:Vocalo.org

During Chicago Freedom School Summer Staff Orientation we talked about race, gender, class, sex, sexuality, religion, ethnicity, disability, ability, and almost every category with which people are labeled and oppressed.  The most contentious topic, however, was age.  Hilda, our youth organizer, and Ace, a member of our Youth Leadership Board presented an anti-adultism training.

 The definition of adultism as they presented it:

Adultism is a system of oppression that privileges adults and promotes the belief that adults are better than youth.  Adultism is method both of thinking and acting.  Behavior exhibited by both youth and adults reflect adultist thinking, such as the belief that youth cannot make adequate decisions without an adult's approval or the belief that adults reserve the right to punish youth for behavior that adults have termed to be "undisciplined."  Youth are "disciplined" at many different levels: by their parents or guardians, by schools who suspend youth from class or detain youth in school after class, by zero tolerance police practices, and by so many other methods both at the personal level and the institutional level.

Adultism is a system that says that youth cannot and should not act independently.  Youth are parented and marketed by many other adults and systems besides their parents, including schools that evaluate and rank young people's abilities and intelligence, by the media which stereotypes youth as criminals and thugs, and by many other groups of people.  Adultism is linked to many other forms of oppression.  White youth are taught to oppress youth of color.  Young women are objectified and stereotyped by the media and other institutions, which also teaches young men to treat young women as objects.  Queer youth are oppressed by straight youth in a homophobic society.  Oftentimes, this oppression is internalized and accepted as a standard belief.

This definition gives us a lot to think about.  Surely many forms of adultism do exist, but are they all negative?  Are some forms of adultism positive and actually in the best interest of youth?  What does this type of rhetoric mean for common mores such as "respect your elders"?  Where is the dividing line between respect and oppression....