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85: Combatting Adultism to Create a Flourishing Democracy w/ Dr. Tanu Biswas & Dr. John Wall
20 Plays4 years ago
Transcripts can be found via our website, humanrestorationproject.org.
Today we're joined by Dr. Tanu Biswas and Dr. John Wall. Dr. Biswas is a doctorate of pedagogy who focuses her research on children's civil disobedience for climate justice, and showcasing the richness that children and childhood have to offer adults. Dr. Wall is a theoretical ethicist who focuses on the idea of a moral life centered on language, power, culture, and childhood. His upcoming book, Give Children the Vote: How to Democratize Democracy argues for voting rights regardless of age.
Our conversation centers on combatting adultism, or the power adults have over children and the discrimination of young people, which is more than present in society but in my opinion, amplified in the classroom. We talk about what adultism and childism mean, how to promote democracy, and the importance of civil disobedience.
GUESTS
Dr. Tanu Biswas, doctorate of pedagogy and researcher focused on civil disobedience, children, and the intersection of climate justice
Dr. John Wall, theoretical ethicist centered on language, power, culture, and childhood
RESOURCES
- The Childism Institute (Rutgers)
- Children's Voting Colloquium
- Upcoming Event!: Exploring Children Across Disciplines by (Jan 22, 2021 @ 8AM ET)
- Children’s Civil Disobedience in the Minority World & its Potential for Re-imagining the Educational by Tanu Biswas
- Why Children Should Have the Right to Vote: An Argument for Proxy-Claim Suffrage by John Wall
FURTHER LISTENING
Recommended
Transcript
Podcast Introduction and Supporters
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello and welcome to episode 85 of our podcast at Human Restoration Project.
00:00:14
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My name is Chris McNutt and I'm a high school digital media instructor from Ohio.
00:00:18
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Before we get started, I want to let you know that this podcast is brought to you by our supporters, three of whom are Ray O'Brien, Jenny Lucas, and Gareth Hype.
00:00:25
Speaker
Thank you for your ongoing
Human Restoration Project Online Presence
00:00:26
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support.
00:00:26
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You can learn more about Human Restoration Project on our website, humanrestorationproject.org, or find us on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.
00:00:52
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Today,
Introducing Dr. Tanu Biswas and Dr. John Wall
00:00:53
Speaker
we're joined by Dr. Tanu Biswas and Dr. John Wall.
00:00:56
Speaker
Dr. Biswas is a doctorate of pedagogy who focuses her research on children's civil disobedience for climate justice and showcasing the richness that children and childhood have to offer adults.
00:01:07
Speaker
Dr. Wall is a theoretical ethicist who focuses on the idea of a moral life centered on language, power, culture, and childhood.
00:01:16
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His upcoming book, Give Children the Vote, How to Democratize Democracy,
00:01:20
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argues for voting rights regardless of age.
00:01:22
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Our conversation
Understanding Adultism and Childism
00:01:23
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centers on combating adultism, or the power adults have over children, and the discrimination of young people, which is more than present in society, but in my opinion amplified in the classroom.
00:01:33
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We talk about what adultism and childism mean, and how to promote democracy, and the importance of civil disobedience.
00:01:40
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First off, to be honest, like the concepts of childism and adultism, I've seen these things referenced, I understand some of the theory, but they're relatively due to me.
00:01:47
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Like I'm kind of familiar with critical pedagogy, the importance of student voice, but truly I am here to learn from you.
00:01:53
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So with that being said, I think it'd be important to start the conversation by defining the terms that we're talking about today, namely childism and adultism.
00:02:01
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So whoever
Historical Context and Potential of Childism
00:02:03
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wants to start us off, do you want to kind of inform us on what those words mean?
00:02:07
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Well,
00:02:07
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I could start off and then Tanu can, I'm sure, add a lot to this as well.
00:02:12
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You know, for me, childism is all about empowering children by critiquing social norms.
00:02:19
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So it's like third wave feminism for me.
00:02:23
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It means questioning the assumptions that put children in a marginalized position in societies and in schools and in academia and lots of different places and trying to come up with ways to imagine children
00:02:37
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more child-inclusive communities and societies where children's own particular lived experiences as children are equally valued to those of adults, which they never really have been over history.
00:02:52
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Yeah, I can add a bit to that because, you know, the term childism itself has, it's been used in both senses to mean adultism.
00:03:05
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And what John just explained
00:03:07
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That's the sense many childhood studies scholars or scholars who relate to childhood studies, that's the way they've been using this term, including myself.
