Youth Leaders

Fri Oct 8 03:06:03 PDT 2010

Dear Tree,
from where I sit (public) decision making as presently practiced, for 
instance in Germany, is ineffective, creates larger problems, is 
lobby-infested, dogmatic, expensive, not even a good show... who would 
want to be part of that?
What I have experienced often in "formal" open space events and in the 
"normal" open space of everyday life (like the 1,5 year old daughter of 
a neighbor visiting and taking over our household, very effectively 
involving us in her life and experiments, curious, decisions?-easy for 
her....pure joy)is that kids of all ages thrive in it.
But then, thats not decision making in the sense of sitting on a "board" 
of whatsoever.
Day-care children, grade school kids, highschool kids, teenagers... are 
the greatest gift to an open space event, so I encourage their taking 
part and it seems to always have been productive, fun, healthy...

Have a great day
Greetings from Berlin
mmp

Tree Fitzpatrick schrieb:
> There are many things off kilter in human culture. One thing that I think is
> off kilter is that adult humans now routinely encourage non-adult humans to
> participate in things like 'public decision making'.  Where did we get the
> assumption that a young person has the capacity of a fully evolved adult
> human to make informed decisions that might have long term consequences on
> the child, other children, the community, the culture, etc? Children are not
> yet adult.
> 
> We encourage children to 'awaken' to adulthood far too early.
> 
> I am appalled that many now take it for granted that children (a non-adult
> is still a child) should sit on something like the Board of Directors of
> something like the Jane Goddall Institute (whatever that is, I imagine
> Ashley meant Jane Goddall).
> 
> This is a major flaw, I think, in evolving culture and it has endlessly
> complex repercussions.
> 
> Children's job is to be children, to developo their own personhood fully so
> that they will one day take a place in adult community. Children awaken to
> adult considerations much too early. TElevision has been a huge culprit in
> this regard and now, of course, the internet.
> 
> A child's main work is being a child. It's just not right to cavalierly get
> youth input into decisioins that children cannot, just cannot, really know.
> A twelve year old, a sixteen year old, is not mature enough to make complex
> public decisions and it is wrong to ask them to:  asking children to
> participate in grown up life as peers with the adults dishonors children
> 
> I get my main attitudes about children from having sent my child to a
> Waldorf School and having been a student of Rudolf STeiner for over twenty
> years. Much of what is wrong with human culture can be traced to the
> practice of stunting youthful inner development under the guise of awakening
> children too early to adult concerns. This is why we now have an education
> system in USA that is focussed on test scores instead of the inner
> development of children. There is a story in today's NYTImes about how
> publishers are publishing less picture books and how parents pressure four
> years olds to listen to long stories and skip picture books so they will
> have better test scores later. . . this dynamic is connected to including
> youth in public decisinmaking.
> 
> I know this is a very popular trend and I know Ashely Cooper is deeply
> invested in the world and I know she is a good caring person intent on
> making positive contributions in the world.
> 
> I get to have my opinion, yes?  I am worried about the millions of humans
> who are children today who are not cloud-gazing and spending their summers
> hunting rocks and birds' nests and who are told, when they are twelve, that
> they can contribute to public decisions. Grown up humans have a duty to
> children:  to let them be children. Otherwise what we are creating is an
> army of humans who are not fully developed humans who will make good wage
> slaves for the elite billionaires running the tea part movement. Thinking
> caring loving people should not participate in pushing children into the
> adult arena while children.
> 
> On Thu, Oct 7, 2010 at 6:51 PM, ashley cooper
> <mail.easilyamazed at gmail.com>wrote:
> 
>> Hello Open Space friends,
>>
>> I have fallen off of the OSlist for awhile, but I wanted to share with you
>> a talk from a recent TEDx event that I hosted, TEDxNextGenerationAsheville<http://www.tedxnextgenerationasheville.com/>.
>> This event was all about spotlighting the ideas of young people and giving
>> them a public stage from which to share and be heard. It was also an
>> invitation for there to be more collaboration between youth and adults.
>> Chase Pickering spoke about the role of youth in leadership and how young
>> people can contribute to public decision-making and serve on Board of
>> Directors (which he did with the Jane Goddall Institute). If you are in a
>> position to invite a youth to serve on your board of directors or advisory
>> board or encourage the clients you work with, please consider Chase's
>> advice!
>>
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27IJpZVP1qs
>>
>> You can also watch Birke Baehr's talk about the food we eat. He is an 11
>> year old who is passionate about food and whose talk has gone viral and been
>> viewed over 200,000 times in less than 2 weeks.
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7Id9caYw-Y
>>
>> Sending fondest regards from Asheville, NC, USA,
>> Ashley
>>
>> P.s. If you would like to respond to me personally, please send it to
>> easilyamazed at gmail.com . I have not been checking this account regularly.
>> Thank you.
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> 
> 
> 

-- 
Michael M Pannwitz, boscop eg
Draisweg 1, 12209 Berlin, Germany
++49-30-772 8000
mmpanne at boscop.org
www.boscop.org

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