Whose Body is It?
Ed Lisbe
Purpose of Article
This article is intended to be read by counselors, teachers, and youth specialists with their imagining that a caring adult is addressing it to young adults and older children. This article presupposes minimal familiarity with my MyBody-YourBody (MBYB) ideas, and elaborates the 'Body' concept in MyBody-Your Body
Adults: Imagine being a young person. How can we adults show you the reality of the lack of freedom you have, and the lack of true justice you experience with almost all the significant adults in your life, particularly with your parents at home and with your teachers in school. They have the ultimate power over you, specifically your Body, your body both in a physical sense and in an extended sense. Understanding the very limited power you have as a young person in our society to make important choices for yourself is the first step in using My Body-Your Body (MBYB) to have the kind of self-determined life that you, as do all human persons, deserve.
Your body belongs to the adults.
When you disagree with an adult who feels strongly about something you want, the solution almost always goes the adult's way. We have enough physical size, psychological power, and/or legal support to do almost anything we want to your body.
We adults talk to you almost all the time about having self-respect for your own body and about the importance of treating other peoples' bodies with respect, tolerance, and acceptance. We talk to you about these values in your homes and schools, in our churches, our mosques, and our synagogues. You hear it from us everywhere. The problem for you is that you don't see it from us everywhere. And your experience is that these values have no relevance to the way you and your own body are treated by adults.
Often, you hardly see it anywhere. After a church sermon reminding people to love one another and to treat others as we would like to be treated, you will see members of the congregation cutting each other off with their cars on the way out of the parking lot. Or, after hearing your dad tell you to be unselfish and to think of others first, you see him take the last ice cube and leave the kitchen without refilling the tray. What you see is very different from what you hear.
Words are easy. Behaviors are much more difficult. No matter how much we talk with you about respect, for instance, it is just a word. You watch what we do, not what we say. And when you watch what we do your gut tells you there is something wrong here as you see and hear the way adults treat each other and the way we treat you and your friends and other young people. You know that we show very little respect for your body in almost everything other than our words.
WHAT DOES 'BODY' MEAN IN MY BODY-YOUR BODY (MBYB)?
My Body-Your Body (MBYB)[MBYBoverview.htm] is a consistent standard of fairness for resolving conflicts between people regardless of age, gender, race, relationship, religion, culture, political affiliation or economic status. The model was developed as an answer to the question, "What is the most basic starting point possible for peaceful coexistence on a planet where people continually clash over different needs, wants, desires and values?" It seemed most unarguable that one's individual rights and freedom should be limited only when they affect others; that, at the very least, each person's physical body should be safe from harm:
- My body is over here.
- Your body is over there.
- I have no right to do anything to your body that you don't want.
- You have no right to do anything to my body that I don't want.
The body as defined here, extends beyond the person's physical 'body' to include his/her clothing, possessions, work or play area, living space, choices, etc. A fair standard of the use of force over others for bodily protection is especially useful for problem solving in relationships of unequal power such as parent: child and teacher: student. This essay illustrates MBYB applied to those situations. The model applies to any relationship such as husband: wife, boss: employee, etc.
WHO OWNS YOUR BODY AT HOME?
Your parents (or guardians) own your body at home.
We hit your body (calling it "spanking" so it doesn't sound as violent as it really is). We pull your body, pick it up, carry it, drag it, and sometimes shake it. We take things out of your hands that you are holding or touching. We tell you what to do with your expressions--Wipe that smile off your face. Look at me when I'm talking to you!--and we order you to stay when you want to leave--Get back here. I'm not finished with you. We keep you inside when you want to go outside and we make you come inside when you want to stay outside. You have to ask permission from us to get up from a table when you are finished eating. Your friends have to ask us for permission to play with you. You have to ask for our permission to play with them. You are even given orders about what to do with your own private space, your room.
Adults lock up your body whenever we want. At home, this process of taking away your liberty is called "grounding." At school it is called "detention." You are told what you can and can't wear. We tell you to get off the phone. We tell you to stop using the computer. We don't let you go to a friend's house. Sometimes we even force you not to have certain friends. You are told not to read certain books or listen to certain kinds of music or watch certain movies. What about all the food and mealtime issues you face with us on a daily basis? You are made to eat: when you don't want to eat; what you don't want to eat; more than you want to eat; where you might not want to eat; and how you don't want to eat.
- Get in here right now. It's lunchtime (when you are playing a great game with your friends).
- Eat at least three string beans and one carrot. Then you can have dessert.
- You are not getting up from the table until you finish what's on your plate.
- No, you can't eat in your room. You know we want everyone to eat dinner together.
- Get your elbows off the table, and stop picking at your food. Use your fork.
WHO OWNS YOUR BODY AT SCHOOL?
Your teacher owns your body at school.
So does the principal, and the psychologists and the counselors, and the Superintendent of Schools. Ultimately, parents own your body at school because they are usually the members of The Board of Education, which makes up the rules of the school.
The law
The people in our government have written many laws about school. You have to go to school if you don't want your body to be locked up somewhere, or if you don't want your parents to get into trouble for "educational neglect." According to the New York State (each state has such a law) "Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act" (CAPTA) abuse and neglect is defined as:
". . . the act, or failure to act, by any parent or caretaker who is responsible for a child under the age of 18 that results in the maltreatment of a child."
One of the listed types of child "maltreatment" is "educational neglect":
"Educational neglect includes failure to enroll a school-age child in school, allowing unexplained absences from school, refusal of recommended remedial services without good reason, and failure to respond to attendance questions."
In our society, the police and the judges and the social workers--many of whom are parents themselves--can take you away from your parents, and put them into prison if you don't go to school. Adults are very serious about having your body be in school. Remember that. It doesn't mean that we are right about school being good for you. It only means that we are very serious about it, and that your likes and dislikes about school don't matter very much to us.
A few of us parents think school is a bad place for you. We have to fight very hard in the Courts to keep your body out of school, to educate you at home and in the community where you live. Most adults want your body to be in an official, government sanctioned building being taught by official, government sanctioned adults we call teachers. The government does not trust us to educate you ourselves, to have us teach you what is and isn't important about life. Those of us who teach you at home are required to submit a report to our closest official school about what we are teaching you. If that report doesn't match what the people who run the schools want to see, we can be charged with "educational neglect."
The teachers
In school we force your body to spend hours and hours of your time with adults (teachers) you probably would not choose to spend any time with outside of school. There are exceptions, of course.
Sometimes you will have a wonderful teacher, or principal, or counselor in school. You feel one of us cares about you, is interested in your life, wants the best for you, and almost always treats you respectfully. You can also tell that we aren't just doing a "job," that we are passionate about being with young people, not just counting the days to retirement, and that we might even stay in the classroom if we won the lottery. You would love being with and learning from someone like us even outside the classroom.
Have you ever had a teacher like that? Doesn't it feel more alive, real, and authentic to be around adults who love and respect the people we're there to serve? Unfortunately for you, this description doesn't fit too many of your teachers. Very few of us are like that. Ask the adults in your life--your parents, uncles, aunts, and grandparents--How many of your official schoolteachers do you remember being respectful and loving to you? How many did you enjoy being with as you learned? You won't get a very long list.
Actually, the same can be said about police officers, judges, social workers, and doctors. We just happen to be talking about teachers here. All you can know for sure about any of us, in any profession, is that we have a degree on our wall that allows us to work in a chosen field. That is all you know. That degree is not necessarily related to how we feel about people or how we will treat the people whose care is entrusted to us. Other than those of us who were appointed or elected to our positions, we simply took a certain number of courses and passed a certain number of tests for a particular job. We might care, and some of us might be marvelous contributions to your life. All I am suggesting to you here is that you trust your heart when you are with us, not our certificate or our degree. Or our words.
In 1988 I experienced a similar dramatic lifelessness in a first grade classroom when I brought my son, David, in for his first day of school. I remember how excited he was walking down the hall, carrying a brand new, red "Master's of the Universe" lunch pail, ready to take on this next adventure of his young life. As we turned the corner toward his room we saw through the open door every student seated at his/her desk with hands folded, no one talking, no one moving. The teacher, seated quietly behind her desk in the front of the room also wasn't talking or moving.
This was ten minutes before the bell, on the very first day of school, in the first grade! There was no emotional or physical contact between the students, and none between the teacher and the students. David and I could feel the stillness in the room--22 first graders, quiet, still, on the first day of school. Nothing alive. Everything dead. We actually could feel the absence of sound, movement and spirit in the room. He and I looked at each other, shook our heads, and together, we left to go home.
The suffering
This is your life on a typical school day, isn't it?
You are made fun of and hurt by people your own age
-- or you see bullied classmates treated that way.
You are humiliated and ridiculed by teachers
-- or you see classmates treated that way.
You are made to sit bored, quietly, for hours and hours, forced to pay attention to things which don't interest you because they are not related to your life or needs.
We forget about the force that puts you into your seat in the classroom where these things happen to you, and then we expect you to like this school experience. We expect you to be appreciative and grateful for your education. And when you aren't appreciative and grateful? When you don't like it? If you express that honestly, bad things usually happen to you, right? So you tend to lie. Don't most of you lie when adults you haven't seen for awhile ask you questions like these at weddings and picnics: So, how do you like school? What subjects are you taking? Do you like your teacher?
You know the questions are meaningless because all we want to hear from you is that everything is fine. When you talk to us about your problems with school, not many of us will be interested in hearing and understanding what you have to say. We don't want to face the truth of our own negative experiences with school, preferring to selectively forget those memories as we wonder why you aren't happier there or more motivated to learn. So you say some form of, It's okay and you try to get away from the conversation as quickly as you can.
We bore you
Adults want and expect you to be interested in school "subjects" even when you don't see how they fit into your life. Writing letters and understanding numbers does not fit into the lives of most kindergartners, for instance. A much more relevant curriculum for you at this age would be:
- What do I do if someone calls me a name?