00:03:19
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But
Adultism in Education and Childist Perspectives
00:03:20
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it's been used also to mean adultism, and that's where it gets a bit confusing because so adultism, which is comparable to, let's say, sexism or patriarchy,
00:03:36
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as those are for feminism, adultism is for childism.
00:03:43
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And the word childism itself, the way it's used in childhood studies, this starts kind of towards the end of the 90s, or rather, you know, 90s and starting 2000s, so pretty much early 21st century.
00:04:00
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Although I would also think that the
00:04:04
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the way of thinking or the way of childish thinking has been present.
00:04:10
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And I think especially in, for example, like phenomenological traditions with the works of Merleau-Ponty, you know, he was, he wrote in child psychology as well and was kind of more, you know, he was a contemporary of Piaget.
00:04:30
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who has contributed to educational sciences, also with his developmental model, but that developmental model actually sort of works almost against seeing children as equal humans or equal becomeings in that sense.
00:04:49
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So, yeah, I mean, the way we're using it is in a more transformative sense.
00:04:57
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of the term.
00:04:58
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And to me, the problem with the negative use of the term is that it's deficit-oriented.
00:05:06
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And it's also really about adults and not about children.
00:05:10
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So if you use childism to mean something like sexism,
00:05:14
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then you're really talking about, you're only including the ways in which children are oppressed and dominated and have prejudices against them.
00:05:23
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And you're not imagining them like in childhood studies as agents who can participate with their own voices and who have distinct and diverse life experiences as well.
00:05:35
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There was actually another use of the word childism in the 90s in literary theory, which
00:05:41
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which kind of died out, but there they used it to mean reading as children.
00:05:48
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And that's a little bit closer, I think, to what we're using the term to mean.
00:05:52
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But the problem with that and the reason it died out is it kind of essentializes children.
00:05:58
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Again, it's about adults, so that's different.
00:06:01
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And it's about how adults can read like a child reads.
00:06:05
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But, of course,
Strategies to Combat Adultism in Schools
00:06:06
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then you have to have an image of how a child reads.
00:06:08
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And so the difference for us would be no...
00:06:15
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you're you're we're trying to look at how the ways in which children themselves experience the world and how that would change so how their experiences have been put aside and forgotten about or or seen as less important and trying to have those be important and be of equal value to the way adults experience the world right it's very interesting to hear that because like when i was
00:06:40
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getting like my education degree, it was still presented to be the opposite way.
00:06:45
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So it's fascinating to hear like how the word has become like morphed depending on the feel, but also how that can inform the way that we speak about it.
00:06:53
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Seeking to empower by use of the term as a positive as opposed to a negative.
00:06:58
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I think that resonates and makes a lot of sense.
00:07:00
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And how this manifests itself and how we understand the concepts of childism and adultism in schools.
00:07:07
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Tana, I wanted to reference your what you call adultist template responses.
00:07:12
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There's a list of them.
00:07:14
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I'll read a couple of them here because it was in regards to young people and activism.
00:07:18
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impermanent emotionality.
00:07:20
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She is emotionally charged and therefore reacts now, but it will pass when objective reason comes forth or depoliticized pedagogical defense.
00:07:28
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Children should stay in school and leave politics to adults.
00:07:31
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Adults are more experienced and more knowledge.
00:07:33
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Therefore, they are entitled to teach children.
00:07:35
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And I read that this whole list that basically dismisses children as not being able to understand things.
00:07:40
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They're going to understand things later.
00:07:41
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They're going to quote unquote, grow up these different things.
00:07:44
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And I
00:07:44
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I think about school, like this is a typical teacher workroom and or school board discussion, sadly, about how adults treat children and the adultist response, right?
00:07:57
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So could you talk a little about the relationship then between teachers, students, adultism and childism?
00:08:05
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Yes, sure.
00:08:07
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You're right that, you know, one comes across these a lot in the school
Empowering Students through Civil Disobedience
00:08:14
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context.
00:08:15
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that is the space, so to say, that, you know, children are trusted into and almost like removed from proactive processes of community formation.
00:08:26
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And the reasoning, you know, that, yeah, they're not yet ready.
00:08:28
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They don't understand the emotions.
00:08:31
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They'll get it later.
00:08:33
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It's kind of, I mean, it's a classic like infantilization process that is used in interest or actively
00:08:43
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used under the pretext of pedagogical relationships or pedagogical responsibilities even.
00:08:51
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I think it's quite rampant in the school systems.
00:08:54
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And I kind of think this comes from the philosophy of pedagogy that underlies how we understand and practice education.
00:09:06
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today in different settings, because you also hear this, these kind of templates a lot when parents are talking about educating children.
00:09:15
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So it's educators in the broadest sense, adult educators.
