Adultism, the systemic discrimination of youth, is the idea that children are oppressed by adults. It is similar to racism, in that one group of people discriminates against another group. Rather than recognizing the natural parent-child relationship, the belief in adultism demands children to be viewed as equals to adults and any effort that disempowers a child is oppressive. This undermining of natural family hierarchy is part of a program sponsored by Grand Haven Area Public Schools (GHAPS) and offered to homeschooling families.
In the summer of 2022, the GHAPS board and administration began offering a program for homeschooling families. When students register for this program, GHAPS receives a portion of school funding from the State of Michigan. Children registered for this program can take on-line art, music, and physical education courses, and can receive money to take recreational classes at community organizations through the Community Partnerships program. Current community partners include organizations such as Outdoor Discover Center, Firehouse Guitars, Music Everyday and Blue Bridge School.
Since COVID began, the number of children being homeschooled in America has exploded. What’s interesting about homeschooling is that families are free to tailor the education to meet the specific needs of their children. They can draw from a wide variety of educational philosophies and select any resources or curriculum that they believe will benefit their children. There are many different methods of homeschooling children such as unit studies, classical, Montessori, and self-directed education.
It is the self-directed form of education that is being co-opted and reformed to incorporate the idea of adultism. John Holt is the father of self-directed education, also known as unschooling or interest-based education. He was an elementary school teacher who studied the way children learn. He keyed into the fact that children are naturally curious and self-motivated to learn about the world around them. Children who are educated by unschooling set their own educational path. There is no set curriculum and learning is seen as an extension of life. Throughout the educational years, parents may choose to expose children to a variety of activities and encourage them to continue with activities the kids find interesting, but expectations are ultimately set by the children. One can easily see how this method of education can be highly motivational for children, but can also be detrimental depending on how it is implemented.
Through the GHAPS homeschool education program, the Blue Bridge School offers Flying Squads which is a field trip program that believes in the liberation of children, youth activism, and collectivism. Strangely, parents must get their children’s consent before participating. According to their website, “unlike school field trips, the Flying Squads do not have a predetermined destination, but instead practice the crucial skills of deciding together where to go and how to spend their time.” Furthermore, they “explore common interests as a collective, experimenting on how to build community and deciding how to voice group concerns on the social justice issue of being youth in a city built for adults.” As the literature below shows, Flying Squads is literally introducing young, impressionable minds to activism.
On the Blue Bridge School resource page, there are links to Decolonizing School, Decolonizing education, and the Alliance for Self-Directed Education. The Tipping Points Magazine on the Alliance for Self-Directed Education instructs parents on how to oppose adultism, “the systemic discrimination of youth”.
The Alliance for Self-Directed Education Tipping Points Magazine also has an article on the Children’s Civil Rights Movement.
Parents that view public school as a toxic or unproductive environment for children may be drawn to this as it offers a unique alternative to traditional schools. As parents, we want our children to grow to be independent thinkers. While this approach suggests it provides a path for children to become independent thinkers, in actuality it is substituting critical theory for critical thinking in a manner that is not easily identifiable as being a vehicle for indoctrination. This Community Partnership program for homeschooling families is a clever way to implement an extreme ideology.
This usurped form of unschooling pretends to encourage children to become independent thinkers while it slowly impresses upon them that in order for them to become independent thinkers, they must separate themselves from their parents' viewpoints in favor of a social justice inspired collective. If you are considering enrolling your kids in Flying Squads, please be sure to ask the teachers what it means to support our young people on their path to liberation.