You are certainly entitled to your beliefs, everyone who has
commented.
Eleven year olds who are organizing anti-war demonstrations have not
been given a childhood that might have allowed that child to
continue his/her inner development to become even better able to
achieve a fully realized adult person. There are biological reasons
why the human being develops so much more slowly than, say, a horse.
It is not just about physical . . there are inner aspects to being
human that cannot be rushed. A central, tragic, mistake is the kind
of thinking many are reflecting here, talk about all children
developing at different stages . .
why not let all humans drink alcohol from age fifteen?
why do we have the voting age at 18 and why was it at 21 for so long?
because the human being is not a full adult until age 21 and, even,
older. .. it's not just about emotional and physical maturity. We
are spiritual beings.
It is our spiritual beings that are most stunted when we allow
children to enter adult decision making and adult simulation at
younger and younger ages.
It is child abuse, in my opinion, to have events like the TED
event. . . I know nobody at that event would agree with me. IMO, and
I do get to have it, inviting children to sit on the boards of
things like TED and the Jane Goodall institute or, my goodness,
citizen/community policy bords, amounts to cultural and child abuse.
Do we want fully evolved human beings to carry the human race into
the future? or do we want working clones for corporations?
I want fully evolved human beings and to get those, we need to keep
children asleep in childhood.That means no television, no internet.
It means reading. It means adding in their heads, not calculators.
And it means not pressuring children to raise money for charity and
antiwar demonstrations.
Everyone can believe whatever they want. Let's see how the world
does with children who spend their childhoods in front of television
and now, online.
On Sat, Oct 9, 2010 at 10:08 AM, Pat Black <patoitexti...@gmail.com>
wrote:
Hello Tree
I have never agreed and disagreed more strongly with the same
thought before. It took me some time to sit with your ideas as I
unpacked my own reaction to your statements. I do not believe I
misunderstand your beliefs about how you think childhoods should be
protected and sheltered and I don't disagree with you in theory.
They should be protected and sheltered. There is no going back to
stolen childhoods and childhood can be stolen. I do think childhoods
can be stolen under the guise of protection and shelter.
I do think there are developmental stages and that it's important
for us to go through all those stages as we grow because we will use
those stages as scaffolding as we become ourselves. Having said
that I also believe that we all come to be with a different set of
tools and brilliant abilities. Those unique qualities of self allow
us to move through different developmental stages with different
abilities and different times. Here is where I take exception with
what you are proposing and Waldorf for that matter. Each brings our
own time to the equation. Some are ready to take on experiences
interacting with adults and their world in very competent ways at
very young ages. In fact, they need to have those experiences to
find the self they came to be. I know for myself I was already
organizing anti-war events by the time I was 11. No one expected,
pushed or even encouraged me to this. I felt compelled by what I
saw in the world and a deep need to change it. I am grateful that
as difficult as it was for my parents to allow me to do these things
because they kept me on the path to myself. My daughter was crying
about flowers picked that didn't want to be picked by the time she
was 2, raising money for pre-schools in Central America by the time
she was 7 and comfortably reading essays she wrote to political
demonstration with crowds of 50,000 people by the time she was 11.
My son on the other hand is 22 and still not ready to navigate the
world as an adult. He needs more time. The issue for me is not
whether I think a young person should participate in certain venues
normally occupied by adults. The issue is where the children are
driven to go. What do the children think? Are they there because
their own heart has passion and commitment or are they there because
someone else thinks that is where they should be? Childhood should
be protected and sheltered. I agree with that. I also think it
needs to be driven by the child's passion and commitment not the
adults sense of what is appropriate for a child. I am thinking
about the recent hoopla about the 16 year old girl who wanted to
sail around the world and all the talk about child abuse. There was
a time when she was out of radio contact and all the world was a
twitter about what happened to her because the loss of contact came
after a bad storm in the Pacific where she was. After some days
they found the boat and team rescued her. Her mast broke in the
storm and with that her satellite communications were down. The
questioners went on and on to her about her safety and whether she
was alright and whether she should be out in a boat sailing by
herself and her reply was "It was just a storm". This child can
only become herself through the sea and if you deny her the sea you
deny her herself.
I am just saying it is for the child to chose the direction and the
speed and the adults to do what they can to facility the possibility.
Pat Black
On Sat, Oct 9, 2010 at 8:11 AM, Tree Fitzpatrick <therese.fitzpatr...@gmail.com
> wrote:
Michael, and other comments. .. I don't think anyone commenting
actually understood what I tried to say so I conclude that I failed
to communicate.
Young humans are not yet fully evolved humans. What all young people
need, including the most precocious of them, including ones that get
asked to sit on the board of the Jane Goodall Institute, is to be
children. It is only by being children than humans can become fully
realized adults.
The world needs fully realized adults to achieve our shared, highest
destiny. When we push children out of childhood and into the adult
realm, those people rarely, if ever, get space later in life to go
back and fill in the gaps of what was missing.
Michael, yes, indeed, children can bring a lovely element to any
open space. . . but that does not mean that it is right. Children
should not be asked to participate in adult matters. Ever.
The damage contemporary society does to childhood is a very serious,
long-term consequence to humanity. If we do not keep children asleep
in childhood so they might do the inner work of their inner beings,
we will have a human future full of unrealized 'grown ups'. It is
casual, nonsensical folly to bring children -- unformed adults --
into adult discussions. It is wrong on a gagillion levels.