00:09:19
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But here's the thing, like what is one status quo or taken for granted assumption upon which I think the entire like education system and teacher education as well rests is that adults teach and children learn.
00:09:33
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You know, this, this, I like your basic qualification to become a teacher is that you're above 18 years old.
00:09:40
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I mean, this, I find that I think is very adultist.
00:09:43
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It's an adultist assumption.
00:09:46
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And it also really, you know, sort of hides and like conceals the potential, what children contribute actually to the development and growth of adults as well.
00:10:00
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So it's not a one way street.
00:10:03
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And you also hear, you know, many teachers who would say, like talk about why their profession is so satisfying, for example, like why they like being teachers.
00:10:13
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A big part of it is also, you know, what they receive from their students.
00:10:17
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Or you hear teachers talking about how they've learned and grown as a result of, you know, their teaching practice.
00:10:26
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But somehow this aspect is never highlighted.
00:10:29
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It's also not talked about so much.
00:10:31
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It's usually about what you delivered and what you taught.
00:10:37
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So what I've been trying to show, especially with the example of the child activism right now with Fridays for Future, school strikes, it's incredible how inspiring, from a sociopolitical point of view, what
00:10:56
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what young activists are doing is and how adults can learn from them because obviously there's like a very passive engagement on part of adults, which is why it's come to this point.
00:11:10
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You know, now it's like when you have discussions in also political education where you'd say, yeah, how can we train children to be better citizens and so on and so forth?
00:11:19
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But the question has to be, what can we learn from children?
00:11:22
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This question has to also become,
00:11:26
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central to educational theory and practice.
00:11:30
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And there's very little room for that, you know, right now.
00:11:34
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Yeah, I can't help but think as you're talking about this, it's very similar to like what Freire spoke about with pedagogy of the oppressed and disestablishing that narrative that the teacher teaches and the child learns and all of the assumptions that we make in school beyond just the transfer of learning, but also like who holds authority and how discipline works and who assigns a grade and the judgment, ranking, and filing.
00:11:56
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that occurs in the school building.
00:11:59
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But I also don't want this entire conversation to be about the negative.
00:12:02
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I also think that there's a place here to talk to teachers about how we can change this and how we can make things better and how we can make that happen.
00:12:11
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And I'm curious if either of you have thoughts about ways that we can combat adultism in schools beyond just
00:12:21
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like we need to think more about their perspective.
00:12:23
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Is there a way that we can bring in a specific thing, like a specific system or idea in the schools that would help us disestablish this narrative of adultism?
00:12:36
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Well, there have been some interesting studies done in schools, for example, with preschoolers, where if you go into the classroom and look at using a childish lens, you know, what is going on in the classroom, you actually find this is not as specific as you want, I don't think, but you do find even very young children.
00:12:56
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actively bringing themselves into the classroom.
00:13:00
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And it may or may not be recognized by the teacher or by the school as important, but in fact, the solution is already there in a certain sense that just like adults, you know, children are extremely diverse people who have a lot of different experiences and ideas and thinking to bring in to bring to whatever situation they're in.
00:13:21
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And so
00:13:22
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A lot of it is seeing what's already there and responding to that.
00:13:28
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But that's just, again, a rather general way of looking at it again.
00:13:32
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Yeah, I've been thinking of how, it's not just about seeing things from a children's point of view.
00:13:42
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That's a very important step.
00:13:45
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And another important step is also, of course, to become aware of, in what ways are we adultist?
00:13:51
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And not in like you don't like beat yourself over it.
00:13:54
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It's just to become aware of, you know, what is adultist about my teaching practice, my relationship, you know, with with children, the childist lens or also childist attitude would be the transformative step, which would be basically, I mean, you know, a simple practice, for example, at the end of the day,
00:14:16
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just write down three things that you learned from your students, you know, so at least every day, like actively thinking of how is your life transformed as a result of that relationship with that person?
00:14:29
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What are they contributing?
00:14:31
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So it could be, you know, simple practices like discussion circles, like amongst, let's say, teachers and the, you know, school management, parents, like just to get together and talk about how are our children
00:14:44
Speaker
and students, like how are they enriching, you know, learning processes?
00:14:49
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How are we as adults also learning something?
00:14:53
Speaker
So it's like once the more and more you become aware of that, those school systems will transform.
00:15:01
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But until I understand that acknowledgement is not happening at a very active level,
00:15:09
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It's not sufficient to simply see things from their perspective or recognize adultism, but actively say, okay, I want to make my learning an active part of my teaching practice.
00:15:24
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So there's a kind of humility as well that is required to let children take the lead as well.
00:15:33
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I would add also that in a more structural sense across, for example, a school, you could look at who is running the school or on what basis are they running the school?
