History of youth rights in the United States
Encyclopedia
First emerging as a distinct movement in the 1930s, the history of youth rights
in the United States has long been concerned with civil rights
and intergenerational equity
. Tracing its roots to youth activists
during the Great Depression
, youth rights has influenced the civil rights movement
, opposition to the Vietnam War
, and many other movements. Since the advent of the Internet
youth rights is gaining predominance again.
, and were furthered greatly when young people across the country banded together to form the American Youth Congress
. Concerned with many issues of the times
, this organization went so far as to present a Declaration of the Rights of American Youth to the U.S. Congress. The group was so successful that its executive director claimed that it was "a sort of a student brain of the New Deal
." While their campaigns led to the development of the National Youth Administration
in the late 1930s, it was stopped cold in the 1940s as the group was labeled communist by Joseph McCarthy
.
cases, with the majority opinions authored by Justice Abe Fortas
were decided in favor of youths' rights. One was Tinker v. Des Moines that established free speech in public schools, and the other was In re Gault
, that gave due process
rights in juvenile court
proceedings.
The movement emerged again in the early 1960s with the arrival of Students for a Democratic Society
and Youth Liberation of Ann Arbor
. The effect of the movement on the national Vietnam anti-war movement is widely acknowledged, particularly for its emphasis on youth empowerment
through activism
. According to Keith Hefner
, a leader of Youth Liberation, "Bob Moses
, a leader of Freedom Summer
in 1964 who now runs the Algebra Project
, and Bill Ayers
of the Weather Underground who now teaches and writes about youth, are only two of the thousands of 1960s activists who turned their idealism and passion to youth..."
Other successes of the movement such as lowering the voting age
to 18 in 1971, and the lowering of other age restrictions on the state level such as lowering the drinking age occurred in the early to mid 70s. The first recorded instance of a high school student campaigning to join a local school board happened in Ann Arbor
Michigan
as Sonia Yaco
, a youth activist associated with Youth Liberation of Ann Arbor
, ran as the Human Rights Party candidate. Despite a court challenge hindering her ability to be listed on the ballot, Yaco gained 1,300 votes in the primary.
In 1974, the movement was first defined explicitly in print with the publication of Escape From Childhood
by John Holt
, in which Holt espoused that,
Later in that year another youth rights-focused book, "Birthrights" by Richard Farson
, was published. During the rest of the 1970s
and early 1980s
, youth rights faced a backlash, succumbing to the more protectionist-oriented and well-established children's rights movement
.
In March 1986 the National Child Rights Alliance was founded by seven youth and adults who had been abused and neglected as children. The organization started its life as a children's rights group concerned with protecting children from abuse, but as it grew and evolved it began addressing issues in a more youth rights framework, passing a Youth Bill of Rights in 1989 The organization disbanded in 1999 due to funding issues.
. This reborn Youth Rights movement coalesced in 1996 into Americans for a Society Free from Age Restrictions (ASFAR). Divisions soon emerged between radicals and moderates within ASFAR leading to the formation in 1998 of the National Youth Rights Association
(NYRA). NYRA, founded by leaders of ASFAR and YouthSpeak, was founded to professionalize the youth rights movement.
Today, the youth rights movement has become a broad-based movement, with central leadership from NYRA augmented by grassroots
organizations around the world. NYRA's executive director, Alex Koroknay-Palicz
, is a visible figure throughout the movement, making regular appearances in mainstream media.
Organizations such as The Freechild Project and Global Youth Action Network
position the youth rights movement within the sphere of international youth activism
and youth voice
movements. Other organizations, including Oblivion and Peacefire
provide support for the youth rights movement, as well.
The 1990s-2000s also saw a resurgence in youth rights books. Two books important for the movement, The Scapegoat Generation and Framing Youth from the late 90s by Mike Males lay out the case that young people have been unfairly blamed for the ills of society and used as a convenient scapegoat. Males describes the attack on youth as a "national pathology, unwarranted by fact, smokescreen for the failure of adulthood and its leadership to confront larger predicaments." Later, in 2007, Robert Epstein
published the most comprehensive book for youth rights since the 1970s with The Case Against Adolescence. The book was described by Albert Ellis as "one of the most revolutionary books I have ever read."