- What if someone has something I want?
- What do I say when I am angry?
- What if no one wants to play with me in the playground?
- How do I get someone to leave me alone?
That would be a much more useful and exciting curriculum for very young people in your first experience trying to survive in a large group of people your own age. In junior high school and in high school, how interested are some of you in Earth Science or Geometry or the Civil War or William Shakespeare?
Do you know why many young people drop out of school these days when they are legally able to do so? It's not because of behavior problems. It's not because you aren't smart enough. It's because you are bored. That's the reason. Boredom. According to a March 2006 press release by The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, boredom was one of the main findings of a study commissioned to determine the reasons for students dropping out of school. The report, The Silent Epidemic: Perspectives of High School Dropouts, found that nearly 50% of 470 dropouts surveyed said they left school because their classes were boring and not relevant to their lives or career aspirations.
We adults live in a fantasyland about young people. What is the difference between you and us in terms of how we learn? There is none. None at all. When you aren't interested in what we are telling you: you either pretend to be interested--to avoid a negative consequence--or you try to find something else that interests you more. Adults do the same thing. When adults are not interested in what someone is telling us: we either pretend to be interested--to avoid a negative consequence--or we try to find something else that interests us more. No difference. Adults and young people are no different in terms of what we may or may not be interested in, yet we treat young people very differently.
Then we drug you
The problem for you, though, is very serious. When you try to find something that interests you more than the classroom activity you are in, we say you are "distracted" and we blame you for not being interested.
And after we blame you? Do you know what we do to many of you who are "distracted" in school, who don't pay attention to things that don't interest you? We drug you. Even at very young ages. In pre-school, kindergarten and first grade we make you sit. For very long periods of time. Your bodies at that age are naturally meant to run and jump and climb and roll and spin and twist and skip and hop and stretch. When you aren't allowed to do that, you become restless. If you become restless enough to move out of your chair, we drug you.
Many of you are now being given drugs by adults who hope to make you more interested in boring subject matter. How many of you know about all the drugs that are now being used to control your bodies when you don't pay enough attention in school? Did you know that adults are drugging approximately 3%-5% of schoolchildren (most of them boys) according to most medical estimates . . . and that the number is increasing dramatically year after year? Peter Breggin, author of Talking Back to Ritalin asserts, "This is a national catastrophe. I'm seeing children who are normal who are on five psychiatric drugs." To Breggin, Ritalin "suppresses creative, spontaneous and autonomous activity in children, making them more docile and obedient, and more willing to comply with routine, boring tasks such as classroom school work and homework." Ritalin is dangerous, the Food and Drug Administration classifies it as a Schedule II substance, joining amphetamines, cocaine, morphine, opium, and barbiturates on the list.
Sure you have "attention deficit." So do adults. It's perfectly normal when people aren't interested in something to be distracted, to pay attention to something we are more interested in. Adults aren't interested in things we are forced to look at, either. We don't pay attention, the same as you don't pay attention. You should watch your teachers sometime at a faculty meeting after school. You'll see us talking to our friends, doodling, writing shopping lists in our books, looking around the room, passing notes, fidgeting, getting up to go to the bathroom. Everyone is distracted when we aren't interested in what is in front of us.
The problem is that when you aren't interested in what is in front of you in school, we say that your distraction is an "attention deficit" problem and we put drugs into your body. The drugs are meant to slow you down. Drugged, less engaged with life, you won't be as interested in other things and you will pay better attention to the things we want you to pay attention to. You won't care as much, probably about anything. You won't question things. Your vitality will be dulled.
Learning this process of quiet, docile obedience is what we are really teaching you in school. We are teaching you how to behave when you don't like what people in authority are doing to you. Trained to be future unthinking citizens, you are learning to obey authority. This, according to John Gatto, New York City Teacher of the Year (1991), is the true school curriculum. He calls this "schooling" (Dumbing Us Down, 1992). This, not your subject matter, is your true education. You are being "schooled." The purpose of being "schooled" is to deaden your spirit. Those of you whose spirit we can't deaden, we drug, or move to increasingly restrictive environments.
As a school psychologist, when parents told me their child was "distracted" and that the teacher suggested drugs for this "attention deficit" I always asked, Are there things your child does where he doesn't seem distracted, where he can focus and pay a great deal of attention? In all but a very few cases, smiling parents could easily recall the many things they couldn't even drag their very normal child's attention away from: an exciting game of football with friends on the street, a certain challenging computer program or video game, a television movie, ice-skating for hours on a pond back of the house.
One such mother, describing camping trips with her children began to cry when she told me how her son would sometimes spend hours either whittling a stick, or looking into the fire, or staring up at the stars. Distraction isn't the problem for kids like hers. School is the problem for kids like hers. It makes sense to me that when an institution like a school has so many "problems" with the kids it is designed to serve, the problem has to be with the institution, not with the kids.
You keep being told that you are the problem. Don't believe it. There could be something wrong with your body, of course, but not necessarily, and certainly not with as many of your bodies as we tell you.
Adults want more and more school control of your 'body'
Not only won't we adults transform ours schools to make them better for you, we actually believe giving you more of a bad thing is the solution. So the news for you is very bad.
Schools keep extending the hours you have to be there. We have laws requiring you to be in school a certain number of hours every day, a certain number of days each year, for a certain number of years of your life. The number of school years keeps growing! Kindergarten used to be voluntary, now it is mandatory. It used to be for a half a day. Now it is for a whole day.
On the other end, you used to be able to stop going to school at age sixteen. In most states you now have to stay until you are seventeen. In some states it is eighteen. Adults want to keep you off the streets and out of trouble because we know that as a society we have little that is productive or stimulating for you to do with your time. We don't tell you this. We tell you we are interested in your "education."
Another reason for extending the school time that you won't hear from most adults is that the state refunds money to the school according to the numbers of students attending each day. The more days you are there, the more money your school gets from the state.
As if you don't have enough problems being controlled during school, we also control your bodies before and after school as well. Before school, some of you have to take bus rides for as long as an hour, early in the morning before you are awake, with people who are so violent that videocameras are now being used to catch kids who hurt other kids.
After school, your time is also not your own because you are required to do more schoolwork at home. This homework extends your school day even further, taking you away from all the other things you would rather be doing and that your body and spirit require such as playing and being with nature. Homework takes more hours away from the cultivation at home of your imagination and creativity, and it keeps you away from your true "education": interaction with your family, friends, pets, community, and the natural world.
Aristotle, a great philosopher, taught that without a fully active role in community life one could not hope to become a healthy human being. What do you think of that? So, let's just give you more and more homework. Let's keep you in school as much as possible while you are home. Let's keep you away from your community, your real life, your true education.
WHAT CAN I DO ABOUT ADULTS OWNING MY BODY?
You have two choices. Both will probably leave you feeling a bit crazy.
- You can give up.
- You can fight back.
Giving up
Most of you fall into the "give up" category. You do what you are told without question. You very rarely say anything, even when you see things that are stupid or unfair. You know this is what we adults want from you. When you disagree with us we don't want to hear what you think. Why say anything if you know we will just tell you why you should like it, tell you to stop complaining, and then make you do it anyway? Very few of us adults are good listeners. You might as well keep your mouth shut. We will think you are one of the "good kids" and you will get all the rewards that go with that.
We want you to do and say what we want you to do and say, and to do and say it without question. We want you to give up. Of your two options, that is the one most adults prefer you choose. More than anything else, in times of disagreement, we teachers and we parents want you to obey us, to do what you are told. (MyBody-YourBody prefers that you choose the "fight back" option and will show you how to do that successfully.)
Those of you who "give up" in school know you are bored. You know you don't care about most of what your teachers talk about. You sit there, quietly, anyway, because you know you would get into trouble for doing anything else. What if you didn't "give up" and followed your heart?
What if, on the first snowstorm of the season you got up from your seat in class without saying anything to anyone (maybe leaving a note on your desk to let the teacher know where you'll be) and just walked outside to have an ecstatic moment alone getting buried by that beautiful snow?
What if, you had a friend who was having very serious trouble at home, so you got up from your seat in class without saying anything to anyone (maybe leaving a note on your desk to let the teacher know where you'll be) to go talk to her in the lunchroom for an hour?
But, you "give up." You won't do what your heart tells you to do, what feels right to do and what may even be right to do. To stay out of trouble with adults you simply do whatever we want you to do.
The same is true at home with your parents: What if, knowing nothing special was going on at your house, you told your parents what you were going to do with your body instead of asking permission? "I'm going to walk over to Janet's house and hang out for a couple of hours. Please just call me if you need anything. See you soon." Wouldn't that work for everyone? Wouldn't that feel right to do?
What if, before heading out the door to go for a bike ride you said to your mother who told you not to go anywhere until you cleaned your room, "I cleaned up everything in the house that was a mess of mine. I even took out the garbage for Mary because she's sick. And I fixed the hinge on the kitchen cabinet that you were having trouble with. I just don't agree that you have a right to tell me what to do with my room. I like it the way it is, so I left it the way it is. It isn't hurting anyone. I am going outside." Wouldn't that feel right to do?
What if, one of your parent's rules is for you to be in bed with the lights out at 9:00 P.M. and your favorite hockey team is playing for the Stanley Cup Championship in a game that probably won't be over until after midnight? What if, you decided to stay up and watch the game?
Would you do that? Wouldn't that feel like the right thing to do? Would your answer change if you were an honor student in school? What if you were failing three classes? With this moment being so special to you, and a moment which might never happen again in your lifetime, would you be willing to watch the game even if your parents made themselves angry about it and threatened to punish you? Would you be willing to lock or barricade your door so your parents couldn't stop you from watching the game? Even if you would get into trouble later, would you feel it was the right thing to do to watch the hockey game?
