CommonAction

Student Voice and Student Engagement as Trojan Horses

2012-01-25T12:36:00.000-08:00

I have a number of concerns about how I am seeing "student voice" and "student engagement" used in K-12 schools, education administration, and other settings that should benefit students to share their voices. One of the is the Trojan Horse Strategy. I call it this because in this approach educators and advocates give students a carrot by listening to their voices, when those same adults blatantly use student voice and student engagement to forward their political agendas without concern for what students are genuinely seeking.

The scariest part of the Trojan Horse is the growing pervasiveness to this approach. Too many schools, governments, and organizations are manipulating student voice to fit into their adult-driven, anti-authentic approaches to promoting particular education reform agendas.

Trojan Horse Parasites

By using the phrases "student voice" and "student engagement", educators, leaders, and advocates are implying their interest in listening to the unfettered opinions, ideas, experiences, and wisdom of students. However, their approach is similar to that of many companies that market to young people: Listening for profit. That's what many educators, leaders, and advocates hope to receive from student voice and student engagement programs: Profit. By continually uplifting the education reform agendas of adults and couching them in "student voice" and "student engagement", many people literally maintain or develop funding for their schools, or their versions of school reform. They continue to maintain or develop funding opportunities for their schools by using "student voice" and "student engagement". If that sounds greedy and parasitic, that's because it is.

Trojan Horse Authority

Most "student voice" and "student engagement" programs use anti-transparent responses to young people. This merely perpetuates the modus operandi of schools, which is to do to and for students, rather than to work with students. I conceptualized Meaningful Student Involvement precisely for the purpose of distinguishing this difference. Meaningful Student Involvement is contingent on student-adult partnerships throughout the education system. The approach advocated for by the vast majority of "student voice" and "student engagement" programs is adult-dictated, adult-agenda oriented, and ultimately will only benefit adults. These "student voice" and "student engagement" programs actually reinforce adult authority, which is antithetical to Meaningful Student Involvement.

Trojan Horse Vacuum

Ultimately, the approach of using "student voice" and "student engagement" to reinforce adults' preconceptions is the same for students as yelling into an empty well. Students speak into a vacuum where they don't know the outcomes of their contributions to educators, leaders, and advocates, and there is little or no accountability. Adults listen only when "student voice" and "student engagement" are needed, and engage students only when adults see it as necessary. Otherwise, there is little or no substantive student presence. The goal of all student engagement activities anywhere in schools should be to build the capacity of students to cause change within the education systems and communities to which they belong. Many "student voice" and "student engagement" programs actually negate students' abilities to cause that change by capturing "student voice" and "student engagement" and putting it into the hands of adults. This disengages, taking away the little authority that authentic "student voice" and "student engagement" should have. It alienates students from the process of whole school reform, and ultimately serves to extinguish any level of interest students may have in the first place.

These three approaches to "student voice" and "student engagement" have brought our schools to where they are now. By manipulating, tokenizing, and exploiting individual students' perspectives on any given topic in education, entire generations of young people have been disengaged from school reform.

The point of Meaningful Student Involvement is to re-engage students in their health of their schools and the education system.

As they stand today, the vast majority of "student voice" and "student engagement" programs only serve to help students learn about their lack of power, and reinforces the belief that the roles of young people throughout society are determined for them, and they simply need to accept what is coming down the line.

This is not what I am about, and that is what is wrong with many "student voice" and "student engagement" programs today.

Protect Our Personal Engagements?

2012-01-25T10:52:00.000-08:00

“You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing, and dance, and write poems, and suffer, and understand, for all that is life.”

—Jiddu Krishnamurti

There is a thought out there that things cared for must be cherished, and in cherishing them we must protect them. However, protecting our engagements throughout life is simply not an option.

Engaging with our children, our family, our friends, and our loved ones is special and important. We are not able to protect them though. Engaging within ourselves by taking time alone, listening to our inner voice while we create and ingest and grow and absorb, this cannot be protected. All of these sustained connections are made for stormy weather, times when it's inconvenient or challenging to make time for them. They are built to last through changes of heart, errant behavior, and transformations of the mind.

If our engagements are not able to weather those movements, that does not mean they are not from our Heartspace. That does not mean they are not more or less real. It simply means that life changes. Change is change, and we cannot and should not protect our engagements from it.

This is a particularly important lesson to teach children, and to remind adults that they learned it in childhood. It reinforces the importance of resilience, which is the ability to bounce back from adversity. Resolving not to protect our engagements particularly allows us to embrace the learning possibilities in challenging situations as we let situations wash over us, and truth reveal itself. Shakespeare alluded to this when he wrote in As You Like It, "Sweet are the uses of adversity which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head."

Life is a constant progression of opportunity, disguised as challenge or suffering. We are meant to live enlivened lives that are filled with the progressions and regressions of our souls and minds, all the while relying on the constancy of Heartspace. That constancy has all the hallmarks of the best relationships and experiences we have ever had, including transformation and change, struggle and growth. At the core of our Heartspace is the simple reality that we are who we are, it is what it is, and it works the way it works. Our human beingness grants us the widest possible leeway we need to experience our lives however we want or need to.