We are all so caught up in rushing towards the future. One thing we
humans cannot 'rush' is the slow development and incubation of fully
realized human beings: that development takes place in childhood.
It is irrationally folly to bring children into adult decisions.
On Fri, Oct 8, 2010 at 3:06 AM, Michael M Pannwitz
<mmpa...@boscop.org> wrote:
Dear Tree,
from where I sit (public) decision making as presently practiced,
for instance in Germany, is ineffective, creates larger problems, is
lobby-infested, dogmatic, expensive, not even a good show... who
would want to be part of that?
What I have experienced often in "formal" open space events and in
the "normal" open space of everyday life (like the 1,5 year old
daughter of a neighbor visiting and taking over our household, very
effectively involving us in her life and experiments, curious,
decisions?-easy for her....pure joy)is that kids of all ages thrive
in it.
But then, thats not decision making in the sense of sitting on a
"board" of whatsoever.
Day-care children, grade school kids, highschool kids, teenagers...
are the greatest gift to an open space event, so I encourage their
taking part and it seems to always have been productive, fun,
healthy...
Have a great day
Greetings from Berlin
mmp
Tree Fitzpatrick schrieb:
There are many things off kilter in human culture. One thing that I
think is
off kilter is that adult humans now routinely encourage non-adult
humans to
participate in things like 'public decision making'. Where did we
get the
assumption that a young person has the capacity of a fully evolved
adult
human to make informed decisions that might have long term
consequences on
the child, other children, the community, the culture, etc? Children
are not
yet adult.
We encourage children to 'awaken' to adulthood far too early.
I am appalled that many now take it for granted that children (a non-
adult
is still a child) should sit on something like the Board of
Directors of
something like the Jane Goddall Institute (whatever that is, I imagine
Ashley meant Jane Goddall).
This is a major flaw, I think, in evolving culture and it has
endlessly
complex repercussions.
Children's job is to be children, to developo their own personhood
fully so
that they will one day take a place in adult community. Children
awaken to
adult considerations much too early. TElevision has been a huge
culprit in
this regard and now, of course, the internet.
A child's main work is being a child. It's just not right to
cavalierly get
youth input into decisioins that children cannot, just cannot,
really know.
A twelve year old, a sixteen year old, is not mature enough to make
complex
public decisions and it is wrong to ask them to: asking children to
participate in grown up life as peers with the adults dishonors
children
I get my main attitudes about children from having sent my child to a
Waldorf School and having been a student of Rudolf STeiner for over
twenty
years. Much of what is wrong with human culture can be traced to the
practice of stunting youthful inner development under the guise of
awakening
children too early to adult concerns. This is why we now have an
education
system in USA that is focussed on test scores instead of the inner
development of children. There is a story in today's NYTImes about how
publishers are publishing less picture books and how parents
pressure four
years olds to listen to long stories and skip picture books so they
will
have better test scores later. . . this dynamic is connected to
including
youth in public decisinmaking.
I know this is a very popular trend and I know Ashely Cooper is deeply
invested in the world and I know she is a good caring person intent on
making positive contributions in the world.
I get to have my opinion, yes? I am worried about the millions of
humans
who are children today who are not cloud-gazing and spending their
summers
hunting rocks and birds' nests and who are told, when they are
twelve, that
they can contribute to public decisions. Grown up humans have a duty
to
children: to let them be children. Otherwise what we are creating
is an
army of humans who are not fully developed humans who will make good
wage
slaves for the elite billionaires running the tea part movement.
Thinking
caring loving people should not participate in pushing children into
the
adult arena while children.
On Thu, Oct 7, 2010 at 6:51 PM, ashley cooper
<mail.easilyama...@gmail.com>wrote:
Hello Open Space friends,
I have fallen off of the OSlist for awhile, but I wanted to share
with you
a talk from a recent TEDx event that I hosted,
TEDxNextGenerationAsheville<http://www.tedxnextgenerationasheville.com/
>.
This event was all about spotlighting the ideas of young people and
giving
them a public stage from which to share and be heard. It was also an
invitation for there to be more collaboration between youth and
adults.
Chase Pickering spoke about the role of youth in leadership and how
young
people can contribute to public decision-making and serve on Board of
Directors (which he did with the Jane Goddall Institute). If you are
in a
position to invite a youth to serve on your board of directors or
advisory
board or encourage the clients you work with, please consider Chase's
advice!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27IJpZVP1qs
You can also watch Birke Baehr's talk about the food we eat. He is
an 11
year old who is passionate about food and whose talk has gone viral
and been
viewed over 200,000 times in less than 2 weeks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7Id9caYw-Y
Sending fondest regards from Asheville, NC, USA,
Ashley
P.s. If you would like to respond to me personally, please send it to
easilyama...@gmail.com . I have not been checking this account
regularly.
Thank you.
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Love rays,
Tree Fitzpatrick (check out my new address)
. . . the great and incalculable grace of love, which says, with
Augustine, "I want you to be," without being able to give any
particular reason for such supreme and unsurpassable affirmation.
-- Hannah Arendt
2175 Kittredge St Apt 615
Berkeley, CA 94704
510-665-4825
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--
Love rays,
Tree Fitzpatrick (check out my new address)
. . . the great and incalculable grace of love, which says, with
Augustine, "I want you to be," without being able to give any
particular reason for such supreme and unsurpassable affirmation.
-- Hannah Arendt
2175 Kittredge St Apt 615
Berkeley, CA 94704
510-665-4825
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