But, again, most of you "give up." We teach you to give up. You don't do these things you really want to do because you don't want to get into trouble. You've given up your body to us. Even when something feels right in your heart and spirit you don't do it.
To stay out of trouble with adults you do what we want, not what you want or what you feel might be the right thing to do. Over time, you lose touch with your own spirit; you don't even remember anymore what feels right in your heart. Since we own your body, it is easy for you to become numb and to lose track of how you feel or what you want. How can you remember your own intention when we never let you act on it? The result is that we determine your life. You don't. Our ownership of your body deprives you of perhaps the most important of all human rights: the right to have a self-determined life. This feeling of "being owned" and numbness and living without values then carries through into your adult life, and perpetuates itself in your interactions with your own children.
Living without intention puts you at the mercy of any of us who have an agenda for you: your parents and teachers; the media--television, newspapers, movies; advertisers; politicians. Those of us in advertising make a lot of money making sure you wear what we want you to wear, and eat what we want you to eat. Those of us who make the laws as politicians, give feel-good names to our agendas knowing you won't think about them.
The "giving up" option is about "being good." You know this is what your parents and teachers want. You don't feel much different from the "bad" kids, the kids who fall into the "fight back" category.
Fighting back
The only real difference between "good kids" and you "bad kids" who "fight back" is that you (1) speak up and say the truth about how you are feeling and (2) do more of what you want to do. Of course, you get into more trouble. You don't seem to care too much about that. You don't seem to care when adults say you have an "attitude problem."
Maybe you really do care, you just don't want to get into all that trouble that the "good kids" manage to avoid? Maybe it's more important for you to be honest about your feelings?
Adults don't want you to choose the "fight back" option, even when you might be right about something in your life that might be unfair. If something is unfair at school, for instance, your parents don't want to hear about it. We don't want you to "fight back." How many of you, when you do say something about school being unfair, are told by your parents something like this:
- Well, you just have to live with it.
- Sometimes life is unfair.
- You can't always have everything you want.
If you are a "good kid," you don't want us to see you as having a "bad kid" with an "attitude problem"; you don't want to be sent to the school psychologist or to a special school for "bad kids."
Feeling crazy
Your reactions of giving up or fighting back are normal. They just won't help you feel very sane. In fact, feeling crazy is probably the most normal or the sanest response you can have in this insane adult world we've given you. Some of you might have a parent who doesn't want you to give up. That helps you not to feel so crazy. Having an adult willing to help you fight back is rare.
I know one furious mother who went to argue for her son's rights in school when he told her that his teacher refused to let the class outside for recess one day. The teacher kept the whole class inside because someone stole something and the teacher didn't know who did it. The boy didn't feel right that the whole class was punished for what one person did. His mother agreed. She was outraged (1) that her son was punished for something he did not do, (2) that he was learning in school to accept such unfair treatment, and (3) that so many children like you would be deprived of one of your most basic human rights--the right to play, to move, to exercise, to get fresh air. She said to me, "This violates the basic rights of a human being."
To compound matters, this happened to be the first sunny, warm day in February after a long cold northeastern winter. The mother went to speak with her son's teacher to demand that she never do anything like that again. The teacher said to her, "I'm sorry, but that is just the way I run my classroom." Getting no satisfaction from the teacher, and wanting to pursue the matter through proper channels, the mother then went to speak with the principal who told her basically the same thing as the teacher. "That's the only way we can run the school and have effective discipline. I am sorry you don't agree with our policy and that's just the way it is."
Schools don't have to work out problems collaboratively with dissatisfied customers (students and parents) because unlike a store, there is no place else for the student or parent to go. Both the teacher and the principal just wanted this mother to go away.
It wasn't that this teacher and this principal wanted this mother to go away. "Teacher" and "Principal" wanted her to go away. The roles wanted her to go away. This teacher and this principal, as individuals, are most likely decent human beings. Most of us adults are just trying to do a good job. Most of us try to do the right thing. It's just that when we are put together to run any institution, in this case a school, we (teachers and principals) begin to operate from a collective way of thinking that can be called a "thought form." The same transformation is true for what happens to good people who are leaders in institutions such as the Legislative branch of government (Senators, House representatives), or police precincts (sergeants, lieutenants, and captains), or hospitals (physicians, nurses, administration).
The mother did not accept what the teacher and principal wanted her to accept. She made a sign and handed out a petition in the parking lot before school the next day, speaking to other parents about the injustice of depriving you kids of the right to be outside for any reason, much less punishing you for a crime you did not commit. Not one other mother or father chose to help her. Most just passed her by on the way to their cars. Some did stop and talk to her, saying things like:
- Well, that's just the way schools are.
- Hey, it's not that big a deal. The kids will get over it.
- I agree with you. But I don't want to make waves or call attention to my son.
This situation where we adults in a school are able to so easily deprive you of your fundamental rights and freedoms is much worse than it seems. The worst is not: you being punished for something you haven't done. The worst is not: you being kept indoors unable to move. The worst is not: you accepting unfair treatment--offering only minimal resistance as this boy did in speaking with his mother after school.
The worst is this. The worst is that we adults want you to accept this kind of treatment of your body at our hands. We do. We want you to stay inside and worse, we want you to not even question the illegitimacy of what we are doing to you. We don't want you to think about what is happening to you. We are training you in obedience. That is what your "education" is really about.
We are educating you to sit in that classroom, to obey that teacher, and to ignore your own needs, desires, and sense of what is right and true.
MOST ADULTS ARE CONFUSED ABOUT WHO OWNS YOUR BODY
Some of us adults aren't confused at all: we understand that we own your body. We are very aware of the power we have over you to do things you don't want to do. Some of us feel it helps you when we hurt you. We often want you to fear us, to keep you in line with what we want you to do and say. We take pride in the fact that we can make you do whatever we want, whenever we want, however we want.
Many books are written for us to help us break your will. If you have a strong will, a strong sense of self-respect and self-determination you are seen as a problem and are called a "strong-willed child." You are seen as a child who needs obedience training. Adults don't want you to say "No" to anything we say to you. When you are first able to do that, at about the age of two, we adults label you and your friends as "The Terrible Twos." Alice Miller, a brilliant Swiss psychiatrist, exposes the intentioned will-breaking of children by parents in her marvelous book, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty and the Roots of Violence.
Fortunately for you, these adults don't seem to be in the majority. Although if one of these kinds of adults does have control over your body, that is a very bad situation for you. You will most likely be physically hurt, emotionally abused, and verbally humiliated, shamed, and blamed. It is not easy to fight back against those of us adults who have been so wounded by our own parents that we take pleasure in hurting you.
But most of us adults don't really know what we are doing. We didn't have parents who loved us as much as we needed to be loved, and none of our parents had parents who could do that either. As parents, we all just do the best we can, with the best of intentions, and with as much love as we have to give. In our confusion we actually believe that we don't own your body even as we force you to do things against your will.
Adults are confused about who owns your body because almost all of us are living in denial. Denial is a psychological term used to describe a condition where someone refuses to acknowledge the truth of what he/she is actually doing. People in denial want to believe what they want to believe rather than face what they are actually doing. (See "Don't You Sometimes Have to Force Children?")
HOW ADULTS TALK TO YOU HIDES THE FORCE WE ARE USING
Here are some of the ways we adults allow ourselves to believe we are not forcing you to do things when that is exactly what we are, in fact, doing:
1. When we believe that whatever we are doing to you is because we love you and because our protective use of force is "in your best interests" or "for your own good,"
2. When we believe we are teaching you responsibility, such as making you clean your room,
3. When we give you "reasons" for using force, even when the reason makes no sense to you: "You can't sleep at your friend's house because you've slept over there twice already this week."
4. When adults say anything to you other than the truthful wording, "I'm making you _____ "
- You have to clean your room.
- Our rule is that you clean your room.
- I need you to clean your room.
- You need to clean your room.
- I expect you to clean your room.
5. When we adults punish you once for doing or not doing something we want, and then don't have to punish you again because you are now doing what we want (only to avoid more punishment) we don't recognize our force that continues to operate on you from that first and only punishment.
6. When adults equate age with wisdom. We tend to believe that since we are older we know what is right for you even when our own lives might not be working very well. One obvious example might be how young people are given orders about food by many of us overweight and otherwise unhealthy parents.
As adults we believe we are right. We believe we are doing what "good parents" do. The force we are actually using somehow doesn't seem to count as force, even in the extreme cases of hitting you. We don't even realize that giving you reasons doesn't matter to you. Our reasons usually make little or no sense to you, and even if a particular reason did make sense, we contradict ourselves and that doesn't make sense to you: your mother makes you clean your room, your father doesn't and we both give you reasons.
We adults give you our reasons for forcing your body to do things it doesn't want to do. We don't give you a principle. You don't learn a standard to apply to different situations. You don't have one standard from which to make wise choices for yourself, all the time, no matter what the situation. And here is where your understanding MyBody-YourBody can help you.
CAN YOU HAVE SELF-RESPECT WHEN SOMEONE ELSE OWNS YOUR BODY?
I don't think so. With an adult treating you as an extension of our own body, to control your body as we want, you don't really have your own body. You don't have a "self" to respect, right? It doesn't matter how much we parents and teachers talk to you about loving your self and respecting your self. If you don't have a "self," a body that is separate and distinct from ours, there is nothing to respect.
It seems to me that most of you understand this, at least at an unconscious level. You understand that you have no real inviolate "self" separate from the significant adults in your lives. You understand that when you want something different from what an adult thinks you should want, it goes the adult's way. Your "self" belongs to the adult.