Because, as Krishnamurti wrote, "...for all that is life."

The Power of Public

2012-01-21T10:35:00.000-08:00

Somewhere out there, nestled inside our collective imaginations, is the power of Public.

Private sources that would profiteer from our laziness, disregard, or indifference would have us think otherwise, but they are wrong.

We each have within us a positive, powerful potential to create, build, sustain, critique, deconstruct, and rebuild every single part of our lives every single day. The reality of The Public is that we share that positive, powerful potential among everyone. Collectively, together, we have the ability to do absolutely anything we want to in our world.

That reality has been proven again and again throughout time, in ways that appear both positive and negative. We have seen wars launched and nations built, diseases ended and cultures razed. There has been limitless growth with periods of painful decay. Taking a person to the moon may be fairly compared with the construction of the first cities in the Fertile Crescent, because both exist in a seamless arch towards human growth.

In America today, there is a movement to surrender the public will in many ways. Corporatists would have us believe that we cannot coexist without profiteering. Segregationists believe we cannot live together because of our races, socio-economic statuses, educational levels, or cultures. Religionists have competing gods, educationalists have competing schools, and nationalists have wars. Competition constantly demeans The Public by interfering with our health and well-being, sacrificing cooperation for success every single day, in almost every single way that we live.

However, somewhere out there, right now, The Public is recuperating. There is an emerging hopefulness that is more apparent among society than ever before.

The future is bright, and we must live towards that hope for all people. For The Public.

Border Crossing In Heartspace

2012-01-18T10:39:00.000-08:00

Teddy Wright is a colleague/hero of mine. He's a person who's work I honestly admire, as his connection with the people he serves (youth, mostly) is authentic, and his attitude genuinely humble. I really appreciate Teddy. He sent me a beautiful response on Monday to my post about Perceptions of Heartspace, which I hope he posts to the blog soon. In the course of his writing, he concentrated on a complex proposition focused on measuring Heartspace, making engagement more apparent, "the evidence of things not seen".

Following is an edited version of my response to Teddy.

Rather than being concerned about how we measure other peoples' engagement, I suggest the we look for proof of how we individually know that we are engaged in our own lives. I am growing increasingly weary of work that is focused on engaging others, because I am not completely sure that is possible. I will not poo-poo anyone's efforts to do that, and more so will support them as thoroughly as I can.

However, today I want people to concentrate individuals engaging themselves. All of the most powerful social workers I know don't need to look for visual cues of involvement, because they know it when they see it. They know it because they experience it on their own. In this way, the same is true of those we seek to engage: Each person can sense when those who would engage them in something are or are not engaged. It's what my friend Greg Williamson calls, "The Sniff Test". Like attracts like.

I have come to understand that we each have an natural sense for engagement within us operating in conjunction with our internal engine for engagement. This natural sense fuels the engine of Heartspace. When our Heartspace detects the Heartspace of another and we're desiring connectivity, we gravitate towards their Heartspace. Not mushy, sentimental love, but authentic, holistic engagement. This holds true in relationships, education, gangs, jobs, and youth work; among generations; past race; and throughout humanity. Like attracts like.

There can come a point where our sense becomes dulled and our engine runs out of gas, and that's where the best social work is done. However, I am not convinced there are measurable, tangible impacts for personal engagement that will ever satisfy a grant requirement or sociological assessment tool. It's at that point that I become concerned that personal engagement simply sounds too contrived and too mechanistic. Seeking to do engagement to another person may not be the problem; seeking to quantify it may be.

There are two analogous experiences I can relate this situation to. The first is that of the scientist, who runs off the fumes of Newton and Darwin and Einstien and Hawking until somehow, someday something is proven. Until then it's all theorem, no matter how widely accepted they are as facts. The other experience is that of the genuine spiritual teacher, who does not have faith their job is done, but does not have "proof" either- they simple know it is done.

I accept that I am not a technologist who sits in labs, but I do not believe that leaves me in the latter role, either. Maybe I am a hybrid of both, because my work focused on Heartspace sits squarely on the shoulders of many, many theorists before me, and yet, I believe that when we engage ourselves, the rest of it will simply work itself out, and that is not faith- it is knowledge. Maybe there is a fine line in between, but I have always been comfortable with border crossing.

A Fear of Students?

2012-01-17T06:31:00.001-08:00

I don't write this lightly. After all these years of teaching educators and education administrators about student voice, student engagement, and my frameworks of meaningful student involvement, I'm led to believe there's something more insidious behind the reluctance to not engage students as partners in learning, teaching, and leading in schools. I'm led to believe that there is a pervasive fear of students among adults in the education systems.

