that there is at least an equally important challenge: reclaiming the futures of youth. After dozens of years of neoliberalism decimating public services for young people as public schools are sold and youth programs are privatized and parenting books and fee-for-service religious services and other ways of selling off the good of children and youth, we - young people and their adult allies - must stand up and reclaim the future of youth.
How to reclaim the future of youth: Engage the distinct ideas, opinions, attitudes, knowledge, and actions of young people throughout our society. A crisis of disconnection has led to this loss, as youth are disconnected in our communities, youth are disconnected from our public good, and youth are disconnected from their own futures. Youth are disconnected in our communities: at home, in school, during youth programs, across our neighborhoods, across our state and throughout our shared history. There is no decision-making for the public good, young people are not routinely engaged in creating positive effects on the whole community, and they are routinely forced to participate in poor community activities. Youth are not being engaged in creating their future because of the perspectives of adults, the bias against youth, structures that disconnect them, and because young people themselves have internalized the messages broadcast to them.
The reason why the future of youth must be reclaimed is because of Hope. Our nation's untold history of youth demonstrates that there are alternative roles of youth throughout society, and because they possess the energy, wisdom and strength adults need to successfully cocreate democratic societies that engage everyone as equal partners. The early common history of the nation, 1960s and 70s youth empowerment activities, 1980s and 90s community building orgs and 1990s and 00s youth voice programs are the greatest indicators we have of those new roles existing. There are new opportunities being created throughout society as new relationships, programs, positions and other avenues are being opened for young people throughout communities, actually creating "wrap-around" community engagement opportunties. As important in the current climate, powerful outcomes are being proven through research and evaluation that actually demostrate the meaning and depth of young people today. I have a plan for the future of youth I want to write more about: - Point 1 - Promote community-wide accountability for the problems that affect the whole community
- Point 2 - Engage every young person in every community as a powerful and purposeful partner
- Point 3 - Encourage and educate every adult in every community about the potential of youth voice
- Point 4 - Create safe and supportive opportunities for youth voice throughout every community in Washington State
- Point 5 - Infuse youth voice throughout the structures that affect every young person everyday
Our only hope is to reclaim the future of youth. Once I saw Rachel Jackson, an organizer with Books Not Bars, speak at a rally in Oakland where she 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."
Our only hope is the future of youth. Let's get to work. PS - You can see the original powerpoint from the speech I gave on this in November 2007 here."The futures we inherit are not of our own making, but the futures we create for generations of young people who follow us arise out of our ability to imagine a better world, recognize our responsibility to others, and define the success of a society to the degree that it can address the needs of coming generations to live in a world in which the obligations of a global democracy and individual responsibility mutually inform each other." - Henry Giroux, "Translating the Future and the Promise of Democracy"
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| December 9, 2008 | 1:12 AM |
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