Even without a recognizable separate "self," some young people do manage to feel a sense of self-respect. These seem to be mostly the "bad kids," you who seem willing to fight back for control of your own bodies. Independent thinkers, you are usually labeled "troublemakers" or "discipline problems." You are not as compliant as the "good kids" who want to please adults in order to get or keep our love, approval, and affection. Though we use our size to defeat you when you are younger and we use our legal support to defeat you when you are older (e.g., physical restraint, deprivation of liberty, removal of "privileges," removal from your home or school) the good news is that I am not sure how easily we can break your will or destroy your soul. As I observe you "bad kids," I think you survive our coercion.
CAN YOU HAVE SELF-RESPECT WHEN YOUR BODY HAS NO INALIENABLE HUMAN RIGHTS?
With the exception of sexual or other severe physical abuse, adults condone each other's absolute control over your bodies:
- You have no "inalienable rights" as set forth for all human persons in The Declaration of Independence.
- The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights does not apply to you.
- The United States Constitution and the "Bill of Rights" would have to end with the words ". . . except for children" in order to be honest and accurate.
- The words ". . . with liberty, and justice for all" at the end of The Pledge of Allegiance, do not apply to you.
These are wonderful documents. When they are followed, large numbers of people in a country can live together in an authentic democracy with a sense of personal safety and social justice.
Unfortunately, there are serious problems with these documents both for adults and for young people.
The problem with these documents for adults
The people whom we elected to represent us in our government often do not follow the written words and intentions of these documents. There are many examples of this in the United States today (2006) such as our right according to "The Bill of Rights" to be protected in our homes from unreasonable searches and seizures. That is supposed to mean that government people like the army or the police are not allowed to come into our homes any time they want (breaking down our doors if they so choose) for any reason.
Did you know they can do that now? Those of us who are soldiers and police officers can legally come into your home anytime we want. Our elected government officials, The President of the United States, our Senators and the members of Congress voted to allow people like army soldiers and police officers to come into the homes of United States' citizens without even a search warrant signed by a judge. A government official who wanted to go, uninvited, into your home used to have to convince a judge that there was "probable cause," something like the high probability of a crime going on in your house. That is not needed anymore.
Did you know, for instance, that our President advocates the torture of human persons? Did you know that our President started a war with a country (Iraq) that was not attacking us, and was not attacking another country that needed our protection? Can you imagine how quickly we parents would be at the school door if we found out that a teacher was telling you it was okay for you to start a fight with a person smaller than you, who you thought might hurt you even though he never did anything to hurt you and there was no proof that he was going to do anything to hurt you? When we pass laws like these, and start wars like these, our important documents don't seem to mean very much, do they?
Did you know that a police officer is now allowed to stop you in the street, anywhere, at any time to ask you for identification of who you are and you are required to show that police officer some form of identification? That never used to be allowed in a democracy such as ours. In the past, you could be stopped, legally, only if you matched the description of a person who recently committed a crime in the area. Not anymore.
When other countries do things like this we refer to them as "police states." Did you know that the government of the United States keeps records of and locks up political dissenters? The President derisively calls citizens "unpatriotic" who peacefully and non-violently disagree with his policies. Is that a responsible attitude to be demonstrated by a leader of an authentic democracy?
The problem with these documents for young people
So, there are many problems with these documents for adults. For young people the problem is worse. For you, these documents were never intended to apply to you in the first place. None of them. Did you know that? Not "The Pledge of Allegiance," not "The Declaration of Independence." None of them apply to you.
Have any of your teachers told you, for instance, that "The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights" has a separate section for you? Under Principle 2, this sentence of the "Declaration of the Rights of the Child" allows adults to override any of your self-determined choices and decisions:
"In the enactment of laws for this purpose, the best interests of the child shall be the paramount consideration." (Italics mine.) If an adult--parent, judge, social worker, or teacher--says something "is in your best interests," then whatever you want doesn't count. You are considered, by law, too young to know what is best for you.
We want you to believe that these documents do apply to you. We want you to believe that you do have rights because then you will not question our authority and you will do more of what we say, and even be happy about it most of the time.
John Stuart Mill, a great British philosopher of the nineteenth century, exposes this lie about your rights in his famous treatise "On Liberty." Writing about the meaning of liberty in a free society, and defining the fair and just use of force against another individual, Mill declares:
" . . . the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant."
Mill's words are the MyBody-YourBody standard for the fair use of force. The problem for you, as young people, is that several paragraphs further in his book Mill says that this universal standard of the fair use of force, of course, doesn't apply to you: "It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to say that . . . we are not speaking of children."
CAN YOU HAVE SELF-RESPECT WHEN NO ONE HELPS YOU WHEN YOUR BODY IS BEING VIOLATED?
The problem for you as a young person is that the concept of "domestic violence" does not extend to you. Your body is not protected. "Domestic violence" is about adults mistreating other adults. Your mistreatment, except in severe cases, is allowed. Ask any adult what "domestic violence" means and I am certain the response will be something like, It is when a husband beats or abuses his wife.
Relatives like uncles and aunts or grandparents or brothers and sisters will rarely protect you if a parent is doing something unfair to you. Your body is rarely even protected by one parent against the other. In a marriage, for instance, one partner who doesn't agree with the other partner's handling of a conflict situation with you will rarely say anything in your favor. Isn't that true?
Haven't you known that one of your parents agreed with you and still let the other parent do to you whatever he/she wanted anyway? The disagreeing parent might even lie about it, pretending to agree. Your parents might have even had a big argument in private about the issue, but in front of you they act like they agree with each other. Don't you feel betrayed? How else can you feel? That is a betrayal of trust. That lie by one of your parents leaves you totally unprotected and at the mercy of the other parent. How can you possibly make sense of this kind of world?
You all understand that you are on your own, that you will get no help for your bodies from adults. You learn to accept this loneliness and despair as "the way it is." We certainly don't teach you those skills of how to protect yourselves in school, and your parents at home only want your obedience. But MyBody-Your Body can begin to teach you the skills you need to know for your body's own self-protection.
CAN YOU PROTECT EACH OTHERS' BODIES?
It is hard enough to protect your own body. What about protecting other kids' bodies? We know that adults won't stop anything between most other adults and children. How about you? What about you daring to intercede in an obviously abusive situation between an adult and another child?
You aren't given societal permission to speak up about unfairness to yourselves, much less to others. In your own homes, where you should feel safest to express your honest feelings, you mostly tend to keep quiet in the face of injustice to others, right? A woman friend of mine remembers feeling helpless rage as a young girl when she watched her father beat up her older brother. This was a regular practice. She was too small to help her brother. Her mother did nothing.
What are your options when you are too terrified of our rage and violence to stand up to us when we are beating your brother or your sister? One option you have as a witness to our cruelty is hatred. The hatred can be directed inwardly or outwardly. In this case the woman said she grew up with an absolute hatred of male authority figures such as public school teachers, the police, college professors, and clergy. She saw men as bullies, as abusers of their power.
Rejecting the institutions many male adults manage such as schools and churches, she went over to the "dark side" and embraced drugs, sex, and alcohol. And this was one of the "good" girls. Her escape seems like a sane response to the powerlessness you all must feel in similar circumstances.
In our coercive actions toward children and young people we adults act with almost 100% shortsighted vision. Our "power over" you gets us what we want in the short-term. What about the long-term? We think our actions toward you are "free," that we don't pay long-term prices for our short-term violent victories over you. If you are someone like this girl, afraid to confront your own parents, how can we expect you to help deal with a friend's parent who is being unjust, or with a teacher or pastor who is being unfair to other children? Why, for instance, should we expect you to vote when you are older? What miracle happens to you at the age of eighteen that makes you believe your voice can now make a difference when it never has before?
Most of you would never express the indignation you must all feel when one of your own is being treated unfairly. At best, you might offer a token verbal or physical resistance. For instance, you might shout That's not fair! or you might grab the adult's arm or try to stand between the adult and the child who is being treated unjustly. To do something like that, to propel yourself into an adult: child conflict situation would be to take an enormous risk. You would have to be feeling an incredible sense of outrage for what is going on. The indignity being suffered by the other child would have to touch you very deeply, probably at a place where you have been similarly violated.
Often the person who stands up against oppression stands alone. Or sits alone, like Rosa Parks on that bus. Adults only deify people like Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, Nelson Mandela, and Martin Luther King after they have been put into jail or killed. Those of us who oppose injustice to our own, or to other peoples' bodies, face varying degrees of consequence for our human rights bravery.
The "Righteous Ones" were such courageous people. During the years 1933-1945, the German government planned and carried out an organized persecution and murder of 6,000,000 Jewish people. The "Righteous Ones" were non-Jewish people who hid and fed Jewish people even though there was a law making it illegal to help a Jew. The punishment for hiding Jewish people or for feeding them was death. These "Righteous Ones" were putting themselves and their families at great risk. Many were discovered and killed as they tried to save Jews from being slaughtered by the German soldiers.
How are young people to learn how to distinguish authority that deserves your obedience, and authority that warrants your disobedience, such as the German law? If we ask any of you what "being good" means, it is unlikely that your answer will sound like this:
- "Being good" is taking forceful action aligned with my conscience to stop an injustice.
Most of you won't answer the question that way. You won't answer that way because we have done nothing to help you answer such a question that way. More likely, your answer will focus on doing what adults want you to do. "Being good" is:
- Doing what the teacher says
- It's not getting in trouble
- It's to do what they tell you
Deciding as a young person whether or not to help other people whose bodies are being violated is a complex issue. What if one adult is hurting another adult, not another child. Have you ever tried to stop your father from beating up your mother? You could get hurt or killed. What if many children are hurting one child? You could get hurt trying to stop kids from hurting each other.
That's what a friend of mine was afraid of, as she tells the story fifty years later, of the time she stood by and did nothing to help as all the other kids were throwing hard snowballs at a helpless girl who was crying hysterically unable to protect herself. My friend still feels guilty about her inaction, about not helping that girl in the first grade playground. These can't be easy decisions for you to make, especially because you have to make them alone. You get little help from adults who give you trite words, inconsistent values, and hypocritical action.