Sharing my frameworks, which focus on integration, efficacy, and sustainability for meaningful student involvement, I frequently have seen an almost knee-jerk reaction. Teachers and principals and counselors all recoil against the notion that students of any grade and any ability can be full partners with adults. They tell stories, collected from years of experience, about the incapabilities of learners. They focus on the few students who've routinely disappointed/upset/frightened them, and generalize across all their experience as if all students have this inability.

Education leaders, namely the building leaders, district and state administrators, and elected officials who guide schools, scoff when introduced to the notion of meaningful student involvement. And I'm talking about my decade-plus experience in small meetings and gigantic conferences, safe places and very public platforms. The reaction is almost always the same: No way!

To be fair, my advocacy for engaging student voice doesn't stop with student government, using technology in classrooms, or other tokenistic gestures. I am talking about the full-scale integration of students as partners in curriculum, classroom management, building culture, and educational leadership. I am challenging the dominant paradigm which is satisfied with the placated, suffocated segregation of students fro mainstream society, who in the meantime are suffering from inadequate skills and knowledge preparation for their future- not ours.

It's kind of ridiculous.

Our public schools are on the brink of whole scale irrelevance, and we're ignoring the very people who could fix the problem, the very people who are most affected: students themselves.

The fear of young people is a tricky phenomenon that positions students as the habitual "Other". This role makes them different and alien to adults. It's both dehumanizing and fetishizing, as adults see students as too foreign, too far out to support. This is why school levies are failing at a rate American society had never seen before. This is why the sneaky tendrils of privatization are reaching further into public schools than ever before.

Adults must reclaim our children and youth, not by insisting they be more like us, but by acknowledging their birthright, affirming their inheritance, and reinforcing our own support for them. We need educational campaigns that teach adults about our connectivity and caringness for young people, and how that's beneficial for all of society. We need social and cultural opportunities for young people and adults to work together to generate and transmit culture and society together.

We need to reclaim our futures, together.

Heartspace Is A Revolution Of The Heart

2012-01-16T09:40:00.000-08:00

"When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality."

—Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

In the middle of it all, beyond the explanations and processes, the concepts and possibilities, Heartspace is ultimately about love. It is about loving the world we all live in and share. It is about loving each other in powerful, positive ways. It is about loving ourselves.

Great revolutionaries, teachers, and leaders like Dr. King understand this, because they live it.

Che Guevara understood it: "At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality."

Maya Angelou understands it: "The sadness of the women's movement is that they don't allow the necessity of love. See, I don't personally trust any revolution where love is not allowed."

Tennessee Williams wrote, "You said, 'They’re harmless dreamers and they’re loved by the people.' 'What,' I asked you, 'is harmless about a dreamer, and what,' I asked you, 'is harmless about the love of the people? Revolution only needs good dreamers who remember their dreams."

José Martí said, "But love, like the sun that it is, sets afire and melts everything. What greed and privilege to build up over whole centuries the indignation of a pious spirit, with its natural following of oppressed souls, will cast down with a single shove." (The single shove of love?)

All these dreamers, they understood.

Near-saintly activist Dorthy Day said, "The greatest challenge of the day is how to bring about a revolution of the heart." That is what Heartspace is: A revolution of the heart.

After spending a lot of time working to change macro-level systems, micro-level practice, and interpersonal attitudes and foster cultures of engagement, I have come to understand that the single most important key to creating a revolution of the heart is for each person seeking that to become deeply engaged within themselves. By deeply I mean that there becomes a seamless fjord of self-love that comes before all other things in this world, defined and strengthened and driven by each of us, individually. Without that fjord, all attempts to engage others within themselves or throughout the world around them are bound to fail, if not with urgent immediacy, then within a short period of a person's lifetime.

Far be it from me to condemn another for doing the work of their heart and insisting that they must do unto others. However, too many teachers throughout too much history, ancient and recent, have taught this: Heartspace must begin within each of us, individually. In my own instance, I worked throughout two decades in order to change others. It was only when life slowed down and my engines stopped racing that I discovered that all my attempts to engage others were irrelevant until I became engaged myself. But I'd always been engaged in my favorite topics, in things I cared about! I was still off-base. I came to understand that it's not simply about engaging with things outside myself, but with what is inside me.

I am teaching this now, in addition to my work through The Freechild Project, SoundOut, and CommonAction. I've traveled a meandering road through bounding mountains as I have come to understand things that path is determined by each of us, individually.

There are some key practices that can draw each of into Heartspace, as we are capable and desiring of going there. The other day I wrote about the inscrutable power of silence as an avenue to Heartspace. On the same continuum is dialogue, which Paulo Freire explained the effect of when he wrote, "True solidarity is found only in the plenitude of this act of love, and in its existentiality, in its praxis." As was his style, he alerted us to the challenge here, too, when he explained, "Dialogue cannot exist, however, in the absence of a profound love for the world and its people." So in the way that true dialogue can lead us to Heartspace, true dialogue cannot exist if we aren't already in our Heartspace. There are countless other avenues to Heartspace, too. The only criteria is that they reciprocally build the fjord of self-love within you while strengthening your ability to connect to the world outside you.