00:15:43
Speaker
And of course, a lot of schools have student councils and things like that.
00:15:47
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Students can go to the board meetings or what have you, but they tend to be rather tokenistic and they don't tend to have to do with actually changing anything that happens in the school.
00:15:57
Speaker
They tend to be around school dances and things like that, which is wonderful.
00:16:01
Speaker
But
00:16:02
Speaker
Are the young people being educated involved at all in the ways in which their education is organized?
00:16:09
Speaker
And there could be many different ways that that could be much more meaningfully done.
00:16:15
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I think where I am in the United States, people tend to assume that children are not really capable of doing much of that kind of stuff.
00:16:22
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But if you look at children around the world, they're
00:16:26
Speaker
They're running children's parliaments from the age of five.
00:16:29
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They're working jobs and supporting families at very early ages.
00:16:33
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They're engaged in the public culture and community starting from birth.
00:16:41
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And so we tend to have privatized children, which is part of this infantilization of them and sort of them as not having any real public roles.
00:16:50
Speaker
And I think that transforms, translates into schools.
00:16:54
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into this idea that the children don't know what is needed to get a good education.
00:17:01
Speaker
But actually, if you are able to have a dialogue amongst children and involve them in a real way and give them real power and real say over what happens,
00:17:09
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I don't think schools or teachers have to be defensive about that and think that their rights are going to be taken away.
00:17:16
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I think, you know, on the contrary, it would provide a much richer discussion about what's really working, what's not working, what could we do differently, how can we think creatively so that the actual people who are supposed to be educating, you know, actually tell us what's going on.
00:17:31
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Yeah.
Standardized Testing and its Democratic Impact
00:17:32
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And as we change those systems, I'm curious about your thoughts on this.
00:17:36
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Do you think that there's then a place to connect civil disobedience with what's going on in the classroom and how essentially the power dynamic between teacher and student rests in order to teach people?
00:17:48
Speaker
how to be disobedient we have to have systems in school where students are allowed to be disobedient as in so many teaching environments are hyper controlled and if you disobey you are automatically disciplined and usually taken out of the environment altogether and in my opinion that's raising a generation of people who basically learn from a very young age respect authority
00:18:14
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which has some benefits for sure.
00:18:18
Speaker
But overall, that also leads to, in my opinion, a less democratic society, one that is less willing to stand up for themselves and question what it is that's going on.
00:18:28
Speaker
Do you have any ideas on how that would look?
00:18:32
Speaker
Like what would it look like to have a classroom where students are free to express their viewpoints and disagree or be disobedient, at least in traditional school classrooms?
00:18:42
Speaker
I wonder why it has to be seen.
00:18:45
Speaker
I mean, of course, within the framework you described, like if it is this very disciplinarian model, of course, that's seen as disobedience.
00:18:51
Speaker
But if you have a different opinion, you know, making room for discussion, I think that would be a really philosophically rich space because what you learn is that there would be more room for negotiation and
00:19:10
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It would require more time, of course.
00:19:12
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One of the reasons why there's so much control is also because certain syllabus has to finish within a certain period of time.
00:19:20
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We have to write our exams.
00:19:21
Speaker
We need to move forward with that curriculum, which the ones who are practicing the curriculum actually have nothing to do with.
00:19:28
Speaker
Yes, things like this, but it's giving more room to negotiate.
00:19:32
Speaker
So if it's seen from this point of view, this is not about disciplining.
00:19:38
Speaker
but rather, let's say, like allowing a critical thinking and critical ways of being to flourish.
00:19:48
Speaker
And that includes, you know, disagreement and engaging with disagreement.
00:19:54
Speaker
And in the in the model you describe, which is actually the prevalent one, you know, it's the teachers who are unable to cope with the disagreement.
00:20:05
Speaker
especially because it's coming from the younger side, you know.
00:20:09
Speaker
So one has to be, you would have to be comfortable with being challenged, for example.
00:20:16
Speaker
So that would be work on part of the adults.
00:20:20
Speaker
But I do not see that as going in a direction of what one would say is like disobedience or also, you know, people have described this as like anarchist.
00:20:31
Speaker
situations, which is, on the contrary, it's kind of like a community formation, which allows diversity of opinions and ways of engaging and knowing to flourish.
00:20:47
Speaker
So a huge aspect there would be that time, like it's a system that allows people to engage and have time to
00:20:58
Speaker
engage in those ways which currently are missing?
00:21:01
Speaker
Well, I think the language of civil disobedience is interesting, and I do think it is important because we're talking about power structures.
00:21:10
Speaker
And so I think civil disobedience is usually about when one group is systematically disempowered.