--end---
Ed Lisbe
Purpose of Article
This article is intended to be read by counselors, teachers, and youth specialists with their imagining that a caring adult is addressing it to young adults and older children. This article presupposes minimal familiarity with my MyBody-YourBody (MBYB) ideas, and elaborates the 'Body' concept in MyBody-Your Body
Adults: Imagine being a young person. How can we adults show you the reality of the lack of freedom you have, and the lack of true justice you experience with almost all the significant adults in your life, particularly with your parents at home and with your teachers in school. They have the ultimate power over you, specifically your Body, your body both in a physical sense and in an extended sense. Understanding the very limited power you have as a young person in our society to make important choices for yourself is the first step in using My Body-Your Body (MBYB) to have the kind of self-determined life that you, as do all human persons, deserve.
Your body belongs to the adults.
When you disagree with an adult who feels strongly about something you want, the solution almost always goes the adult's way. We have enough physical size, psychological power, and/or legal support to do almost anything we want to your body.
We adults talk to you almost all the time about having self-respect for your own body and about the importance of treating other peoples' bodies with respect, tolerance, and acceptance. We talk to you about these values in your homes and schools, in our churches, our mosques, and our synagogues. You hear it from us everywhere. The problem for you is that you don't see it from us everywhere. And your experience is that these values have no relevance to the way you and your own body are treated by adults.
Often, you hardly see it anywhere. After a church sermon reminding people to love one another and to treat others as we would like to be treated, you will see members of the congregation cutting each other off with their cars on the way out of the parking lot. Or, after hearing your dad tell you to be unselfish and to think of others first, you see him take the last ice cube and leave the kitchen without refilling the tray. What you see is very different from what you hear.
Words are easy. Behaviors are much more difficult. No matter how much we talk with you about respect, for instance, it is just a word. You watch what we do, not what we say. And when you watch what we do your gut tells you there is something wrong here as you see and hear the way adults treat each other and the way we treat you and your friends and other young people. You know that we show very little respect for your body in almost everything other than our words.
WHAT DOES 'BODY' MEAN IN MY BODY-YOUR BODY (MBYB)?
My Body-Your Body (MBYB)[MBYBoverview.htm] is a consistent standard of fairness for resolving conflicts between people regardless of age, gender, race, relationship, religion, culture, political affiliation or economic status. The model was developed as an answer to the question, "What is the most basic starting point possible for peaceful coexistence on a planet where people continually clash over different needs, wants, desires and values?" It seemed most unarguable that one's individual rights and freedom should be limited only when they affect others; that, at the very least, each person's physical body should be safe from harm:
- My body is over here.
- Your body is over there.
- I have no right to do anything to your body that you don't want.
- You have no right to do anything to my body that I don't want.
The body as defined here, extends beyond the person's physical 'body' to include his/her clothing, possessions, work or play area, living space, choices, etc. A fair standard of the use of force over others for bodily protection is especially useful for problem solving in relationships of unequal power such as parent: child and teacher: student. This essay illustrates MBYB applied to those situations. The model applies to any relationship such as husband: wife, boss: employee, etc.
WHO OWNS YOUR BODY AT HOME?
Your parents (or guardians) own your body at home.
We hit your body (calling it "spanking" so it doesn't sound as violent as it really is). We pull your body, pick it up, carry it, drag it, and sometimes shake it. We take things out of your hands that you are holding or touching. We tell you what to do with your expressions--Wipe that smile off your face. Look at me when I'm talking to you!--and we order you to stay when you want to leave--Get back here. I'm not finished with you. We keep you inside when you want to go outside and we make you come inside when you want to stay outside. You have to ask permission from us to get up from a table when you are finished eating. Your friends have to ask us for permission to play with you. You have to ask for our permission to play with them. You are even given orders about what to do with your own private space, your room.
Adults lock up your body whenever we want. At home, this process of taking away your liberty is called "grounding." At school it is called "detention." You are told what you can and can't wear. We tell you to get off the phone. We tell you to stop using the computer. We don't let you go to a friend's house. Sometimes we even force you not to have certain friends. You are told not to read certain books or listen to certain kinds of music or watch certain movies. What about all the food and mealtime issues you face with us on a daily basis? You are made to eat: when you don't want to eat; what you don't want to eat; more than you want to eat; where you might not want to eat; and how you don't want to eat.
- Get in here right now. It's lunchtime (when you are playing a great game with your friends).
- Eat at least three string beans and one carrot. Then you can have dessert.
- You are not getting up from the table until you finish what's on your plate.
- No, you can't eat in your room. You know we want everyone to eat dinner together.
- Get your elbows off the table, and stop picking at your food. Use your fork.
WHO OWNS YOUR BODY AT SCHOOL?
Your teacher owns your body at school.
So does the principal, and the psychologists and the counselors, and the Superintendent of Schools. Ultimately, parents own your body at school because they are usually the members of The Board of Education, which makes up the rules of the school.
The law
The people in our government have written many laws about school. You have to go to school if you don't want your body to be locked up somewhere, or if you don't want your parents to get into trouble for "educational neglect." According to the New York State (each state has such a law) "Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act" (CAPTA) abuse and neglect is defined as:
". . . the act, or failure to act, by any parent or caretaker who is responsible for a child under the age of 18 that results in the maltreatment of a child."
One of the listed types of child "maltreatment" is "educational neglect":
"Educational neglect includes failure to enroll a school-age child in school, allowing unexplained absences from school, refusal of recommended remedial services without good reason, and failure to respond to attendance questions."
In our society, the police and the judges and the social workers--many of whom are parents themselves--can take you away from your parents, and put them into prison if you don't go to school. Adults are very serious about having your body be in school. Remember that. It doesn't mean that we are right about school being good for you. It only means that we are very serious about it, and that your likes and dislikes about school don't matter very much to us.
A few of us parents think school is a bad place for you. We have to fight very hard in the Courts to keep your body out of school, to educate you at home and in the community where you live. Most adults want your body to be in an official, government sanctioned building being taught by official, government sanctioned adults we call teachers. The government does not trust us to educate you ourselves, to have us teach you what is and isn't important about life. Those of us who teach you at home are required to submit a report to our closest official school about what we are teaching you. If that report doesn't match what the people who run the schools want to see, we can be charged with "educational neglect."
The teachers
In school we force your body to spend hours and hours of your time with adults (teachers) you probably would not choose to spend any time with outside of school. There are exceptions, of course.
Sometimes you will have a wonderful teacher, or principal, or counselor in school. You feel one of us cares about you, is interested in your life, wants the best for you, and almost always treats you respectfully. You can also tell that we aren't just doing a "job," that we are passionate about being with young people, not just counting the days to retirement, and that we might even stay in the classroom if we won the lottery. You would love being with and learning from someone like us even outside the classroom.
Have you ever had a teacher like that? Doesn't it feel more alive, real, and authentic to be around adults who love and respect the people we're there to serve? Unfortunately for you, this description doesn't fit too many of your teachers. Very few of us are like that. Ask the adults in your life--your parents, uncles, aunts, and grandparents--How many of your official schoolteachers do you remember being respectful and loving to you? How many did you enjoy being with as you learned? You won't get a very long list.
Actually, the same can be said about police officers, judges, social workers, and doctors. We just happen to be talking about teachers here. All you can know for sure about any of us, in any profession, is that we have a degree on our wall that allows us to work in a chosen field. That is all you know. That degree is not necessarily related to how we feel about people or how we will treat the people whose care is entrusted to us. Other than those of us who were appointed or elected to our positions, we simply took a certain number of courses and passed a certain number of tests for a particular job. We might care, and some of us might be marvelous contributions to your life. All I am suggesting to you here is that you trust your heart when you are with us, not our certificate or our degree. Or our words.
In 1988 I experienced a similar dramatic lifelessness in a first grade classroom when I brought my son, David, in for his first day of school. I remember how excited he was walking down the hall, carrying a brand new, red "Master's of the Universe" lunch pail, ready to take on this next adventure of his young life. As we turned the corner toward his room we saw through the open door every student seated at his/her desk with hands folded, no one talking, no one moving. The teacher, seated quietly behind her desk in the front of the room also wasn't talking or moving.
This was ten minutes before the bell, on the very first day of school, in the first grade! There was no emotional or physical contact between the students, and none between the teacher and the students. David and I could feel the stillness in the room--22 first graders, quiet, still, on the first day of school. Nothing alive. Everything dead. We actually could feel the absence of sound, movement and spirit in the room. He and I looked at each other, shook our heads, and together, we left to go home.
The suffering
This is your life on a typical school day, isn't it?
You are made fun of and hurt by people your own age
-- or you see bullied classmates treated that way.
You are humiliated and ridiculed by teachers
-- or you see classmates treated that way.
You are made to sit bored, quietly, for hours and hours, forced to pay attention to things which don't interest you because they are not related to your life or needs.
We forget about the force that puts you into your seat in the classroom where these things happen to you, and then we expect you to like this school experience. We expect you to be appreciative and grateful for your education. And when you aren't appreciative and grateful? When you don't like it? If you express that honestly, bad things usually happen to you, right? So you tend to lie. Don't most of you lie when adults you haven't seen for awhile ask you questions like these at weddings and picnics: So, how do you like school? What subjects are you taking? Do you like your teacher?
You know the questions are meaningless because all we want to hear from you is that everything is fine. When you talk to us about your problems with school, not many of us will be interested in hearing and understanding what you have to say. We don't want to face the truth of our own negative experiences with school, preferring to selectively forget those memories as we wonder why you aren't happier there or more motivated to learn. So you say some form of, It's okay and you try to get away from the conversation as quickly as you can.
We bore you
Adults want and expect you to be interested in school "subjects" even when you don't see how they fit into your life. Writing letters and understanding numbers does not fit into the lives of most kindergartners, for instance. A much more relevant curriculum for you at this age would be:
- What do I do if someone calls me a name?