Ultimately, this is why I believe engagement is the purpose of living. Without engaging within ourselves we will never get to wherever it is each of us is seeking to go. It simply will not happen. Where each of us is going is so completely individualized and intangible that it is nigh impossible to name that realization, that goal as it were. Seeking to make the implausible teachable, I suggest the journey *is* the destination, and in that, engagement is the purpose.

Perceptions of Heartspace

2012-01-15T10:05:00.000-08:00

"There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception."
—Aldous Huxley

When we look at the world, there is always a reflection of our Heartspace peering back at us. In seeing tranquility, chaos, abundance, poverty, joy, or destitution, our own personal well-being is looking at us. The way we see our Heartspace determines how we engage within ourselves and throughout our world.

Our perceptions of Heartspace are informed by many factors, including our experience, culture, education, spirituality, and economics. Our understanding of all that information can change instantaneously though, when we change our perception. The first step to changing how we engage is to understand how we perceive engagement.

I have identified five different perceptions of Heartspace.

The first perception is apathy. Apathy happens when we consciously or unconsciously choose to be indifferent towards Heartspace. We choose not to see how we are engaged within ourselves or in the world. Apathy responds to apathy, and the ways we connect with the world are shown towards us.

After apathy is a completely top-down perception of Heartspace that is called pity. Viewing engagement pitifully actively places us in a position of complete superiority over others, and over ourselves. Pity incapacitates compassion. It positions experiences around us and within us as being completely incapable of providing for us. By positioning ourselves in absolute authority, pity extinguishes our humility and self-graciousness. Our personal sense of agency and purpose is actually diminished when we see Heartspace with pity. Ultimately, pity is dehumanizing.

Perceiving our Heartspace with sympathy can be alluring. It allows us to give others what they apparently cannot acquire for themselves, and to do that with charity. However, we cannot give to others what we cannot give to ourselves, whether it is love, abundance, well-being, or trust. Sympathy actually disengages us from actively cultivating what we need for ourselves. It singularly positions us to give to outside of ourselves without acknowledging we are receiving anything in return.

Perceptions of Heartspace take a completely positive turn when empathy is the lens we look through. Reciprocity is the key to establishing empathy within and outside of ourselves. Empathy allows us to see ourselves in a more just way by identifying that we receive and give in equal measure, all of the time. We acknowledge our Heartspace as the ultimate guide in life, allowing us to become authentically invested in the others. If an empathetic perception of Heartspace were drawn, it would show a möbius strip of infinite reciprocity within a person.

The last perception of Heartspace that I have identified is solidarity. It is reflected in the completely honest, completely equitable engagements a person has within and outside themselves. Solidarity fully recognizes the benefits and challenges in our relationship to ourselves and with others, and operates from a place of possibilities rather than problems. It may be the most challenging perception to maintain because it seems completely alien throughout our society today. However, seeking solidarity towards Heartspace may be the most natural state of all things.

There are many important considerations to recognize about our perceptions of Heartspace. One consideration is that we do not maintain one perception of Heartspace all the time. While there are predominate perceptions, there are also exceptions to the rule. Another important consideration is that acknowledging these perceptions is not about “good” and “bad”; they simply are. We simply do not operate in complete empathy towards our Heartspace all the time, and that is not “bad” or “wrong”. Everyone cannot be expected to engage with every single experience, person, or attitude they ever meet within or outside themselves.

Using these perceptions of Heartspace as a starting point, the challenge for us becomes whether we can consciously, critically, and creatively reflect on our attitudes, behaviors, and ultimately, our perceptions towards Heartspace. While we do this, it is our obligation to keep an eye towards further developing our practice in order to be more reflective of our perceptions of Heartspace. Perceptions determine engagement, and engagement is the reason for living.

Foundations Fail Youth By Design

2012-01-13T06:55:00.000-08:00

To all the program officers cringing right now, I feel your pain.

Across the United States and around the world, there has risen a particular class of nonprofit organization that insidiously, if inadvertently, promotes youth discrimination. Through their giving programs, organizational culture, and leadership structures, foundations fail young people by design, constantly and consistently.

Starting in 2000, I have worked with philanthropies of all sizes and in many capacities. My experiences speaking at regional, national, and international conferences; consulting family and corporate foundations; contracting as a writer, evaluator, and interim program officer have given me insights into the field I want to share here.

There are three major concerns I have with foundations that serve young people: 1) Authentic youth engagement; 2) The culture of philanthropy, and; 3) Sustainability.