00:21:18
Speaker
In a certain sense, the only option you have there is to try and deconstruct the power structures that are oppressing you.
00:21:25
Speaker
But I very much agree with Tanya that to me, that would be only a part of the situation or only a first step because what civil disobedience, generally speaking, is working towards is a more inclusive society where power is shared.
00:21:41
Speaker
So I think you would also have to do the kind of things that civil disobedience groups have always done, which is
00:21:48
Speaker
generate positive alternatives and be the change you want to see, you know, that sort of thing.
00:21:57
Speaker
And so, and part of the problem, I think, is that, you know, adults need to change as well.
00:22:05
Speaker
So it's not just a matter of
00:22:07
Speaker
children getting what they want.
00:22:09
Speaker
It's a matter of changing the whole dynamic.
00:22:11
Speaker
And I think what childism suggests is that adults need to be more in touch with their childist side, you know, just like feminism asked men to be more in touch with a feminine side of themselves or, or, or feminist vote, women voting as societies to be more in touch with the female side of the society.
00:22:32
Speaker
So the same thing would have to happen in schools where adults
00:22:36
Speaker
become learners as well or become like children in different ways.
00:22:40
Speaker
And that's, and that should not be a bad thing.
00:22:42
Speaker
We tend to use the word childish in a bad sense, just like decades ago, people use womanish in a bad sense, you know, uh,
00:22:52
Speaker
But actually, it's not that at all.
00:22:55
Speaker
It makes you more roundly human.
00:22:58
Speaker
I think, too, that there's a place for teachers to use their relative privilege as an adult to basically combat against these structures and fight and demand better.
00:23:08
Speaker
for students.
00:23:09
Speaker
Speaking of time, I've always been shocked by how much time we spend covering every single topic, not actually leading to doing any better or worse on standardized assessment, which is the reason why people feel so pressured to get through those units.
00:23:24
Speaker
Because at the end of the day,
00:23:26
Speaker
Covering those topics and ensuring that you hit those check marks is not going to ensure that students are interested or care about or engage in those topics because you're not listening to them if you're going very quickly.
00:23:38
Speaker
And I think there's a place there for community norms to establishing these ideas with students up front and having them engage and build those norms with you.
00:23:47
Speaker
so that they feel like you're thinking about these things.
00:23:51
Speaker
It's one thing for me to approach this with a child as perspective, recognize that students need to share things with me, but I also need to be very open with them about what it is that I'm doing.
00:24:00
Speaker
Because I found that a lot of students, even though you might feel this way, still don't feel inclined to speak up because they're in that system.
00:24:09
Speaker
And they still think that, well, you know, for the last seven years, last eight years, this is how it's been.
00:24:14
Speaker
So you might be saying that, but I don't necessarily believe you.
00:24:17
Speaker
Establishing those norms up front of like, this is what we're doing.
00:24:20
Speaker
This is how we're going to get there.
00:24:21
Speaker
This is how I value you.
00:24:22
Speaker
And this is what you're contributing for me.
00:24:24
Speaker
I think there's a lot of power in that dynamic.
00:24:27
Speaker
I think standardized testing is the sort of ultimate power in position from adults.
00:24:33
Speaker
You know, it's coming from very top-down perspective.
00:24:36
Speaker
Here's what you have to learn, and we're going to demand that you do it on a highly regular basis.
00:24:41
Speaker
And it doesn't leave a lot of room for input from even teachers don't get much input into that, let alone the students being taught.
00:24:50
Speaker
And I know that I grew up in England where there wasn't so much of that.
00:24:55
Speaker
And it was quite surprising coming here just how regimented that whole system is.
00:25:02
Speaker
And I do think it tends to force children to the situation where they
00:25:08
Speaker
They learn that learning is about meeting adult goals.
00:25:12
Speaker
And they also learn, as you were suggesting earlier, that democracy is about doing what you're told and then replicating as an adult what you've been told democracy is.
00:25:24
Speaker
And I think it tends to generate a passive change.
00:25:27
Speaker
You know, a group of people who don't participate in democracy very much.
00:25:31
Speaker
And we have very low participation rates in this country.
00:25:34
Speaker
And I do think part of that is we're taught, it's true everywhere, but especially here, we're taught, you don't know anything about this.
00:25:41
Speaker
We're going to, you're going to jump through these hoops and only then will you have any idea what's going on.
00:25:47
Speaker
It's highly
Economic Motivations Behind Standardized Testing
00:25:48
Speaker
counterproductive in my view.
