So I’ve been thinking for a while about this subject, and I finally decided to make a post about this some time after I saw a YouTuber say what I put on the title of this post.
Thing is, I’ve noticed that very often young people and especially kids are treated as lesser beings, like if they were not humans beings with problems and lives of their own but just an annoyance that people have to keep up with.
I remember when I was a kid and I wanted to cross a zebra crossing cars would just pass by without stopping more often than not. Now that I’m an adult they stop pretty much every time. I suspect it was because they didn’t want to stop for someone they consider to be lesser than them.
Also, a lot of people seem to think that being a kid means that you just play videogames or whatever all day, but don’t these people remember when they were kids? I sure do. Going to school has been the worst thing I’ve ever had to endure. The only difference with having a job is that you don’t get paid.
I honestly don’t have any thoughts on this right now other than we need to discuss this. At the time of me writing this, there are no comments on this post.
This issue is often dismissed, but we Marxists criticize and breakdown every amount of our society in hopes of building a new one, and the role of children and/or childhood shouldn’t be an exception to this.
Also, what are your guys’ thoughts on the concept of youth liberation? Do you support the idea or reject it? Should it be implemented immediately under socialism, implemented gradually as productive forces grow, or not be considered at all?
I support Marxist abolition of the family and education reforms to get rid of the “factory model of education.”
That being said, I don’t think getting rid of education entirely, for example, is a good idea.
In addition to Rondomi’s reply, I wanted to point out that I interpreted OP’s post as perhaps implying that meaning, when they wrote:
Going to school has been the worst thing I’ve ever had to endure.
This was further confirmed when the first result when searching “youth liberation” was this anarchist article that called schools concentration camps and unironically suggested the word “children” is equivalent to the N-word.
Our conditions aren’t conducive to maintaining a proper state of mind. After having been put through the barbaric, traumatic education typical to the west, I can understand why people foster a belief that education is bad by default. Like those put through conversion therapy who develop a disdain for psychologists. Or those wronged by their government who become anarchists. All three have applied to me in the past. When one is a victim of poor education and trauma, getting them to see the truth can become an extremely delicate act.
I support the concept of youth liberation. I can say without a doubt that if I had an “out” from my family, that I would have taken it. Aldous Huxley writes of a concept in his fiction novel Island, where families are assigned to a unit. If children need an escape from their immediate family, they’re able to stay with other families in the unit. I think the saying “it takes a village” is true and we’ve been ignoring it for at least the last century here in the west.
Any resources on what the concept of youth liberation is and how it might be implemented? This is the first time I’ve heard of it… (Yes, I know I could look it up, but considering how search engines can be biased or low-quality, I would rather ask someone already familiar with the concept.)
I never knew how to engage with kids once I no longer considered myself one, but now that I have kids, it’s like they have wiped that from my brain and I can’t imagine what it’s like to not want to engage with kids. I think that it’s a mixed bag in terms of “Are kids treated like humans”. There are a lot of people who are still holding onto the notions they were subjected to growing up:
- Kids should be seen and not heard.
- Kids should have respect for adults. (which is almost always code for obedience, not respect)
- “My house, My Rules” aka Authoritarian Centered Parenting.
- Illogical or disproportionate punishment for breach of “the rules”.
It seems to me that these “traditional” values in regard to parenting lead to a deficit in trust between parent and child, the child becomes more adept at subterfuge as they attempt to skirt the more illogical rules, and instills a kind of adversarial relationship between the parent and child. Rules like “Don’t wear your hat at a restaurant” followed up with “Because I said so” or “Because I’m your Parent and what I say goes” are just the codification of preferences both personal and learned into arbitrary rules. Naturally, when you point out how nonsensical it is, you’re met with “That’s how my parents were and I turned out fine!”. Are_You_Sure_About_That.mp4
Kids are wiser than you think, and if you explain to them why you’re asking them to do something, they’ll usually get it. Obviously, that depends on their age. One thing I’ve learned from experience with my toddler is that, if you talk too fast or repeat yourself too quickly or expect them to respond instantly to a question or demand, you’re going to have a bad time. They need time to process what you’re saying because they’re still learning how to process language. Usually, if something is pressing or they’re just not listening, you can just redirect them. I’ve never had this become a huge fight so far. Usually I ask twice, and if that doesn’t work, I guide them to the thing we’re doing now, and that kind of direction they seem to just get. Do I get the odd tantrum, sure, but that’s to be expected. I tend to make sure to loop back after the tantrum and try to empathize and explain what the request was and why. Sometimes, the tantrum is just illogical and you have to just accept that.
