One of the key protocols of patriarchy (the ideology of the angry father-figure) is the separation of the world, or any microcosm within the world in terms of “us” and “them”. We humans love to frame things in dualistic terms (such as yin and yang or good and bad), but this is one dichotomy that I would argue we would be well served to rid from ourselves, and in so doing, rid from our greater culture. Doing so, I believe, would go a long way to finally eradicating the patriarchal “virus” that manages somehow to propagate itself from generation to generation. As a parent and a progressive-minded person, propagation to the next generation is something I think about a lot.

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Just as in real estate they say the three key things are “location, location, location”, when it comes to formal institutions like schools, businesses, religious congregations, or even just teams within those institutions, in my mind the three key things are “governance, governance, governance”. Given my obsession, it is nice to see Education Week blogs highlighting both a new study focused on school governance and a very different non-hierarchical model for running a school.

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It is stunning to me the “adultism” demonstrated by the disrespectful ways many adults still treat children and youth, particularly their own kids. I think it is one of the last vestiges in our society of pure patriarchal “power-over” protocol that is still considered acceptable by many adults in dealing with their children and youth. That protocol involves the assumption that the “superior” adult/parent has the absolute command and control over the “inferior” young person/child, such that any inappropriate behavior by the “inferior” reflects on and is highly disrespectful to the reputation of their “superior” and must be forcibly modified to save face.

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As I have said many times before (from my reading of human history), the development of our species for the past five millennia has been all about the transition from patriarchal institutions based on the rule of strength to more partnership ones based on the rule of law. This transition involves more people becoming stakeholders with the liberty to chart their own course, check the power of their leaders, and contribute their two cents to the growing collective wisdom that has brought us such breakthroughs as the 2008 election of Barak Obama as President of the United States.

For me, a logical step still ahead of us in this progression is conferring more liberty upon our young people so they can be greater stakeholders in their own development, prior to their reaching adulthood. (more…)

My parents were not into rewards or punishments, an approach to parenting that was pretty unique when I was growing up in the late 50’s through the early 70’s, and still so today. I recall one instance of being swatted on the butt by my dad, not a premeditated thing, but impromptu when I was reaching for something on the hot stove. But other than that, I have no recollection of ever being spanked or grounded, or receiving any of the conventional punishments that most other kids were subjected to. (more…)

A hierarchical social system by its nature is all about ranking (including the most basic and binary ranking of superiors and inferiors, winners and losers), which determines whether one is slotted in the upper of lower levels of the societal structure. If you look around the world today you can see the rigid ordering of human beings still thriving in some cultures, while in others, a transition to a more (I would venture to say more evolved) egalitarian circle of equals is well underway, at least in some societal institutions.

Since the time of ancient Greece (if not earlier), Western culture has had an ongoing historical thread of the emergence of more egalitarian trends (including Athenian democracy and the egalitarian philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth) attempting to break through an overlay of coercive authoritarian control (including Greek and Roman empires, and religious conformity under Constantine and later Roman Church popes). (more…)

My mom had a great love for everything that had to do with Christmas, and particularly the figure of Santa Clause and what he symbolized in terms of celebrating and honoring children. She believed in God (unlike me) but also felt that organized religion was one of the great scourges of human history. Given that, she still enjoyed even the Christian celebration of the birth of the baby Jesus, and the bestowing on him of great gifts, seeing it as a metaphor as to how all people should greet and treat our children with an abundance of love.

Though they lived on a new college professor’s modest earnings, my parents made every effort to make Christmas time the most wonderful time of the year for me as a child. They perhaps more than most parents of the 1950s understood the value of play in the development of a young person and researched and bought me wonderful toys – like Tinker Toys, Lincoln Logs, wooden trains, plastic soldiers and dinosaurs – that they wrapped and placed under our Christmas tree, sometimes as much as a week or two before the big day, fueling my anticipation of this yearly event. Add to this great anticipation, we would sometimes do our Christmas celebration back east at my mom’s folks house in Binghamton, a journey usually taken by train in a sleeping compartment, one of my young life’s most memorable adventures. (more…)

So I’m continuing to explore youth-worker John Bell’s article “Understanding Adultism: A Key to Developing Positive Youth-Adult Relationships”. According to Bell most young people experience adultism from the day they are born until the day the world around them recognizes them as an adults. It is part of the structure of society and its institutions, including families, schools, churches and government. (If you did not read my first piece introducing the concept of adultism, you can read it by clicking this link.) (more…)

Passing some sort of metaphorical baton to the next generation (along with the key to the closet full of skeletons) is never easy. Surrendering that baton, particularly in a cultural tradition steeped with 5000 years of patriarchal pecking-order thinking can feel very uncomfortable. In many of those old stories, still hanging around somehow in the cultural zeitgeist, the “old man” only surrenders power to his son on his death bed. And then there are all those embarrassing skeletons. (more…)

When I was a young teen I spent six hours a day, five days a week, forty weeks a year in age segregated classrooms where I was often uncomfortable, stressed out, and felt disrespected by many of my peers and even some of the adults that controlled the classrooms and the encompassing school environment. And I certainly was not there by choice, finding every excuse I could (usually illness… real or imagined) to stay away. Looking back I think I was suffering from institutional age segregation and having my rights as a human being given short shrift. Certainly, as a youth and not an adult, I had no guarantee of full civil rights under the U.S. Constitution.

First of all, I will admit to being a bit of a provocateur in that initial paragraph to build my “hook” for this piece. But I am hoping that it is a prescient, though provocative, statement of a step forward in human rights that is still percolating in our future, and the debates to come surrounding the evolutionary trajectory of the human race. (more…)