00:25:49
Speaker
I just want to add that, I mean, the scales of testing have grown as well in the last, you know, 20, 30 years, because it's become, you have the PISA test, for example, which is, it becomes an international competition, you know, between nations.
00:26:07
Speaker
And there are very clear economic goals behind testing.
00:26:11
Speaker
that kind of system of testing, because you're essentially testing human capital of a potential future human capital of every nation and then competing, you know, with different national students, setting them up against each other.
00:26:29
Speaker
So those scales have grown in the past years.
00:26:33
Speaker
And what is lost is basically this, the idea that
00:26:38
Speaker
education is it's essentially an intergenerational relationship.
00:26:43
Speaker
So, I mean, we can structure it differently, but as long as we stay close to this, that is, it's a relationship, you know, that's, and is that relationship, how democratic is your relationship?
00:26:58
Speaker
And both sides have to, are co-educating almost.
00:27:03
Speaker
So if some kind of a co-generational dynamic develops,
00:27:08
Speaker
the quality of those, like an educational process, would be positively transforming, I think.
00:27:16
Speaker
And currently, I don't think education is, in the largest sense of the term, it's not understood as a relationship, but it's more functional.
00:27:26
Speaker
And, you know, because we have to meet certain, it's to solve, I mean, either for development, you know, economic growth, and so on and so forth.
00:27:36
Speaker
And one has to remember that it is
00:27:38
Speaker
economic growth, which is sort of feeding off the future generations resources, you know, and we are raising children to be part of the system that's depleting itself.
00:27:50
Speaker
And I would just add that the other problem with this neoliberal model of education is it constructs adults as solely economic people, part of the world system,
00:28:04
Speaker
And it also constructs adults as no longer learners.
00:28:07
Speaker
So they've reached a fixed plateau and they're never going to get any better.
00:28:12
Speaker
Whereas we adults know that you spend your whole life learning and changing and you're not necessarily going to be in the same job for the rest of your life.
00:28:23
Speaker
You're not going to have the same interests for the rest of your life.
00:28:25
Speaker
So it's very constraining on adults, too, to be thought of as fixed beings for the rest of time.
00:28:30
Speaker
Yeah, there's a great irony in our obsession with standardization to basically make the best job seekers possible when we realize that when we standardize models, we're taking away things like play-based learning, which actually helps students develop.
00:28:44
Speaker
It would make them more critical thinkers that could understand even more through their schooling.
00:28:49
Speaker
And we're just basically taking away these different ideas that would help students develop even further, despite what school might do to them, which feels bad as a teacher to say that because I recognize that I'm part of the system that is creating those models.
00:29:02
Speaker
But at the same time,
Giving Children the Vote: A Societal Shift
00:29:03
Speaker
as I said earlier,
00:29:04
Speaker
I think that there are ways for teachers to come into this process and make that change, however small it might be based on their ability, depending on their district.
00:29:15
Speaker
Before I go too far on that, I do want to talk about specifically, John, your upcoming book.
00:29:21
Speaker
which I think that for many might be viewed with skepticism, depending on their background, which is give children the vote, how to democratize democracy, which basically suggests expanding the right to vote to children.
00:29:34
Speaker
Could you talk a little bit about that idea and how you kind of came to that and what that would mean for society?
00:29:40
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:29:40
Speaker
Yes.
00:29:40
Speaker
Well, it always meets with skepticism.
00:29:43
Speaker
Although I have to say I'm part of another group, a group that is called the Children's Voting Colloquium.
00:29:50
Speaker
And this is academics and activists around the world, including children and youth themselves, who are working, who discovered each other working on this issue.
00:29:59
Speaker
I've been writing about this for about a decade now.
00:30:02
Speaker
I mean, my essential argument is that excluding children from the vote is actually... Well, the problem with children in voting is not with children, but with democracy.
00:30:14
Speaker
So democracy is meant to be a system in which all the people's experience holds power or where the people rule, rule by the people.
00:30:24
Speaker
So...
00:30:27
Speaker
Just as in over time, democracies have actually changed quite radically.
00:30:32
Speaker
When the U.S. was founded, it was only about 6% of the population who had the vote, and this was wealthy, landowning white men.
00:30:41
Speaker
And as other groups like poor men got the vote, it changed what voting was and how democracy was thought about.
00:30:48
Speaker
And as women got the vote, it changed it again.
00:30:51
Speaker
Well, now, for about 100 years, the idea has been only adults can vote.
00:30:56
Speaker
And that's because supposedly only adults have the competence to do so.
00:31:00
Speaker
So I made basically two arguments.
00:31:02
Speaker
One is that
00:31:03
Speaker
The competence to vote is actually not the same as the competence to do things like marry or drive a car or things of that nature.