Youth rights
Youth rights refers to a set of philosophies intended to enhance civil rights for young people. They are a response to the oppression of young people, with advocates challenging ephebiphobia, adultism and ageism through youth participation, youth/adult partnerships, and promoting, ultimately,...
in the United States has long been concerned with civil rights
Civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...
and intergenerational equity
Intergenerational equity
Intergenerational equity in economic, psychological, and sociological contexts, is the concept or idea of fairness or justice in relationships between children, youth, adults and seniors, particularly in terms of treatment and interactions. It has been studied in environmental and sociological...
. Tracing its roots to youth activists
Youth activism
Youth activism is when the youth voice is engaged in community organizing for social change. Around the world, young people are engaged in activism as planners, researchers, teachers, evaluators, social workers, decision-makers, advocates and leading actors in the environmental movement, social...
during the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
, youth rights has influenced the civil rights movement
Civil rights movement
The civil rights movement was a worldwide political movement for equality before the law occurring between approximately 1950 and 1980. In many situations it took the form of campaigns of civil resistance aimed at achieving change by nonviolent forms of resistance. In some situations it was...
, opposition to the Vietnam War
Opposition to the Vietnam War
The movement against US involvment in the in Vietnam War began in the United States with demonstrations in 1964 and grew in strength in later years. The US became polarized between those who advocated continued involvement in Vietnam, and those who wanted peace. Peace movements consisted largely of...
, and many other movements. Since the advent of the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
youth rights is gaining predominance again.
1930s-1950s
Youth rights first emerged as a distinct issue in the 1930. The Great Depression kick started the radicalization and politicization of undergraduates for the first time. Youth Rights first began to emerge through the National Student LeagueNational Student League
The National Student League was a Communist led organization of college and high school students in the United States.-Origins:The organizations founding came about as a result of a case of censorship on the campus of the City College of New York in 1931. The Social Problems Club had begun...
, and were furthered greatly when young people across the country banded together to form the American Youth Congress
American Youth Congress
American Youth Congress was an early youth voice organization composed of youth from all across the country to discuss the problems facing youth as a whole in the 1930s. It met several years in a row - one year it notably met on the lawn of the White House. The delegates are known to have caused...
. Concerned with many issues of the times
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
, this organization went so far as to present a Declaration of the Rights of American Youth to the U.S. Congress. The group was so successful that its executive director claimed that it was "a sort of a student brain of the New Deal
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call...
." While their campaigns led to the development of the National Youth Administration
National Youth Administration
The National Youth Administration was a New Deal agency in the United States that focused on providing work and education for Americans between the ages of 16 and 24. It operated from 1935 to 1939 as part of the Works Progress Administration . Following the passage of the Reorganization Act of...
in the late 1930s, it was stopped cold in the 1940s as the group was labeled communist by Joseph McCarthy
Joseph McCarthy
Joseph Raymond "Joe" McCarthy was an American politician who served as a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957...
.
1960s-1980s
In the 1960s, two landmark U.S. Supreme CourtSupreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
cases, with the majority opinions authored by Justice Abe Fortas
Abe Fortas
Abraham Fortas was a U.S. Supreme Court associate justice from 1965 to 1969. Originally from Tennessee, Fortas became a law professor at Yale, and subsequently advised the Securities and Exchange Commission. He then worked at the Interior Department under Franklin D...
were decided in favor of youths' rights. One was Tinker v. Des Moines that established free speech in public schools, and the other was In re Gault
In Re Gault
In re Gault, 387 U.S. 1 , was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that held that juveniles accused of crimes in a delinquency proceeding must be afforded many of the same due process rights as adults, such as the right to timely notification of the charges, the right to confront witnesses, the...
, that gave due process
Due process
Due process is the legal code that the state must venerate all of the legal rights that are owed to a person under the principle. Due process balances the power of the state law of the land and thus protects individual persons from it...
rights in juvenile court
Juvenile court
A juvenile court is a tribunal having special authority to try and pass judgments for crimes committed by children or adolescents who have not attained the age of majority...
proceedings.
The movement emerged again in the early 1960s with the arrival of Students for a Democratic Society
Students for a Democratic Society (1960 organization)
Students for a Democratic Society was a student activist movement in the United States that was one of the main iconic representations of the country's New Left. The organization developed and expanded rapidly in the mid-1960s before dissolving at its last convention in 1969...
and Youth Liberation of Ann Arbor
Youth Liberation of Ann Arbor
Youth Liberation of Ann Arbor was an organization based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It existed from 1970 to 1979, and is often cited in more recent academic literature as one of the leading forerunners of several youth movements in the United States, including the youth rights movement, youth voice...