- What if someone has something I want?
- What do I say when I am angry?
- What if no one wants to play with me in the playground?
- How do I get someone to leave me alone?
That would be a much more useful and exciting curriculum for very young people in your first experience trying to survive in a large group of people your own age. In junior high school and in high school, how interested are some of you in Earth Science or Geometry or the Civil War or William Shakespeare?
Do you know why many young people drop out of school these days when they are legally able to do so? It's not because of behavior problems. It's not because you aren't smart enough. It's because you are bored. That's the reason. Boredom. According to a March 2006 press release by The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, boredom was one of the main findings of a study commissioned to determine the reasons for students dropping out of school. The report, The Silent Epidemic: Perspectives of High School Dropouts, found that nearly 50% of 470 dropouts surveyed said they left school because their classes were boring and not relevant to their lives or career aspirations.
We adults live in a fantasyland about young people. What is the difference between you and us in terms of how we learn? There is none. None at all. When you aren't interested in what we are telling you: you either pretend to be interested--to avoid a negative consequence--or you try to find something else that interests you more. Adults do the same thing. When adults are not interested in what someone is telling us: we either pretend to be interested--to avoid a negative consequence--or we try to find something else that interests us more. No difference. Adults and young people are no different in terms of what we may or may not be interested in, yet we treat young people very differently.
Then we drug you
The problem for you, though, is very serious. When you try to find something that interests you more than the classroom activity you are in, we say you are "distracted" and we blame you for not being interested.
And after we blame you? Do you know what we do to many of you who are "distracted" in school, who don't pay attention to things that don't interest you? We drug you. Even at very young ages. In pre-school, kindergarten and first grade we make you sit. For very long periods of time. Your bodies at that age are naturally meant to run and jump and climb and roll and spin and twist and skip and hop and stretch. When you aren't allowed to do that, you become restless. If you become restless enough to move out of your chair, we drug you.
Many of you are now being given drugs by adults who hope to make you more interested in boring subject matter. How many of you know about all the drugs that are now being used to control your bodies when you don't pay enough attention in school? Did you know that adults are drugging approximately 3%-5% of schoolchildren (most of them boys) according to most medical estimates . . . and that the number is increasing dramatically year after year? Peter Breggin, author of Talking Back to Ritalin asserts, "This is a national catastrophe. I'm seeing children who are normal who are on five psychiatric drugs." To Breggin, Ritalin "suppresses creative, spontaneous and autonomous activity in children, making them more docile and obedient, and more willing to comply with routine, boring tasks such as classroom school work and homework." Ritalin is dangerous, the Food and Drug Administration classifies it as a Schedule II substance, joining amphetamines, cocaine, morphine, opium, and barbiturates on the list.
Sure you have "attention deficit." So do adults. It's perfectly normal when people aren't interested in something to be distracted, to pay attention to something we are more interested in. Adults aren't interested in things we are forced to look at, either. We don't pay attention, the same as you don't pay attention. You should watch your teachers sometime at a faculty meeting after school. You'll see us talking to our friends, doodling, writing shopping lists in our books, looking around the room, passing notes, fidgeting, getting up to go to the bathroom. Everyone is distracted when we aren't interested in what is in front of us.
The problem is that when you aren't interested in what is in front of you in school, we say that your distraction is an "attention deficit" problem and we put drugs into your body. The drugs are meant to slow you down. Drugged, less engaged with life, you won't be as interested in other things and you will pay better attention to the things we want you to pay attention to. You won't care as much, probably about anything. You won't question things. Your vitality will be dulled.
Learning this process of quiet, docile obedience is what we are really teaching you in school. We are teaching you how to behave when you don't like what people in authority are doing to you. Trained to be future unthinking citizens, you are learning to obey authority. This, according to John Gatto, New York City Teacher of the Year (1991), is the true school curriculum. He calls this "schooling" (Dumbing Us Down, 1992). This, not your subject matter, is your true education. You are being "schooled." The purpose of being "schooled" is to deaden your spirit. Those of you whose spirit we can't deaden, we drug, or move to increasingly restrictive environments.
As a school psychologist, when parents told me their child was "distracted" and that the teacher suggested drugs for this "attention deficit" I always asked, Are there things your child does where he doesn't seem distracted, where he can focus and pay a great deal of attention? In all but a very few cases, smiling parents could easily recall the many things they couldn't even drag their very normal child's attention away from: an exciting game of football with friends on the street, a certain challenging computer program or video game, a television movie, ice-skating for hours on a pond back of the house.
One such mother, describing camping trips with her children began to cry when she told me how her son would sometimes spend hours either whittling a stick, or looking into the fire, or staring up at the stars. Distraction isn't the problem for kids like hers. School is the problem for kids like hers. It makes sense to me that when an institution like a school has so many "problems" with the kids it is designed to serve, the problem has to be with the institution, not with the kids.
You keep being told that you are the problem. Don't believe it. There could be something wrong with your body, of course, but not necessarily, and certainly not with as many of your bodies as we tell you.
Adults want more and more school control of your 'body'
Not only won't we adults transform ours schools to make them better for you, we actually believe giving you more of a bad thing is the solution. So the news for you is very bad.
Schools keep extending the hours you have to be there. We have laws requiring you to be in school a certain number of hours every day, a certain number of days each year, for a certain number of years of your life. The number of school years keeps growing! Kindergarten used to be voluntary, now it is mandatory. It used to be for a half a day. Now it is for a whole day.
On the other end, you used to be able to stop going to school at age sixteen. In most states you now have to stay until you are seventeen. In some states it is eighteen. Adults want to keep you off the streets and out of trouble because we know that as a society we have little that is productive or stimulating for you to do with your time. We don't tell you this. We tell you we are interested in your "education."
Another reason for extending the school time that you won't hear from most adults is that the state refunds money to the school according to the numbers of students attending each day. The more days you are there, the more money your school gets from the state.
As if you don't have enough problems being controlled during school, we also control your bodies before and after school as well. Before school, some of you have to take bus rides for as long as an hour, early in the morning before you are awake, with people who are so violent that videocameras are now being used to catch kids who hurt other kids.
After school, your time is also not your own because you are required to do more schoolwork at home. This homework extends your school day even further, taking you away from all the other things you would rather be doing and that your body and spirit require such as playing and being with nature. Homework takes more hours away from the cultivation at home of your imagination and creativity, and it keeps you away from your true "education": interaction with your family, friends, pets, community, and the natural world.
Aristotle, a great philosopher, taught that without a fully active role in community life one could not hope to become a healthy human being. What do you think of that? So, let's just give you more and more homework. Let's keep you in school as much as possible while you are home. Let's keep you away from your community, your real life, your true education.
WHAT CAN I DO ABOUT ADULTS OWNING MY BODY?
You have two choices. Both will probably leave you feeling a bit crazy.
- You can give up.
- You can fight back.
Giving up
Most of you fall into the "give up" category. You do what you are told without question. You very rarely say anything, even when you see things that are stupid or unfair. You know this is what we adults want from you. When you disagree with us we don't want to hear what you think. Why say anything if you know we will just tell you why you should like it, tell you to stop complaining, and then make you do it anyway? Very few of us adults are good listeners. You might as well keep your mouth shut. We will think you are one of the "good kids" and you will get all the rewards that go with that.
We want you to do and say what we want you to do and say, and to do and say it without question. We want you to give up. Of your two options, that is the one most adults prefer you choose. More than anything else, in times of disagreement, we teachers and we parents want you to obey us, to do what you are told. (MyBody-YourBody prefers that you choose the "fight back" option and will show you how to do that successfully.)
Those of you who "give up" in school know you are bored. You know you don't care about most of what your teachers talk about. You sit there, quietly, anyway, because you know you would get into trouble for doing anything else. What if you didn't "give up" and followed your heart?
What if, on the first snowstorm of the season you got up from your seat in class without saying anything to anyone (maybe leaving a note on your desk to let the teacher know where you'll be) and just walked outside to have an ecstatic moment alone getting buried by that beautiful snow?
What if, you had a friend who was having very serious trouble at home, so you got up from your seat in class without saying anything to anyone (maybe leaving a note on your desk to let the teacher know where you'll be) to go talk to her in the lunchroom for an hour?
But, you "give up." You won't do what your heart tells you to do, what feels right to do and what may even be right to do. To stay out of trouble with adults you simply do whatever we want you to do.
The same is true at home with your parents: What if, knowing nothing special was going on at your house, you told your parents what you were going to do with your body instead of asking permission? "I'm going to walk over to Janet's house and hang out for a couple of hours. Please just call me if you need anything. See you soon." Wouldn't that work for everyone? Wouldn't that feel right to do?
What if, before heading out the door to go for a bike ride you said to your mother who told you not to go anywhere until you cleaned your room, "I cleaned up everything in the house that was a mess of mine. I even took out the garbage for Mary because she's sick. And I fixed the hinge on the kitchen cabinet that you were having trouble with. I just don't agree that you have a right to tell me what to do with my room. I like it the way it is, so I left it the way it is. It isn't hurting anyone. I am going outside." Wouldn't that feel right to do?
What if, one of your parent's rules is for you to be in bed with the lights out at 9:00 P.M. and your favorite hockey team is playing for the Stanley Cup Championship in a game that probably won't be over until after midnight? What if, you decided to stay up and watch the game?
Would you do that? Wouldn't that feel like the right thing to do? Would your answer change if you were an honor student in school? What if you were failing three classes? With this moment being so special to you, and a moment which might never happen again in your lifetime, would you be willing to watch the game even if your parents made themselves angry about it and threatened to punish you? Would you be willing to lock or barricade your door so your parents couldn't stop you from watching the game? Even if you would get into trouble later, would you feel it was the right thing to do to watch the hockey game?