00:31:10
Speaker
It's much more like the competence to have freedom of speech, which children have in general.
00:31:18
Speaker
You have to be able to understand your own experiences as a political being, and children are political beings.
00:31:24
Speaker
They are impacted by decisions in politics as much, if not more, than adults.
00:31:29
Speaker
And then you have to be able to apply that to concrete political choices that you're presented with.
00:31:34
Speaker
Should you vote for Trump or Biden?
00:31:36
Speaker
A choice like that.
00:31:38
Speaker
And so on the competency side, children have proven themselves competent in many different ways.
00:31:45
Speaker
Not just Fridays for Future, but as I mentioned before, around the world, children run children's parliaments.
00:31:51
Speaker
They work.
00:31:51
Speaker
They're actively engaged in politics.
00:31:53
Speaker
They always have been actively engaged in politics.
00:31:55
Speaker
They were involved in the civil rights movement, the women's voting rights movement.
00:32:00
Speaker
So there's no age at which you could say suddenly you become competent.
00:32:04
Speaker
And if you exclude people from voting because of their supposed lack of competence, then that's discrimination.
00:32:11
Speaker
It's a double standard.
00:32:13
Speaker
And then, of course, you can start to if you were to apply that standards consistently, you might find a lot of adults were not competent to vote.
00:32:22
Speaker
And so
00:32:23
Speaker
It would be better for democracy.
00:32:25
Speaker
But the other side of the argument is that everybody would be better off if children could vote.
00:32:31
Speaker
So children themselves, this may be a little more obvious, they could have their interests actually represented in government.
00:32:40
Speaker
They would actually have some power to... Well, governments would actually feel they had pressure to respond to children's concerns.
00:32:49
Speaker
For example, when they're developing standardized testing procedures,
00:32:54
Speaker
You know, people in power might have to think twice about just simply imposing them regardless of what anybody really thinks who's going to be affected by them.
00:33:01
Speaker
And then also adults would gain because, for example, teachers would have a much better sense of what children wanted in schools.
00:33:13
Speaker
The policies directing the way they do their jobs, again, like like like testing or funding, for example, for schools would be much more child centered.
00:33:24
Speaker
So again, as with every other group that's come into a democracy, there's always been this argument, no, it's going to dilute democracy and make it worse.
00:33:32
Speaker
But always it's made it better.
00:33:34
Speaker
When women got the vote, that was better for men as well as for women.
00:33:38
Speaker
And the reason is that democracy actually works.
00:33:42
Speaker
It actually is a system that by collecting the more diverse voices you collect in making political decisions, the better the decisions on the whole are going to be.
00:33:52
Speaker
So that's, that's my argument.
00:33:54
Speaker
I, of course, I run into all kinds of objections.
00:33:57
Speaker
I've, you know, I've written a lot about it.
00:33:59
Speaker
I've engaged in a lot of conversations about it.
00:34:02
Speaker
And, and I honestly just have never found an objection that actually stands up.
00:34:08
Speaker
It's always comes down for me to kind of the same kind of prejudices that men had about women and rich men had about poor men and
00:34:17
Speaker
you know, non-aristocrats head about non-aristocrats.
00:34:21
Speaker
Speaking as someone who
00:34:23
Speaker
formally was a civics teacher.
00:34:25
Speaker
The implications of being able to actually have students in the classroom go out and vote after taking your class or during your class alone, to me, makes it worth it.
00:34:36
Speaker
I think that there's an easy argument to be made that because of the way we teach civics in school, by the time someone's 20 years old, they might not really understand the process anymore.
00:34:46
Speaker
They might not go out and vote.
00:34:47
Speaker
I think in 20...
00:34:48
Speaker
20, I think it was like 55% of young people 18 to 24 voted, which is insane.
00:34:54
Speaker
That's such a low number.
00:34:57
Speaker
Young people are taught right away that their voice doesn't count.
00:35:01
Speaker
They can have a civics class in which they learn about what adults do and what they will themselves do when they're adults.
00:35:08
Speaker
But the clear implication is you yourself don't have any, we don't trust you to be involved in this process.
00:35:16
Speaker
And that's, I think, why we have such low, in most societies, the young adults have lower rates of voting than older adults.
00:35:25
Speaker
You have to kind of get used to the idea that, oh, you know, I actually do count around here.
00:35:30
Speaker
But I think you would have a stronger democracy if people actually grew up thinking they were part of it and deserved to be heard.
00:35:40
Speaker
I also made the argument in my book that the ways in which democracies are currently sliding into autocratic and authoritarian types of regimes, and this is a worldwide phenomenon.
00:35:52
Speaker
Most of the largest democracies in the world are actually run by fairly authoritarian leaders.