. The effect of the movement on the national Vietnam anti-war movement is widely acknowledged, particularly for its emphasis on youth empowerment
Youth empowerment
Youth empowerment is an attitudinal, structural, and cultural process whereby young people gain the ability, authority, and agency to make decisions and implement change in their own lives and the lives of other people, including youth and adults....
through activism
Activism
Activism consists of intentional efforts to bring about social, political, economic, or environmental change. Activism can take a wide range of forms from writing letters to newspapers or politicians, political campaigning, economic activism such as boycotts or preferentially patronizing...
. According to Keith Hefner
Keith Hefner (activist)
Keith Hefner is the founder and Executive Director of Youth Communication, an influential nonprofit organization publishing magazines and books by and for youth. The magazines are New Youth Connections, written by New York City teens, and Represent, by and for foster youth...
, a leader of Youth Liberation, "Bob Moses
Robert Parris Moses
Robert Parris Moses is an American, Harvard-trained educator who was a leader in the 1960s Civil Rights Movement and later founded the nationwide U.S. Algebra project.-Biography:...
, a leader of Freedom Summer
Freedom Summer
Freedom Summer was a campaign in the United States launched in June 1964 to attempt to register as many African American voters as possible in Mississippi which had historically excluded most blacks from voting...
in 1964 who now runs the Algebra Project
Algebra Project
The Algebra Project is a national U.S. mathematics literacy effort aimed at helping low-income students and students of color successfully achieve mathematical skills that are a prerequisite for a college preparatory mathematics sequence in high school...
, and Bill Ayers
Bill Ayers
William Charles "Bill" Ayers is an American elementary education theorist and a former leader in the movement that opposed U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. He is known for his 1960s activism as well as his current work in education reform, curriculum, and instruction...
of the Weather Underground who now teaches and writes about youth, are only two of the thousands of 1960s activists who turned their idealism and passion to youth..."
Other successes of the movement such as lowering the voting age
Voting age
A voting age is a minimum age established by law that a person must attain to be eligible to vote in a public election.The vast majority of countries in the world have established a voting age. Most governments consider that those of any age lower than the chosen threshold lack the necessary...
to 18 in 1971, and the lowering of other age restrictions on the state level such as lowering the drinking age occurred in the early to mid 70s. The first recorded instance of a high school student campaigning to join a local school board happened in Ann Arbor
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Ann Arbor is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan and the county seat of Washtenaw County. The 2010 census places the population at 113,934, making it the sixth largest city in Michigan. The Ann Arbor Metropolitan Statistical Area had a population of 344,791 as of 2010...
Michigan
Michigan
Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
as Sonia Yaco
Sonia Yaco
Sonia Yaco was the 1972 Human Rights Party candidate for the Ann Arbor, Michigan school board. When she ran for office at the age of fifteen, she became the youngest documented candidate ever for a publicly elected school board seat in the United States....
, a youth activist associated with Youth Liberation of Ann Arbor
Youth Liberation of Ann Arbor
Youth Liberation of Ann Arbor was an organization based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It existed from 1970 to 1979, and is often cited in more recent academic literature as one of the leading forerunners of several youth movements in the United States, including the youth rights movement, youth voice...
, ran as the Human Rights Party candidate. Despite a court challenge hindering her ability to be listed on the ballot, Yaco gained 1,300 votes in the primary.
In 1974, the movement was first defined explicitly in print with the publication of Escape From Childhood
Escape From Childhood
Escape from Childhood: The Needs and Rights of Children is a book by John Caldwell Holt. ISBN 978-0345244345For most of John Holt’s career as an author he wrote primarily about schooling...
by John Holt
John Caldwell Holt
John Caldwell Holt was an American author and educator, a proponent of homeschooling, and a pioneer in youth rights theory.-Biography:...
, in which Holt espoused that,
- ...[T]he rights, privileges, duties of adult citizens be made available to any young person, of whatever age, who wants to make use of them.
Later in that year another youth rights-focused book, "Birthrights" by Richard Farson
Richard Farson
Richard Farson Ph.D., is a psychologist, author, and educator. He is the president and chief executive officer of the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute, which he co-founded in 1958 with physicist Paul Lloyd and social psychologist Wayman Crow.The non-profit WBSI explores ways in which human...