But, again, most of you "give up." We teach you to give up. You don't do these things you really want to do because you don't want to get into trouble. You've given up your body to us. Even when something feels right in your heart and spirit you don't do it.
To stay out of trouble with adults you do what we want, not what you want or what you feel might be the right thing to do. Over time, you lose touch with your own spirit; you don't even remember anymore what feels right in your heart. Since we own your body, it is easy for you to become numb and to lose track of how you feel or what you want. How can you remember your own intention when we never let you act on it? The result is that we determine your life. You don't. Our ownership of your body deprives you of perhaps the most important of all human rights: the right to have a self-determined life. This feeling of "being owned" and numbness and living without values then carries through into your adult life, and perpetuates itself in your interactions with your own children.
Living without intention puts you at the mercy of any of us who have an agenda for you: your parents and teachers; the media--television, newspapers, movies; advertisers; politicians. Those of us in advertising make a lot of money making sure you wear what we want you to wear, and eat what we want you to eat. Those of us who make the laws as politicians, give feel-good names to our agendas knowing you won't think about them.
The "giving up" option is about "being good." You know this is what your parents and teachers want. You don't feel much different from the "bad" kids, the kids who fall into the "fight back" category.
Fighting back
The only real difference between "good kids" and you "bad kids" who "fight back" is that you (1) speak up and say the truth about how you are feeling and (2) do more of what you want to do. Of course, you get into more trouble. You don't seem to care too much about that. You don't seem to care when adults say you have an "attitude problem."
Maybe you really do care, you just don't want to get into all that trouble that the "good kids" manage to avoid? Maybe it's more important for you to be honest about your feelings?
Adults don't want you to choose the "fight back" option, even when you might be right about something in your life that might be unfair. If something is unfair at school, for instance, your parents don't want to hear about it. We don't want you to "fight back." How many of you, when you do say something about school being unfair, are told by your parents something like this:
- Well, you just have to live with it.
- Sometimes life is unfair.
- You can't always have everything you want.
If you are a "good kid," you don't want us to see you as having a "bad kid" with an "attitude problem"; you don't want to be sent to the school psychologist or to a special school for "bad kids."
Feeling crazy
Your reactions of giving up or fighting back are normal. They just won't help you feel very sane. In fact, feeling crazy is probably the most normal or the sanest response you can have in this insane adult world we've given you. Some of you might have a parent who doesn't want you to give up. That helps you not to feel so crazy. Having an adult willing to help you fight back is rare.
I know one furious mother who went to argue for her son's rights in school when he told her that his teacher refused to let the class outside for recess one day. The teacher kept the whole class inside because someone stole something and the teacher didn't know who did it. The boy didn't feel right that the whole class was punished for what one person did. His mother agreed. She was outraged (1) that her son was punished for something he did not do, (2) that he was learning in school to accept such unfair treatment, and (3) that so many children like you would be deprived of one of your most basic human rights--the right to play, to move, to exercise, to get fresh air. She said to me, "This violates the basic rights of a human being."
To compound matters, this happened to be the first sunny, warm day in February after a long cold northeastern winter. The mother went to speak with her son's teacher to demand that she never do anything like that again. The teacher said to her, "I'm sorry, but that is just the way I run my classroom." Getting no satisfaction from the teacher, and wanting to pursue the matter through proper channels, the mother then went to speak with the principal who told her basically the same thing as the teacher. "That's the only way we can run the school and have effective discipline. I am sorry you don't agree with our policy and that's just the way it is."
Schools don't have to work out problems collaboratively with dissatisfied customers (students and parents) because unlike a store, there is no place else for the student or parent to go. Both the teacher and the principal just wanted this mother to go away.
It wasn't that this teacher and this principal wanted this mother to go away. "Teacher" and "Principal" wanted her to go away. The roles wanted her to go away. This teacher and this principal, as individuals, are most likely decent human beings. Most of us adults are just trying to do a good job. Most of us try to do the right thing. It's just that when we are put together to run any institution, in this case a school, we (teachers and principals) begin to operate from a collective way of thinking that can be called a "thought form." The same transformation is true for what happens to good people who are leaders in institutions such as the Legislative branch of government (Senators, House representatives), or police precincts (sergeants, lieutenants, and captains), or hospitals (physicians, nurses, administration).
The mother did not accept what the teacher and principal wanted her to accept. She made a sign and handed out a petition in the parking lot before school the next day, speaking to other parents about the injustice of depriving you kids of the right to be outside for any reason, much less punishing you for a crime you did not commit. Not one other mother or father chose to help her. Most just passed her by on the way to their cars. Some did stop and talk to her, saying things like:
- Well, that's just the way schools are.
- Hey, it's not that big a deal. The kids will get over it.
- I agree with you. But I don't want to make waves or call attention to my son.
This situation where we adults in a school are able to so easily deprive you of your fundamental rights and freedoms is much worse than it seems. The worst is not: you being punished for something you haven't done. The worst is not: you being kept indoors unable to move. The worst is not: you accepting unfair treatment--offering only minimal resistance as this boy did in speaking with his mother after school.
The worst is this. The worst is that we adults want you to accept this kind of treatment of your body at our hands. We do. We want you to stay inside and worse, we want you to not even question the illegitimacy of what we are doing to you. We don't want you to think about what is happening to you. We are training you in obedience. That is what your "education" is really about.
We are educating you to sit in that classroom, to obey that teacher, and to ignore your own needs, desires, and sense of what is right and true.
MOST ADULTS ARE CONFUSED ABOUT WHO OWNS YOUR BODY
Some of us adults aren't confused at all: we understand that we own your body. We are very aware of the power we have over you to do things you don't want to do. Some of us feel it helps you when we hurt you. We often want you to fear us, to keep you in line with what we want you to do and say. We take pride in the fact that we can make you do whatever we want, whenever we want, however we want.
Many books are written for us to help us break your will. If you have a strong will, a strong sense of self-respect and self-determination you are seen as a problem and are called a "strong-willed child." You are seen as a child who needs obedience training. Adults don't want you to say "No" to anything we say to you. When you are first able to do that, at about the age of two, we adults label you and your friends as "The Terrible Twos." Alice Miller, a brilliant Swiss psychiatrist, exposes the intentioned will-breaking of children by parents in her marvelous book, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty and the Roots of Violence.
Fortunately for you, these adults don't seem to be in the majority. Although if one of these kinds of adults does have control over your body, that is a very bad situation for you. You will most likely be physically hurt, emotionally abused, and verbally humiliated, shamed, and blamed. It is not easy to fight back against those of us adults who have been so wounded by our own parents that we take pleasure in hurting you.
But most of us adults don't really know what we are doing. We didn't have parents who loved us as much as we needed to be loved, and none of our parents had parents who could do that either. As parents, we all just do the best we can, with the best of intentions, and with as much love as we have to give. In our confusion we actually believe that we don't own your body even as we force you to do things against your will.
Adults are confused about who owns your body because almost all of us are living in denial. Denial is a psychological term used to describe a condition where someone refuses to acknowledge the truth of what he/she is actually doing. People in denial want to believe what they want to believe rather than face what they are actually doing. (See "Don't You Sometimes Have to Force Children?")
HOW ADULTS TALK TO YOU HIDES THE FORCE WE ARE USING
Here are some of the ways we adults allow ourselves to believe we are not forcing you to do things when that is exactly what we are, in fact, doing:
1. When we believe that whatever we are doing to you is because we love you and because our protective use of force is "in your best interests" or "for your own good,"
2. When we believe we are teaching you responsibility, such as making you clean your room,
3. When we give you "reasons" for using force, even when the reason makes no sense to you: "You can't sleep at your friend's house because you've slept over there twice already this week."
4. When adults say anything to you other than the truthful wording, "I'm making you _____ "
- You have to clean your room.
- Our rule is that you clean your room.
- I need you to clean your room.
- You need to clean your room.
- I expect you to clean your room.
5. When we adults punish you once for doing or not doing something we want, and then don't have to punish you again because you are now doing what we want (only to avoid more punishment) we don't recognize our force that continues to operate on you from that first and only punishment.
6. When adults equate age with wisdom. We tend to believe that since we are older we know what is right for you even when our own lives might not be working very well. One obvious example might be how young people are given orders about food by many of us overweight and otherwise unhealthy parents.
As adults we believe we are right. We believe we are doing what "good parents" do. The force we are actually using somehow doesn't seem to count as force, even in the extreme cases of hitting you. We don't even realize that giving you reasons doesn't matter to you. Our reasons usually make little or no sense to you, and even if a particular reason did make sense, we contradict ourselves and that doesn't make sense to you: your mother makes you clean your room, your father doesn't and we both give you reasons.
We adults give you our reasons for forcing your body to do things it doesn't want to do. We don't give you a principle. You don't learn a standard to apply to different situations. You don't have one standard from which to make wise choices for yourself, all the time, no matter what the situation. And here is where your understanding MyBody-YourBody can help you.
CAN YOU HAVE SELF-RESPECT WHEN SOMEONE ELSE OWNS YOUR BODY?
I don't think so. With an adult treating you as an extension of our own body, to control your body as we want, you don't really have your own body. You don't have a "self" to respect, right? It doesn't matter how much we parents and teachers talk to you about loving your self and respecting your self. If you don't have a "self," a body that is separate and distinct from ours, there is nothing to respect.
It seems to me that most of you understand this, at least at an unconscious level. You understand that you have no real inviolate "self" separate from the significant adults in your lives. You understand that when you want something different from what an adult thinks you should want, it goes the adult's way. Your "self" belongs to the adult.
