{"id":1531,"date":"2009-10-23T11:07:38","date_gmt":"2009-10-23T19:07:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/?p=1531"},"modified":"2010-02-22T15:07:15","modified_gmt":"2010-02-22T23:07:15","slug":"defining-adultism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/2009\/10\/23\/defining-adultism\/","title":{"rendered":"Defining Adultism"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ChildishSo you have probably already been \u201cism\u2019d\u201d within an inch of your life and may be ready to roll your eyes if I attempt to direct your attention to another one! Seems the 20th Century was full of positive movements and negative systems being coined as \u201cisms\u201d, including \u201cfeminism\u201d, \u201cprogressivism\u201d and \u201cenvironmentalism\u201d on the one side and \u201csexism\u201d, \u201cracism\u201d and \u201cmilitarism\u201d on the other. Some might make a good argument that we should leave all those \u201cisms\u201d behind with the last century and turn our focus forward and reframe the way we look at liberating movements and the restricting systems that hinder human development.
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\nGiven those disclaimers I want to alert you to one more \u201cism\u201d, \u201cadultism\u201d, that has been defined by and comes out of the milieu of thoughtful people, youth and adults, working in the democratic education and youth empowerment movements. One of my colleagues in the newly formed Institute for Democratic Education in America (IDEA), Adam Fletcher, has compiled information calling out this negative system on his website (freechild.org) page titled \u201cChallenging Adultism\u201d<\/a>.
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\nOn his site is a link to a very comprehensive piece defining adultism, \u201cUnderstanding Adultism: A Key to Developing Positive Youth-Adult Relationships\u201d, an article written by long-time youth worker John Bell of YouthBuild. Though I don\u2019t agree with everything in Bell\u2019s article, its definition of \u201cadultism\u201d does resonate with me as a useful calling out of a negative system that I would urge all progressive people to think twice about and keep in mind in our relationships (as adults) with youth.
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\nSo \u201cadultism\u201d is basically the disrespect and discrimination against young people (simply because they are not adults) that exists beyond the legitimate responsibility of adults \u2013 parents, teachers and others \u2013 to provide guidance and a developmentally appropriate environment for young people to mature to adulthood.
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\nIn the article Bell writes…<\/p>\n

As children, most young people are told what to eat, what to wear, when to go to bed, when they can talk, that they will go to school, which friends are okay, and when they are to be in the house. Even as they grow older, the opinions of most young people are not valued; they are punished at the will or whim of adults; their emotions are considered \u201cimmature.\u201d In addition, adults reserve the right to punish, threaten, hit, take away \u201cprivileges,\u201d and ostracize young people when such actions are deemed to be instrumental in controlling or disciplining them.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So if you parse Bell\u2019s paragraph, some of what he\u2019s talking about is the legitimate role of parents, teachers and other adults to set limits and ensure kids take responsibility for their actions, have proper nutrition and an otherwise enriched environment to grow.
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\nBut like all human social endeavors, there are at least two profoundly different ways of doing things. One involves the \u201cpecking order\u201d, a hierarchy of acknowledged \u201csuperiors\u201d using acceptable forms of coercion necessary to exercise power and control over acknowledged \u201cinferiors\u201d. The other involves a \u201ccircle of equals\u201d (without categories of superiors and inferiors) where power is not defined as control over but facilitation of a group of people. To the extent that adults relate to young people (including exercising their legitimate responsibility towards them) within the \u201cpecking order\u201d paradigm; that is what is being defined as \u201cadultism\u201d.
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\nThe last 5000 years of human history is a parade of various \u201cpecking order\u201d forms of social organization \u2013 masters over slaves, lords over serfs, whites over people of color, Aryans over non-Aryans \u2013 all eventually repudiated (though not yet eliminated) by human culture as morally unsustainable and grave hindrances to human development. That these forms of social organization still exist, is a legacy of patriarchy, an ancient ideology of domination, which is still alive and well in the world.
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\nEvidence that patriarchy is alive and well can be found in the fact the \u201cpecking order\u201d of men over women, though challenged by progressives throughout the world, is still conventional practice and official policy on much of our planet. The superior position of men over women is so fundamentally woven into much of human culture that the 19th and 20th Century efforts towards sexual equality have led, I believe, to much of the violent expressions of religious fundamentalism that many describe as the \u201cism\u201d of \u201cterror\u201d today.
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\nAt the bottom of the patriarchal \u201cpecking order\u201d, still cloaked in general respectability and conventional wisdom, is the superiority of adults over young people. Just as for centuries feudal lords justified their indisputable authority over their serfs as necessary stewardship, adults today throughout the world justify their absolute authority over young people.
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\nOne justification of the \u201cpecking order\u201d of adults over youth is that it is transitory, that once young people are properly trained and come of age, they move from the inferior to the superior group (adults). But as Bell points out in his article, the impact of \u201cadultism\u201d is much more pervasive. Young people raised in a paradigm where they are the acknowledged \u201cinferiors\u201d and adults are the acknowledged \u201csuperiors\u201d grow up to become adults themselves more willing to accept other \u201cpecking orders\u201d that still have power in the adult world, not the least of which are continuing racial, gender and sexual orientation inequality. Further, young people who internalize their inferiority to adults, can grow up to be adults who are more willing to participate in business paradigms of \u201csuperior\u201d bosses and \u201cinferior\u201d worker bees.
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\nWe who believe in the progressive ideals of the inherent worth and dignity of every human being need to be cognizant of these vestiges of patriarchy and \u201cpecking order\u201d in the conventional wisdom of our relationships between adults and young people. If we adults continue to give ourselves near absolute power over youth, won\u2019t this lead to increasing corruption and disrespect for our charges?
\n
\nThink of some of the common statements that reflect the conventional wisdom of the superiority of adults, and when examined show that fundamental disrespect for youth and their developmental process…
\n
\n* \u201cYou\u2019re so smart for fifteen!\u201d
\n* \u201cWhen are you going to grow up?\u201d
\n* \u201cDon\u2019t ever yell at your mother like that!\u201d (yelling)
\n* \u201cIt\u2019s just a stage. You\u2019ll outgrow it.\u201d
\n
\nMost telling of all, in my opinion, is the oft hurled epithet, \u201cYou\u2019re behaving like children.\u201d
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\nSo this piece is just a brief introduction to the concept of \u201cadultism\u201d, that I believe is an important component of the remaining patriarchal infrastructure of our culture (and most others in the world). It is an infrastructure that I have made a continuing commitment to call out and urge all of us to move beyond so that we can all better go about our continuing effort towards the development of our species here on planet Earth.
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\nSee my next piece on Adultism at https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/2009\/10\/25\/the-dimensions-of-adultism\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So you have probably already been \u201cism\u2019d\u201d within an inch of your life and may be ready to roll your eyes if I attempt to direct your attention to another one! Seems the 20th Century was full of positive movements and negative systems being coined as \u201cisms\u201d, including \u201cfeminism\u201d, \u201cprogressivism\u201d and \u201cenvironmentalism\u201d on the one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[633,632,356,634,635,271,166],"class_list":["post-1531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-context","tag-adult-authority","tag-adultism","tag-patriarchy","tag-rights-of-children","tag-rights-of-youth","tag-youth-empowerment","tag-youth-rights"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t