From the largest to the smallest, there is almost no foundation in the US that authentically engages young people by design. Of the growing number of youth philanthropy programs in the 2000s, many have been eliminated in the current economic climate. Glowing reports throughout the decade touted their efficacy and sustainability. However, those reports were devoid the grim reality that while several foundations hosted youth-exclusive programs, few if any integrated youth throughout foundations. Youth-driven philanthropy was also youth-centered, and when foundations cut youth-centered giving, they cut youth boards, too. The remaining youth-driven, youth-centered foundation programs in the U.S. today rely on the beneficence of their foundation's regular governance boards to keep them intact. In such cases that their existence is secured by policy, youth are still segregated from adults. All of this severely hinders the authenticity of young people's engagement in philanthropy.

The second way foundations fail young people by design is through their cultures. There is no philanthropy in the U.S. that actively addresses the reality of adultism, which is bias toward adults. Adultism is pervasive in philanthropy, as adult-driven, adult-biased philanthropic priorities are supported by adult-driven, adult-biased research which drives adult-driven, adult-biased grantmaking, the performance of which is evaluated against adult-driven, adult-biased metrics. I can find no evidence of any foundation that employs youth in regular positions. The rarity of youth-driven decision-making in philanthropies further understates the cultural reality of philanthropy. However, the way those examples are touted goes beyond decoration and purely objectifies youth, dehumanizing their contributions and grossly under-estimating their capacities. And this is only in the formal structures of foundations. I will say little about the directors, administrative leaders, program officers, and contractors I have personally encountered throughout my career, aside from suggesting there is an inherent anti-child and youth inclusive climate throughout the entire field of philanthropy.

Which brings me to my third point about how foundations are designed to fail young people. By their very nature, these organizations perpetuate a social pattern of youth segregation that is only 100 years old. This is an unsustainable trend, one that is beginning to erode as our greater society begins to reconfigure its institutions to reflect a new and growing consensus about young people: It is absolutely vital that all children and youth become woven throughout the fabric of community, both for their sake AND ours. Their contributions to the cultural, educational, economic, and political well-being of democracy are beginning to take center stage, as evidenced by several fields including philanthropy. However, stagnation is not acceptable, now sustainable. With the evolving capacities of young people continuously demonstrating their essentialness to social transformation, surely no foundation can justify their continued segregation through the historic excuses of inability or lack of desire. And some aren't: I have heard more than one program officer say they have no interest in engaging young people as genuine partners in philanthropy. And I'm afraid that is indicative of the entire field, including boards of directors, consultants such myself, and many others. What makes this position truly unsustainable is the way foundations make it okay, even expect it of, their grantees. The organizations receiving money from foundations transmit this culture of age segregation almost unwittingly as their paternalistic funders refuse to revisit their apparent stance that young people are incapable. That is truly unacceptable, and clearly unsustainable.

Foundations fail youth by design- but there is a choice. And that's another post for a different day.

Entering Heartspace Through Silence

2012-01-13T02:47:00.000-08:00

Mind thinks, heart knows.

Silence is a mystery all people solve for themselves. I have answered that mystery by acknowledging it: in me is a desire for silence and stillness. This is where I find ease, knowingness, and connection. I call that place Heartspace. Throughout our lives we can all find many ways to express ourselves, and oftentimes that's what we occupy our time with, self-expression. We write, sing, dance, talk, act, and do. Heartspace wants us to be. It's in being that we can actually know ourselves most. Silence is an avenue to Heartspace, and that's why Gandhi wrote, "In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness."

Heartspace provides crystal clearness.

That's all I'm going to write now, because it's time for me to get quiet. Join me?

Fletcher's Rules of Personal Engagement

2012-01-12T12:53:00.000-08:00

There is more to living than getting good jobs, living opulently, going exotic places, or being an extravagant person. More than ever, people around the world are wondering how to live meaningful lives filled with substance, depth, and a different kind of success than what marketers sell. People want to know how to become deeply engaged within themselves. After learning from thousands of workshop participants over the last decade, I have discovered five important rules for personal engagement.

Fletcher's Rules of Personal Engagement

Rule #1: Personal engagement is for everyone.
Every person in every home in every community around the world should become engaged in themselves.
It doesn't matter how old you are, how much money you have or don't have, or where you live; None of these should be barriers to personal engagement. Instead, these are points to build on and learn from. Personal engagement is an active, intentional process whereupon everybody everywhere can become purposefully compelled as humans.

Rule #2: Personal engagement does not end inside ourselves.
Everybody should be active within their families and throughout their communities. Personal engagement goes far beyond meditation or self-study or listening to music or writing poetry. Making roles for ourselves through democratic action, powerful cultural expression activities, and meaningful experiences of freedom of speech throughout society opens the doors and sustains personal engagement. Personal engagement can happen in our homes, when we play, through relationships with others, and throughout our lives.

Rule #3: Every person should feel responsible for their own engagement.
Only through the constant self-encouragement and self-focus will each of us feel there is a real place within ourselves to connect to, our Heartspace. Personal engagement extends beyond our own interests, and every single person in our lives is a reflection of that. However, nobody else is responsible for it. Every person should feel that self-engagement is their own responsibility.