To be clear. I’m only synthesizing my own experiences along with the experiences of other parents either personally or online. Some people take their childhood as a blueprint for their parenthood, and others have reflected on their childhood and make attempts to have it not be the blueprint for their parenthood. I want to be as communicative and empathetic with my kids as I can, and to actually hear them when they express how they feel. I know that was something I needed growing up, and I know they’ll need it too.
In terms of our social systems and structures surrounding kids, definitely not Humans by any stretch. America is the only nation in the UN that has signed but not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child. While the US played an active role in drafting this bill of child rights, they still have not ratified it. Doing so would require them to completely unearth and rebuild child welfare within their legal system. The primary opponents of these rights are, unsurprisingly, political and religious conservatives such as The Heritage Foundation and the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA). The Heritage Foundation believes that “a civil society in which moral authority is exercised by religious congregations, family, and other private associations is fundamental to the American order” while the HSLDA argues that ratifying these rights would threaten homeschooling in America.
In the majority of US States Corporal Punishment is legal under statues making exceptions to the states law regarding crimes of assault, criminal battery, domestic violence, sexual assault, sexual abuse or child abuse. Exceptions to these laws make it nearly impossible to charge a legal guardian of a child with a crime when certain actions are applied to that child. This extends into the public school system, where 17 states still allow for Corporal Punishment as a form of discipline within their public school systems. The practice was deemed “constitutional” by the Supreme Court in 1977. The Court held that the “cruel and unusual punishments” clause of the Eighth Amendment only applied to the treatment of prisoners convicted of a crime. Which, naturally we understand to be pure hypocrisy when you consider how often solitary confinement is used in the American prison system, and how universally accepted it is that solitary confinement is a horrific, life altering, inhumane experience.
You can read all the articles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child here: https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/convention-rights-child
There are countless examples of children being objected to utterly horrific state violence, from the cartoonishly evil such as being arrested for not using the potty, to the systematically evil conditions within the foster care system: “According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, in 2018, 62% of children placed in foster care were removed from their homes due to abusive neglect, totaling over 160,000 children.”. Then consider that states are actively fighting against universal free lunch programs in schools, and that the federal government failed to make permanent the temporary expansion of the child tax credit during covid which brought food insecurity in households with children to a two decade low.
For as much as the reactionaries talk about family values in America, it’s clear through their policies and actions that they have no intention of treating kids as anything other than property.
♥ Thanks for the kind words comrade! Honestly, a lot of this information lives in my head rent-free. As a family with a comfortable dual income, we’re still treading water because of childcare costs. Where we live the age to enter kindergarten has been pushed up (for sound academic and social-emotional reasons) without any measures to ease the burden on working families who understand the objective reality that public education is also a form of free child care and had been budgeting against that reality.
Being a parent is hard work, and the systems we live under only make it more challenging. This is a perspective I didn’t have until I had kids of my own. If anything, having kids has been the strongest radicalizing force in my life, and is the reason I consider myself a Marxist.
The US “school to prison pipeline” has a double meaning:
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Schools in the US do not adequately prepare children for society, and as a result many fall into poverty and turn to crime to survive.
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Children in US schools are literally treated in a way that takes many elements from how inmates in US prisons are treated.
The presence of “resource officers” in schools also increases the likelihood that a student ends up on the School to Prison Pipeline as administrations defer to the officer as a mechanism for punishment, which often results in criminal charges against the student. Their existence in schools can not even be justified via critical analysis because any inquiry into their “effectiveness” proves that no resource officer in any school building across the country has ever prevented or reduced the likelihood of a mass causality event in the building.
Also it’s surprisingly common for minors, as in children, to be tried as adults and be sent to adult prisons in the US.
Let that sink in.
Oh damn, I thought it was just Australia who did that! Finally, the US is adopting something from our prison system, rather than the other way around.
Being a teenager was definitely a surreal experience. At school I was expected to write pages-long essays about history and politics without warning. I had to have a litany of formulas memorized and also remember when and how to use them. I needed to know how to analyze dense texts, including ones in middle English.
But outside of school I was treated as an idiot kid who’s 5 seconds away from stealing or breaking something at any given moment. The contrast between how I was treated in high school and college is like night and day even though I was doing much, much less schoolwork that was easier in college.
