Youth Liberation League

[xcriteria]

I've been thinking about how to get discussion going along somewhat similar lines, though my focus is less directly about the concept of rights, and more about what can be done to help people realize that things can work so much better when young people are granted autonomy, voice, and support, as opposed to coercion.

This can be approached from a few angles:

(1) Finding ways to encourage parents and families in general to improve understanding and communication, and find better ways to do things than coercion and conflict.

(2) Finding ways to promote self-directed education, where learners themselves have choice and space and support to pursue learning and life in ways that work for them.

(3) Encouraging young people to realize the power they do have; much of what gets in the way of youth empowerment is learned helplessness and simply not realizing what they are capable of, even though there are of course other obstacles to autonomy.

As for children's rights in a legal sense, that is also important but it's something that I think will mostly change only after culture changes based on the above 3 items and others.

Overall, for these things and change in general, I think media in various forms (journalism, PSAs, social media, YouTube, television, fiction and nonfiction books, and so on) is one of the best opportunities to change things. Another is simply conversations people can have in their day-to-day lives, even though not every conversation leads to immediate change.

Maybe we could arrange a Skype call sometime; video can always be optional. Facebook chat is another option, quite a few people are on there.