Rule #4: Engage a person in an experience and they’ll connect with that time; teach people how to engagement throughout themselves and they will engage for a lifetime.
Learning to engage in our lives is something many people want to do without every knowing that is what they want to do. This is literally why we "get engaged" before we get married- to want to have a sustained connection in our lives, and that's (minimally) what marriage should be. Good teachers actually aspire to engage their students in learning without every being explicit in their intentions; good doctors, health; good authors, stories; good bosses, work. Every person should develop their own understanding of what engages them in life. If you want to engage another person, take a constructivist perspective about the nature of engagement, the purpose of teaching, and the arch of lifelong personal engagement. We live this life from cradle to grave in order to become engaged; teaching others to do that requires more than simply doing; it requires facilitating. There is a difference.

#5: Personal engagement is never done.
Will Rogers once said, “Even if you’re on the right track you’ll get run over if you don’t move.” We live in a world of transition and transformation. Everyone of us changes with the times whether we do it intentionally or not, whether we acknowledge it or not. It is hardwired in our Heartspace to understand that if we do the same old things we've always done, we’ll always get what we've always got. As society constantly changes, we do. Many people have told me that their lives have changed more in the last 5 years than at any other point in their lives. Society is evolving faster than ever, right now. That gives people who want to engage others a lot of opportunities to become personally engaged within themselves. Along the way, we can transform our homes, our organizations and businesses, our governments, and our society in order to truly engage every single person in every single community around the world. Personal engagement is at the core of every single person's life, and that should be how we engage with every single person, all the time.

Those are my rules of personal engagement. What are yours?

My Fear of Heartspace

2012-01-08T06:54:00.001-08:00

It's easy to be afraid of becoming engaged in your self. We may spend our lifetime surrounded by people and things and experiences, filling our heads with ideas and our hearts with emotions, and never truly understanding what lies within. Heartspace is a tender understanding within each of us. It is something bigger than ourselves, yet something that is each of us, individually.

Actor Alan Alda once wrote, “You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover is yourself.” For me, that journey of discovery has gone beyond anything I have ever done. It has required a kind of bravery I have never known in my life, a kind that didn't show easily. Developing my commitment to myself has taken me through harrowing white water rapids from my past, confronted me with grand canyons of unacknowledged emotions, and surrounded me with the abrupt solitude of self-knowingness. I have suddenly started to demonstrate the deepest self-sustainability I have ever known as I have come to understand the smooth waters of complacency. Lately I have sought to maintain the easy sailing I am experiencing these days.

That easy sailing has not coming because of anything around me. The world I live in is filled with a lot of roles: Being a full-time dad, working for a living, living a healthy lifestyle, all of these things. I have learned to release, get rid of, or extinguish the things that hurt me or deflate me, which wasn't easy work. My history wants to be present right now, and the future calls out for me a lot, especially when I'm alone in the middle of the night. But all of these actions in my life, all these situations and occurrences, they are things outside of me, hiding spots under rocks and in thickets along the narrow trail to the meadow where I rest these days.

Surrounding me, too, are all these books, workshops, retreats, and seminars. There are lectures online and songs from musicians; movies and plays, poetry and stories. I read theories and examine plot lines, memorize lyrics and recite cool sonnets. My friends tell me stories and my family reminds me of their interpretations all the time. Everyday I live stories, too, that have all the elements of great dramas, comedy routines, and sitcoms, all wrapped into one convenient life.

But I have finally, finally learned what Rumi meant when he insisted, "Stop searching here and there. The jewels are inside you."

Before I did that I had to get over my fear of Heartspace. Once I did that, I became rapidly, massively engaged within myself. This has strengthened my ability to connect with the world in a way that I would have never estimated. Now that I know it, I will never let it go.

"Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights.
But your ears thirst for the sound of your heart's knowledge.
You would know in words that which you have always known in thought.
You would touch with your fingers the naked body of your dreams.
And it is well you should.
The hidden well-spring of your soul must rise and run murmuring to the sea;
And the treasure of your infinite depths would be revealed to your eyes.
But let there be no scales to weigh your unknown treasure;
And seek not the depths of your knowledge with staff or sounding line.
For self is a sea boundless and measureless.
Say not, "I have found the truth," but rather, "I have found a truth."
Say not, "I have found the path of the soul." Say rather, "I have met the soul walking upon my path."
For the soul walks upon all paths.
The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed.
The soul unfolds itself like a lotus of countless petals."
—Khalil Giban, The Prophet

I release my fear of Heartspace every single day, and at many moments throughout my days. I am learning to face the things that challenge me most by engaging deeper inside myself every time I have the opportunity to, and sometimes I miss those opportunities. I still get upset, scared, lonely, and hungry. The difference now is that I am learning through those occasions. I engage with myself, explore my uncertainties, indifferences, and apathies. I want to help other people do the same.