00:35:58
Speaker
And we still have Trump here, so we still have that in even our own country.
00:36:03
Speaker
People have been taught from a young age that what is democracy?
00:36:07
Speaker
Well, it's what people more powerful than you do.
00:36:10
Speaker
And we need to trust our betters to leaders because we don't actually know anything about it.
00:36:15
Speaker
And learning that in your formative years is
00:36:19
Speaker
is probably the worst thing that could happen for a democracy.
00:36:23
Speaker
And we have, you know, it's like we're discussing this at a moment where, you know, those children who don't have voting rights, they are taking up civil disobedience to make their point and be heard.
00:36:36
Speaker
And I mean, the world has never seen a generation that went into sort of civil disobedience before they started voting, you know, but they're finding their ways around it to be heard.
00:36:46
Speaker
And,
Childism's Potential to Enrich Democracy
00:36:47
Speaker
you know,
00:36:47
Speaker
and also in very powerful ways.
00:36:53
Speaker
And they're making very grounded arguments.
00:36:57
Speaker
It's great to see that.
00:36:58
Speaker
And they're impacting the political priorities in very effective ways.
00:37:09
Speaker
So they could be voting.
00:37:12
Speaker
Well, the climate crisis is a really good example of how having children's voices actually improves the conversation.
00:37:20
Speaker
Because until Greta Thunberg and the Fridays for Future movement came along, most adults didn't really think about the fact that young people are going to face these consequences of climate change much more dramatically and in a very much very real way.
00:37:35
Speaker
Whereas, you know, someone who's in their 60s is probably not going to really be that affected by it.
00:37:40
Speaker
So they're not going to be that involved.
00:37:44
Speaker
But I actually have a I also in my book have a more concrete proposal, which I call proxy claim voting.
00:37:51
Speaker
So I use this childish idea to say that extending the vote to children, again, just like historically, doesn't just mean giving children the same vote that adults now have.
00:38:01
Speaker
It actually means reconceptualizing democracy and practicing it in a different way.
00:38:06
Speaker
And that's always happened.
00:38:07
Speaker
Every time someone else got the vote, things changed ideally and in reality what people did to vote.
00:38:15
Speaker
And so the proxy claim vote is an attempt to think about democracy in an interdependent rather than independent way.
00:38:22
Speaker
So it's not just individuals saying what they think.
00:38:24
Speaker
It's acting interdependently in relation to each other.
00:38:29
Speaker
And my argument is that every human should have a proxy vote from birth to death that's exercised by their closest guardian or what have you.
00:38:40
Speaker
And this could be a newborn child.
00:38:42
Speaker
It could be a young child.
00:38:44
Speaker
It could be an adult who has dementia.
00:38:47
Speaker
10% of adults have severe cognitive disabilities.
00:38:52
Speaker
In fact, adults in the U.S. with dementia do have this already because an adult caretaker can fill in their needs.
00:39:00
Speaker
Adults with severe mental illness, someone who's just in hospital for a while or overseas deployed can have a proxy vote.
00:39:06
Speaker
But then the claim side is at any point in your life, regardless of age, gender, sexuality, race, or anything, you can claim your own vote to exercise on your own behalf.
00:39:18
Speaker
And so it would be ageless voting that would be eliminating that final barrier of age.
00:39:24
Speaker
You know, so if you want to vote when you're nine and you're really passionate about gun control or something, then...
00:39:30
Speaker
that itself proves that you're ready to vote.
00:39:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:34
Speaker
I mean, I think it's a fantastic proposal.
00:39:36
Speaker
I really like the idea, especially since, at least in my experience, young people, because they haven't experienced neoliberal society for as long, tend to be less cynical.
00:39:47
Speaker
And we see a lot of powerful movements and really the change that we want to see in the world come from people, you know, that are adolescents or children or
00:39:56
Speaker
young adults, as opposed to people that are teachers ages.
00:40:01
Speaker
We might help them along the way, but honestly, that change is typically led, that social change is typically led our youth.
00:40:07
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:40:08
Speaker
And they have lots of experiences that adults need to hear about and learn about and perspectives.
00:40:13
Speaker
And of course, children are diverse.
00:40:15
Speaker
So there's many different ones, but yes, it would greatly enrich the conversation in a democracy.
00:40:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:25
Speaker
Thank you again for listening to Human Restoration Project's podcast.
00:40:28
Speaker
I hope this conversation leaves you inspired and ready to push the progressive envelope of education.
00:40:32
Speaker
You can learn more about progressive education, support our cause, and stay tuned to this podcast and other updates on our website at humanrestorationproject.org.