Over on the Freechild Blog, Adam writes about this awesome Gandhi quote, then quickly goes off on a tangent about Laura Bush:

For instance, Mr. Bush’s wife Laura has spent the last two years being concerned about America’s youth. From the beginning, her initiative focused on the problems young people face. In a rather traditional and completely conservative fashion, the program, “Helping America’s Youth”, has identified young people as broken objects in need of being helped, instead of seeing them as complete people who are ready to help others. This type of deficit model is really tricky, primarily because it decieves a large number of adults into justifying their own patriarchial, top-down models of youth development and education.

I agree completely that seeing youth as broken objects that need to be fixed is the problem we are facing. That impression of youth is what we are up against and it can be found in individuals of all political leanings and all positions in society. But since I always think simply agreeing with someone is boring, I’ll look for something I disagree with Adam about instead of all the stuff I agree about.

My central point involves how Adam says we should see youth “as complete people who are ready to help others”. Without question this is a far better view of youth than what he credits Laura Bush as espousing, no debate there. However is it the best possible view of youth?

I see this kind of language thrown around a lot by proto-youth rights people in the “youth voice” or “youth involvement” movements, and it always irks me. Typically I don’t say anything because its better than the alternative, but it being Valentines Day and me being bitter I’m going to speak to it.

I am irked by this drive for community service because at some level it still feels like using youth. Lets expend all our energy on pushing or enabling youth to work for others. Lets get young people to pick up parks, feed homeless people, wash windows, etc. All good things, without question, but if young people spend all their time helping other people, who helps youth?
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