If you are ready to go to your Heartspace, simply go. Connect within yourself and take the journey, self-guided, towards a brave new future. If you would like to read more about what I have learned, send me an email to adam@commonaction.org and I will send you a free e-book.

Your Emerging Awareness of Heartspace

2012-01-06T08:35:00.000-08:00

"The urgency of slowing down — to find the time and space to think — is nothing new, of course, and wiser souls have always reminded us that the more attention we pay to the moment, the less time and energy we have to place it in some larger context."

This quote, from Pico Iyer's recent New York Times article called "The Joy of Quiet", seems to hearken to the ages, calling forth the words of sages and saints throughout the years who have guided us over and over to connect. This emerging awareness is what draws us into our Heartspace, the engine of personal engagement.

Engagement, which I define as the sustained connection to something within or outside of ourselves, requires an intentionality that many people live without. A lot of people get tied up in yoga and meditation, performing music and writing poetry, without ever developing the type of intentionality I'm alluding to.

Often, these same people are the ones who work with people for a living, and don't like it. They're mothers and fathers who feel like they can't handle parenting. They are teachers who don't like students, doctors who belittle their patients, and counselors who deride their patients' symptoms.

These people aren't lost or bad; they simply have not found their Heartspace. They haven't joined into the cultural underpinning of our society in a sincere way, a way that will allow them to prioritize the connections they have in life, both outside of themselves and inside themselves.

You may be among this group. Here are 5 simple questions you can ask yourself to decide if you are:

Can you name 5 deep connections you have to the world around you in a minute?
Can you name 5 deep connections you have within you in a minute?
Do you end any of your days after a regular 5-day workweek feeling fulfilled and satisfied with your life?
Do you trust yourself to make the right decision in every choice in your life?
Can you define the meaning of your life right now?

If you answered "no" to any of these questions you have an opportunity to reach into your Heartspace. Start with reading Iyer's article, or listening to the song "Higher" by the Theoretics, or by walking into your day thinking about Heartspace (not meditation: no pillows, special breathing, or fingers pinched; you can find Heartspace in every moment).

When you are ready, calmly allow yourself to simply work through these questions, easily. It's not a test. It's not a measurement. Heartspace is simply a place that you can occupy, permanently. It's no obligation or assignment; it's an opportunity to embrace your personal engagement.

Generations Must End

2012-01-05T14:54:00.000-08:00

I wrote about generations and adultism last month, and drew a response from a dear colleague who challenged me. He suggested generations are important, and needed. I'm afraid they aren't, at all.

I think that the very invention of generations as a social analysis tool was off-based to begin with.

Generational generalisms seem to have been constructed as an anti-dialogical response to the evolutionary nature of society. And it's the non-transactional nature of this analysis that I reject most thoroughly: By postulating that populations are distinct and unique of themselves according to their birth to death ranges, sociologists remove them from the intergenerational nature of social life, which routinely blends and interacts individuals beyond people their own age in a variety of social, educational, cultural, governmental, militaristic, and other venues. These in turn define social categorization, along with the economic functioning of society, in ways that really have nothing to do with generations. All that is to say that two hundred years ago generations were not definable in the ways they are now.

The supposed relevance of generations relies on an American model of social development, one that we're collectively watching get town asunder today. Identifying people according to their birth and death ranges requires that those are distinguishable. In the way that calling generations "extinct" allows for them to exist in the first place, I will grant that they may have been relevant for the 100 years of global domination American imperialism enjoyed. The American mode of economy, family, and social structure necessitated a particular kind of distinctiveness among so-called generations in order to market to them more effectively; commercialism and consumerism make generations necessary. Minus the American market-based dominance over the world, generations are largely irrelevant.

What I have witnessed through studying history is that the convenient pinching together on the sides of differentiation effectively pummels young people to the bottom of the social ladder by disallowing their active congregation with adults. Schools, youth programs, youth marketing... all these are a type of age ghetto-ization/segregation that generations only perpetuates. Generations further necessitate age discrimination by making generalizations okay and intergenerational relationships taboo. We cannot afford this kind of age segregation and youth alienation anymore.

Unfortunately, generations are being used as a crowbar in our sociology- and education-oriented work. I constantly am made aware that people are using generations to justify their own ignorance, and for that alone we must abolish any use of these terms from our work.

I'm afraid we're not taking any steps forward through defining, perpetuating, or expanding generational-oriented analysis; I simply have not seen or heard any good come of it. Worst still, I have only seen bad.

I would love to hear what you think.

Service Learning versus "Activist Learning"

2012-01-05T07:48:00.000-08:00

From the late 90s through the 2000s, I participated in a number of service learning programs across the U.S. Some were hyper-local, such as the program in Taos, New Mexico, focused on building cultural and social connections between the Taos Pueblo and youth in the neighboring town. I worked at the state level in Washington, helping administer a Learn and Serve America grant that went to dozens of subgrantees across the state. I also worked nationally with the Points of Light Foundation and the Corporation for National Service promoting service learning.