Even without a recognizable separate "self," some young people do manage to feel a sense of self-respect. These seem to be mostly the "bad kids," you who seem willing to fight back for control of your own bodies. Independent thinkers, you are usually labeled "troublemakers" or "discipline problems." You are not as compliant as the "good kids" who want to please adults in order to get or keep our love, approval, and affection. Though we use our size to defeat you when you are younger and we use our legal support to defeat you when you are older (e.g., physical restraint, deprivation of liberty, removal of "privileges," removal from your home or school) the good news is that I am not sure how easily we can break your will or destroy your soul. As I observe you "bad kids," I think you survive our coercion.
CAN YOU HAVE SELF-RESPECT WHEN YOUR BODY HAS NO INALIENABLE HUMAN RIGHTS?
With the exception of sexual or other severe physical abuse, adults condone each other's absolute control over your bodies:
- You have no "inalienable rights" as set forth for all human persons in The Declaration of Independence.
- The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights does not apply to you.
- The United States Constitution and the "Bill of Rights" would have to end with the words ". . . except for children" in order to be honest and accurate.
- The words ". . . with liberty, and justice for all" at the end of The Pledge of Allegiance, do not apply to you.
These are wonderful documents. When they are followed, large numbers of people in a country can live together in an authentic democracy with a sense of personal safety and social justice.
Unfortunately, there are serious problems with these documents both for adults and for young people.
The problem with these documents for adults
The people whom we elected to represent us in our government often do not follow the written words and intentions of these documents. There are many examples of this in the United States today (2006) such as our right according to "The Bill of Rights" to be protected in our homes from unreasonable searches and seizures. That is supposed to mean that government people like the army or the police are not allowed to come into our homes any time they want (breaking down our doors if they so choose) for any reason.
Did you know they can do that now? Those of us who are soldiers and police officers can legally come into your home anytime we want. Our elected government officials, The President of the United States, our Senators and the members of Congress voted to allow people like army soldiers and police officers to come into the homes of United States' citizens without even a search warrant signed by a judge. A government official who wanted to go, uninvited, into your home used to have to convince a judge that there was "probable cause," something like the high probability of a crime going on in your house. That is not needed anymore.
Did you know, for instance, that our President advocates the torture of human persons? Did you know that our President started a war with a country (Iraq) that was not attacking us, and was not attacking another country that needed our protection? Can you imagine how quickly we parents would be at the school door if we found out that a teacher was telling you it was okay for you to start a fight with a person smaller than you, who you thought might hurt you even though he never did anything to hurt you and there was no proof that he was going to do anything to hurt you? When we pass laws like these, and start wars like these, our important documents don't seem to mean very much, do they?
Did you know that a police officer is now allowed to stop you in the street, anywhere, at any time to ask you for identification of who you are and you are required to show that police officer some form of identification? That never used to be allowed in a democracy such as ours. In the past, you could be stopped, legally, only if you matched the description of a person who recently committed a crime in the area. Not anymore.
When other countries do things like this we refer to them as "police states." Did you know that the government of the United States keeps records of and locks up political dissenters? The President derisively calls citizens "unpatriotic" who peacefully and non-violently disagree with his policies. Is that a responsible attitude to be demonstrated by a leader of an authentic democracy?
The problem with these documents for young people
So, there are many problems with these documents for adults. For young people the problem is worse. For you, these documents were never intended to apply to you in the first place. None of them. Did you know that? Not "The Pledge of Allegiance," not "The Declaration of Independence." None of them apply to you.
Have any of your teachers told you, for instance, that "The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights" has a separate section for you? Under Principle 2, this sentence of the "Declaration of the Rights of the Child" allows adults to override any of your self-determined choices and decisions:
"In the enactment of laws for this purpose, the best interests of the child shall be the paramount consideration." (Italics mine.) If an adult--parent, judge, social worker, or teacher--says something "is in your best interests," then whatever you want doesn't count. You are considered, by law, too young to know what is best for you.
We want you to believe that these documents do apply to you. We want you to believe that you do have rights because then you will not question our authority and you will do more of what we say, and even be happy about it most of the time.
John Stuart Mill, a great British philosopher of the nineteenth century, exposes this lie about your rights in his famous treatise "On Liberty." Writing about the meaning of liberty in a free society, and defining the fair and just use of force against another individual, Mill declares:
" . . . the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant."
Mill's words are the MyBody-YourBody standard for the fair use of force. The problem for you, as young people, is that several paragraphs further in his book Mill says that this universal standard of the fair use of force, of course, doesn't apply to you: "It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to say that . . . we are not speaking of children."
CAN YOU HAVE SELF-RESPECT WHEN NO ONE HELPS YOU WHEN YOUR BODY IS BEING VIOLATED?
The problem for you as a young person is that the concept of "domestic violence" does not extend to you. Your body is not protected. "Domestic violence" is about adults mistreating other adults. Your mistreatment, except in severe cases, is allowed. Ask any adult what "domestic violence" means and I am certain the response will be something like, It is when a husband beats or abuses his wife.
Relatives like uncles and aunts or grandparents or brothers and sisters will rarely protect you if a parent is doing something unfair to you. Your body is rarely even protected by one parent against the other. In a marriage, for instance, one partner who doesn't agree with the other partner's handling of a conflict situation with you will rarely say anything in your favor. Isn't that true?
Haven't you known that one of your parents agreed with you and still let the other parent do to you whatever he/she wanted anyway? The disagreeing parent might even lie about it, pretending to agree. Your parents might have even had a big argument in private about the issue, but in front of you they act like they agree with each other. Don't you feel betrayed? How else can you feel? That is a betrayal of trust. That lie by one of your parents leaves you totally unprotected and at the mercy of the other parent. How can you possibly make sense of this kind of world?
You all understand that you are on your own, that you will get no help for your bodies from adults. You learn to accept this loneliness and despair as "the way it is." We certainly don't teach you those skills of how to protect yourselves in school, and your parents at home only want your obedience. But MyBody-Your Body can begin to teach you the skills you need to know for your body's own self-protection.
CAN YOU PROTECT EACH OTHERS' BODIES?
It is hard enough to protect your own body. What about protecting other kids' bodies? We know that adults won't stop anything between most other adults and children. How about you? What about you daring to intercede in an obviously abusive situation between an adult and another child?
You aren't given societal permission to speak up about unfairness to yourselves, much less to others. In your own homes, where you should feel safest to express your honest feelings, you mostly tend to keep quiet in the face of injustice to others, right? A woman friend of mine remembers feeling helpless rage as a young girl when she watched her father beat up her older brother. This was a regular practice. She was too small to help her brother. Her mother did nothing.
What are your options when you are too terrified of our rage and violence to stand up to us when we are beating your brother or your sister? One option you have as a witness to our cruelty is hatred. The hatred can be directed inwardly or outwardly. In this case the woman said she grew up with an absolute hatred of male authority figures such as public school teachers, the police, college professors, and clergy. She saw men as bullies, as abusers of their power.
Rejecting the institutions many male adults manage such as schools and churches, she went over to the "dark side" and embraced drugs, sex, and alcohol. And this was one of the "good" girls. Her escape seems like a sane response to the powerlessness you all must feel in similar circumstances.
In our coercive actions toward children and young people we adults act with almost 100% shortsighted vision. Our "power over" you gets us what we want in the short-term. What about the long-term? We think our actions toward you are "free," that we don't pay long-term prices for our short-term violent victories over you. If you are someone like this girl, afraid to confront your own parents, how can we expect you to help deal with a friend's parent who is being unjust, or with a teacher or pastor who is being unfair to other children? Why, for instance, should we expect you to vote when you are older? What miracle happens to you at the age of eighteen that makes you believe your voice can now make a difference when it never has before?
Most of you would never express the indignation you must all feel when one of your own is being treated unfairly. At best, you might offer a token verbal or physical resistance. For instance, you might shout That's not fair! or you might grab the adult's arm or try to stand between the adult and the child who is being treated unjustly. To do something like that, to propel yourself into an adult: child conflict situation would be to take an enormous risk. You would have to be feeling an incredible sense of outrage for what is going on. The indignity being suffered by the other child would have to touch you very deeply, probably at a place where you have been similarly violated.
Often the person who stands up against oppression stands alone. Or sits alone, like Rosa Parks on that bus. Adults only deify people like Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, Nelson Mandela, and Martin Luther King after they have been put into jail or killed. Those of us who oppose injustice to our own, or to other peoples' bodies, face varying degrees of consequence for our human rights bravery.
The "Righteous Ones" were such courageous people. During the years 1933-1945, the German government planned and carried out an organized persecution and murder of 6,000,000 Jewish people. The "Righteous Ones" were non-Jewish people who hid and fed Jewish people even though there was a law making it illegal to help a Jew. The punishment for hiding Jewish people or for feeding them was death. These "Righteous Ones" were putting themselves and their families at great risk. Many were discovered and killed as they tried to save Jews from being slaughtered by the German soldiers.
How are young people to learn how to distinguish authority that deserves your obedience, and authority that warrants your disobedience, such as the German law? If we ask any of you what "being good" means, it is unlikely that your answer will sound like this:
- "Being good" is taking forceful action aligned with my conscience to stop an injustice.
Most of you won't answer the question that way. You won't answer that way because we have done nothing to help you answer such a question that way. More likely, your answer will focus on doing what adults want you to do. "Being good" is:
- Doing what the teacher says
- It's not getting in trouble
- It's to do what they tell you
Deciding as a young person whether or not to help other people whose bodies are being violated is a complex issue. What if one adult is hurting another adult, not another child. Have you ever tried to stop your father from beating up your mother? You could get hurt or killed. What if many children are hurting one child? You could get hurt trying to stop kids from hurting each other.
That's what a friend of mine was afraid of, as she tells the story fifty years later, of the time she stood by and did nothing to help as all the other kids were throwing hard snowballs at a helpless girl who was crying hysterically unable to protect herself. My friend still feels guilty about her inaction, about not helping that girl in the first grade playground. These can't be easy decisions for you to make, especially because you have to make them alone. You get little help from adults who give you trite words, inconsistent values, and hypocritical action.
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