It’s Time for Youth Rights

There has been a lot of attention placed recently on parental rights but what about youth rights, the rights of children to have access to a well rounded, intellectually challenging and honest education, the right to be heard and valued, the right to become empowered to determine their own way in life. We live in a society that sees children as a product, not equal to adults and not capable of finding their own interests and purpose in life. We send them to school at age 5 and for 12 years we fill them up with instructions about what to learn, how to learn it and when, with the expectation that they will all do the same things at the same time. And then we turn them loose in the world and expect them to function independently, make good choices and earn a living. Why can we not see them as fellow human beings who are equally worthy of respect and dignity? Why do we think we know what and how they should learn? Why do we think a standardized curriculum will generate diverse and creative thinkers which is what we so badly need in our torn and fractured world. Sure, children need boundaries, structure and support, but so do we all. We are all products of a system that doesn’t want to change, whose “normal” is what we experienced and therefore this is what we pass on to our children. We have a divided, dysfunctional society and nothing will ever change if we keep doing the same thing over and over and hoping for different results. Our children deserve better. After all they are our future and the much needed fresh thinking that has been conditioned out of us adults.