Kids and School, Parents and Activism
By Curtis Cooper at Sep 03, 2010 |
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My kids are going back to school, or in the case of my littlest, starting out for the first time.
While I wish that every child in school was encouraged to grow intellectually and to develop in socially positive ways, that is too often not the case. Turning from the students, school frees up time for parents, guardians, and others involved in raising kids to work, or to engage in other activities as time allows.
A couple of personal and political thoughts as school starts- it’s important for social movements to value children and childraising, and not just in an abstract sense. Young people are an immediate link in the chain to the future we should be struggling to create. Also, parents and others with pressing childcare responsibilities generally welcome support from political allies who are sensitive to their situations.
Cat Stevens’ question from a song of many years ago is apt- I know we’ve come a long way, we’re changing day to day, but tell me, where do the children play?



A very important question
By Barnier, Julien at Sep 05, 2010 00:15 AM
Hi Curtis,
I really agree with your post. I write from another country in another context (from France), but I really think that the place of children is way too small in most of political thoughts and movements. But I really think it is also a sign of the place of children as a social category in general. Sometimes I believe that the domination of adults over children is at some point almost as ignored as the one of men over women maybe a century ago.
School raises several important questions, too. We were very attached to public schools in the beginning, and still are in some way, but finally decided to switch to homeschooling not a long time ago.
So thanks for your blog post, I'm always happy to hear about these questions here. And sorry if my comment is not very clear, it is very late and my english is not very fluent :-)
Julien
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