Crushing US Youth Resistance (Blog post #2)

In the article "8 Reasons Young Americans Don't Fight Back: How the US Crushed Youth Resistance" the author talks about how the youth of America used to be the main driving factor behind many of the revolutions our history has experienced, and how the youth now is suppressed and won't fight back against anything. I somewhat agree with this ideology. The author makes many great points including the point about Student Loan Debt. Being in a somewhat large amount of debt myself, it is easy to see how the youth feels this can hold them back. I agree that it is ridiculous for me to be paying Social Security taxes from every paycheck from my job, but should I speak out about it, or try to resist that payment, I would lose my job and ultimately be unable to pay my debt off. With that thought looming over my head, I find myself just keeping quiet, and secretly resenting the whole situation. How can we fight for what is right when our livelihood is on the line?

Now here is where I veer a little bit off from agreeing with the author. Being an Elementary Education major, and planning to teach children in a school setting for the rest of my career, I have a hard time seeing how schooling pays homage to this subduing of resistance. The author, Bruce Levine, makes a solid point, were it not in a school context. He says that:

"The truth is that schools don’t really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands of humane, caring people work in schools as teachers and aides and administrators, but the abstract logic of the institution overwhelms their individual contributions."

Out of context, out in this crazy work-a-day world we live in, that would sound like a terrible way to live , obeying orders, and not really learning anything but to follow rules. However, in a classroom setting, this is essential to learning. Imagine this: You are a teacher in a classroom full of 24 eight-year-olds, and you tell them "Hey kids, learn however you want to, I won't tell you what or how to learn and I certainly won't make you follow my rules in this classroom." Do you think the students will sit down and learn how to add and subtract fractions by themselves? Or learn how to read and know what contractions are without them being first taught about it? I have spent enough time with students to confidently say, no, they will not. In order to catch and gain their attention, they must be taught to listen to your rules, and behave in a fashion conducive to learning. This is not to say that some teachers abuse this power and make rules just to make the children comply to them, but I would have to disagree overall that school is actually suppressing America's youth.

Enough of the teacher rant, but that one hit a little close to home. Going on, Levine remarks that their is an increasing amount of children being prescribed drugs to settle them down from their so called "rambunctious actions." I agree with Levine here. I think many teachers/parents make snap decisions about young children when talking about ADD or ODD symptoms. By giving a student Ritalin who doesn't really need it, you are messing with their natural ability to focus on what's important and how they would normally react to information.

Levine goes on to talk about how technology is holding back today's youth. Television is one the main reasons  America is suppressing it's youth Levine writes. American children "average 8 hours a day watching tv, playing video games, listening to iPods, and other various technologies. If you're stuck at home, glued to your tv, how can you possibly be out in the real world tackling real life problems? America is being shut down by our advancing technological world.

While reading this article, I thought of a few other things that suppress an American's ability to come together and fight against what they feel is unjust.

1. Parents holding their kids back. This sounds a little cheesy, but children don't generally want to do anything to anger their parents, or worse (and everyone knows what I'm talking about here) "disappoint" them. As such, if a person was inclined to go publicly protest against something they felt needed to be fought against, and their parents disproved of it, that person is less likely now to go out and do so, for fear of "dishonoring" their family and going against their wishes. 
2. Another reason American Youths are being suppressed is this idea of waiting for someone to follow to fight the cause. There may be many who wish to change what they're seeing in today's world, but until they have their Rosa Parks to spark the fire, these potential revolutionists will sit back and wait. A movement needs an inspirational, charismatic leader to follow, but until it gets that, the movement will lie stagnant.  As John Mayer says, "It's that we don't care, we just know that the fight ain't fair, so we keep on [waiting] on the world to change." I share this mentality, this sense of helplessness. I wish their was a way to fight back, especially against the SS problem, because I think it's completely unfair to take money out of our checks for it, even though we won't be able to use it ourselves, but there isn't anything just one person can do to change things the way they are.
3. People get so caught in their day-to-day that they are often not thinking about anything but getting through their day. Getting so comfortable and complacent with your life leads to a dangerous thing. "It is our routines and our comforts that allow us to ignore social issues. For some of us, it is our privilege to be ignorant," states musician Brett Dennen of his song "Ain't No Reason." In this song, he says "You could spend your whole life working for something, just to have it taken away." It's this mentality that scares people from responding to this world's injustices that we hear about everyday. Furthermore, he says "You don't need a 3 piece suit to argue the truth," which to me epitomizes Fox-Piven's claim that some of the biggest changes in our history were executed by regular people that came together to fight something they knew was wrong.

4. Alongside the debt that many young Americans are accruing during their schooling time, most people don't have the resources to fight against an injustice. Whether it's money, supplies, or even followers, you can't fight for anything without the appropriate resources. Again going back to Fox-Piven, in order to change something, people to come together and fight. There needs to something to unite behind, something to form the group of individuals into a cohesive, singular entity.

These all make me want to believe that by ignoring these factors that I know suppress myself as a youth in America, I can make a difference. However, the reality is that change in this world is unlikely with the way things are. To change, we need plenty of individuals willing to give up everything they know and love for their cause. Until then, I will keep on waiting on the world to change too.