Youth are Segregated

Adam’s note: If you’re a subscriber, sorry about filling up your inbox. I’m cleaning out half-finished blog entries and want to make sure the ones from today hit the streets. Notice the dates; a lot are from January 2008. Hope you enjoy!

Youth segregation happens throughout our lives. Starting from the first moments of a child’s life, newborn infants are oftentimes removed from their mothers immediately after birth. Incubated like chicken eggs under glaring lights, babies are immediately wrenched away from the healthy grips of the mother-child bond, and mothers are immediately trained to believe and trust that the segregation of their children is a normal, acceptable, and even beneficial thing.

As children grow they continue to experience this alienation and abandonment. Daycare, schooling and many community programs all rely on the isolation of children and youth from adults, and worse still is that our adultcentric economy relies on this isolation as well. In addition to serving as captive audiences for promoting violence, consumerism and nationalism, these programs oftentimes also become the many purveyors of social values for young people, effectively negating the ability and responsibility the larger community has for “raising its own,” as Hilary Clinton professs in her book It Takes a Village and Other Lessons Children Teach Us.

Schooling is the main vehicle for reinforcing the youth segregation throughout our society. As John Taylor Gatto powerfully explains in Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, schools have long succeeded at teaching and reinforcing segregation for young people. Reflecting on his 25 years of teaching in public schools, the premise of his book are the following seven lessons:”