Along the way I saw patterns of educational abuse that were extremely disconcerting for me. In the worst cases, young people were being taught the missionary perspectives of the European conquistadors who believed they knew best for those they were to have been serving. Other times, students were extremely tokenized, made to seem as if their presence was all that was needed, while their actions, opinions, ideas, and knowledge was trivial or meaningless.

From that position, in 2006 I drafted an introduction to "Activist Learning". In this intro I wrote that,

Activist Learning is an intentional strategy for creating knowledge characterized by taking action to realize just relationships that transform unequal power structures in our personal, social, political, environmental, spiritual, and economic lives.

I was clearly reacting to the pressures of poorly implemented service learning. However, I thought it was essential to problematize the position I saw many service learning programs occupying, and provide an alternative conceptualization.

Today I know that there are many, many high quality service learning programs across the U.S. and around the world. There are a number of criteria and assessments available to young people and adults in service learning programs, and a plethora of good examples of service learning challenging the missionary perspective I was railing against.

The problem today presents itself to me in a deeper way. Instead of poor programs, I see now that there are poor perspectives, activities perpetuated by well-meaning but ill-prepared practitioners who want to do the right thing, but are wholly incapable of that because of the assumptions and ideas they hold. It is these people who I want to target with the considerations of Activist Learning, if for no other reason than to challenge their thinking.

What do you think? What are the next steps that are necessary to develop service learning, and does a consideration need to be made for a new pedogological norm focused on "Activist Learning"?

Youth Power in 2012

2012-01-04T10:37:00.000-08:00

Long-ranging, deep, effective social change largely happens through communication, people talking with people. Education and entertainment are tools of manipulation as well as enlightenment, and they work to change society.

In mainstream social change, the 1960s and 70s hippies in the U.S. relied on educating their peers and young people in order to bring more people into the ranks. They held workshops and sit-ins, classes and rallies all focused on raising individual knowledge and awareness of the social change they wanted to see. In the 1990s and 2000s conservatives in the U.S. relied on manipulating people through the media in order to spread their message and bring "believers" on board. Perhaps the most sophisticated approach to large scale social change happened from the 1920s through the 1960s, when the African American Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. staged a two-pronged approach to transforming American society. Their usage of mainstream media pulled on heartstrings while their consciousness-raising education activities effectively reached every American, and caused transformations that still ripple through society today.

In the process of the last century, youth power emerged as a startlingly effective force for communicating social change. Starting with the 1936 Declaration of the Rights of American Youth written by the American Youth Congress, young peoples' voices are being heard with ever-greater power and impact on society. This 1936 creed resulted in the creation of the National Youth Administration, which while it was short lived, showed the power of youth when it was destroyed by Joseph McCarthy's Red Scare. The 1943 Zoot Suit Riots in Los Angeles showed the compelling power of Latino youth to control popular culture, and the effect when white American adults don't like that. Their actions led to an increased awareness of the presence of Latinos throughout the U.S., and introduced the weapon of cultural awareness into the battle against discrimination. The emergence continued in the early 1960s with the formation of Students for a Democratic Society. Their Port Huron Statement effectively set the agenda for a generation of white, middle class young people who were determined to fight for democracy. In the 1970s, the Youth Liberation Press of Ann Arbor, Michigan, began printing and mailing thousands of copies of publications written by young people, for young people- and adults. And many read these pieces, too. There are so many other ways youth power became more real than ever before, but that's the past.

In 2012, young people are educating and manipulating society as never before. Social media, which is the predominant tool for popular culture manipulation and education, is being used by children, youth, young adults, and their adults in order to create, grow, foster, sustain, and enhance social change. There has never been a force like it before, and young people have never experienced power like this before.

Youth power is by no means limited to the Internet or computers, either. I predict we will see a surge in the development of participatory technologies throughout society that allow, encourage, and build social action in all corners of our community and world over the next 20 years. We will see more effective democratic voting platforms, more engaging community group activism, more substantive usage of social media. All of these tools are being built to engage; more importantly, they are going to enhance and grow.

Communication is power, and that power belongs to young people today.

All Engagement Matters

2011-12-21T14:43:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Evolution of Society

2011-12-19T07:49:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why Adultism Must Stop

2011-12-18T20:58:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

Adultism makes the jobs of adults today easier, too.

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

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

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

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

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

Adultism In Schools

2011-12-16T14:24:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Rough Moments

2011-12-16T07:27:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anti-Adultism Parenting Resources

2011-12-16T01:53:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other recommending reading...

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

Helping Adults Remember Our Youth

2011-12-13T06:42:00.001-08:00

‎"There is in you what is beyond you."

—Paul Valéry

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

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

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

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

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

Remembering Our Youth

Time required: 20-45 minutes

Needed: Quiet room

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Infinite Ripples, or, Standing WITH Other People

2011-12-12T18:02:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Full Self-Responsibility

2011-12-09T15:00:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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