, was published. During the rest of the 1970s
1970s
File:1970s decade montage.png|From left, clockwise: US President Richard Nixon doing the V for Victory sign after his resignation from office after the Watergate scandal in 1974; Refugees aboard a US naval boat after the Fall of Saigon, leading to the end of the Vietnam War in 1975; The 1973 oil...
and early 1980s
1980s
File:1980s decade montage.png|thumb|400px|From left, clockwise: The first Space Shuttle, Columbia, lifted off in 1981; American President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev eased tensions between the two superpowers, leading to the end of the Cold War; The Fall of the Berlin Wall in...
, youth rights faced a backlash, succumbing to the more protectionist-oriented and well-established children's rights movement
Children's rights movement
The Children's Rights Movement is a historical and modern movement committed to the acknowledgment, expansion, and/or regression of the rights of children around the world...
.
In March 1986 the National Child Rights Alliance was founded by seven youth and adults who had been abused and neglected as children. The organization started its life as a children's rights group concerned with protecting children from abuse, but as it grew and evolved it began addressing issues in a more youth rights framework, passing a Youth Bill of Rights in 1989 The organization disbanded in 1999 due to funding issues.
1990s-present
In the mid-1990s, a youth led movement for self-determination rights began on the InternetInternet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
. This reborn Youth Rights movement coalesced in 1996 into Americans for a Society Free from Age Restrictions (ASFAR). Divisions soon emerged between radicals and moderates within ASFAR leading to the formation in 1998 of the National Youth Rights Association
National Youth Rights Association
The National Youth Rights Association is the largest youth-led civil rights organization in the United States promoting youth rights, with approximately ten thousand members...
(NYRA). NYRA, founded by leaders of ASFAR and YouthSpeak, was founded to professionalize the youth rights movement.
Today, the youth rights movement has become a broad-based movement, with central leadership from NYRA augmented by grassroots
Grassroots
A grassroots movement is one driven by the politics of a community. The term implies that the creation of the movement and the group supporting it are natural and spontaneous, highlighting the differences between this and a movement that is orchestrated by traditional power structures...
organizations around the world. NYRA's executive director, Alex Koroknay-Palicz
Alex Koroknay-Palicz
Alex Koroknay-Palicz is an American activist in Washington, D.C. He is currently the executive director of the National Youth Rights Association.-Biography:Koroknay-Palicz was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan and grew up in Holland, Michigan...
, is a visible figure throughout the movement, making regular appearances in mainstream media.
Organizations such as The Freechild Project and Global Youth Action Network
Global Youth Action Network
The Global Youth Action Network is an international network of youth NGOs spanning 180 countries, and headquartered in New York, near the United Nations. GYAN is a youth-led not for profit organization that incubates global partnerships and increases youth participation in decision-making...
position the youth rights movement within the sphere of international youth activism
Youth activism
Youth activism is when the youth voice is engaged in community organizing for social change. Around the world, young people are engaged in activism as planners, researchers, teachers, evaluators, social workers, decision-makers, advocates and leading actors in the environmental movement, social...
and youth voice
Youth voice
Youth voice refers to the distinct ideas, opinions, attitudes, knowledge, and actions of young people as a collective body. The term youth voice often groups together a diversity of perspectives and experiences, regardless of backgrounds, identities, and cultural differences...
movements. Other organizations, including Oblivion and Peacefire
Peacefire
Peacefire is a U.S.-based website, with a registered address in Bellevue, Washington, dedicated to "preserving First Amendment rights for Internet users, particularly those younger than 18". It was founded in August 1996 by Bennett Haselton, who still runs it...
provide support for the youth rights movement, as well.
The 1990s-2000s also saw a resurgence in youth rights books. Two books important for the movement, The Scapegoat Generation and Framing Youth from the late 90s by Mike Males lay out the case that young people have been unfairly blamed for the ills of society and used as a convenient scapegoat. Males describes the attack on youth as a "national pathology, unwarranted by fact, smokescreen for the failure of adulthood and its leadership to confront larger predicaments." Later, in 2007, Robert Epstein
Robert Epstein
Robert Epstein Ph.D. is an American psychologist, researcher, writer, and media professional whose primary contributions have been in the areas of creativity, artificial intelligence, peace, adolescence, and interpersonal relationships...
published the most comprehensive book for youth rights since the 1970s with The Case Against Adolescence. The book was described by Albert Ellis as "one of the most revolutionary books I have ever read."