i've run across some kinda idea here recently, and, i'm absolutly sure just about everyone's covered it in some form or another, but, eh, it's like, time for my 2 cents

... for those of us interested in youth rights, the biggest hurdle we have to come over is adults and parents wanting to place their own restrictions on kids.

you see, they claim that we've built up an imiage, or ideal of a child ... and that we've sexualized them through this ideal we supposedly have in our heads.

i think they've turned this into a monsterous lie, for many of us peds. many of us have not done this, and see children more as themselvs, how they are, than how we'd like them to be.

but anti's havnt--THEY too have idealized children. ... think about the way's the do it. they keep sending kids messages, backing the way they WANt kids to be, but not the way kids actually ARE.

public school--great example, here... in public school, the society at large pushes the 'ideal child' image on children. they should shut up, sit still, dont question authority (i sure remember getting punished for correcting teachers in class)--no sex education. they're teaching kids .. not according to how kids ARE, or how kids learn best.. but how they think children OUGHT to be--not heard, not seen, not active, follwers, and asexual.

same way with parents... they raise children the way they want them .. they way they have always thought children have been and should be.

why do schools and parents push these idealized virtues on their children? why do they try and create, by force, the child they think they should have? ..

because that's all they've ever learned. in essance, they're ignorant. in another way, they're only doing what they think is best.

now, this ideal is what anyone for youth rights has to dis-assemble.

i'm not sure how this should or can be done. the ideal always changes. different in different cultures. children are bombarded with messages telling them how they ought to be, and how they ought to act--so, even haivng THEM realize, and find out what they REALLY are at the core of their own being could take some work (just, make them shed some of the BS layers of fakeness schools are parents have put on them)

perhaps this should be incorporated into the idea of fighting mono-culture, like the US.

in any case, was just an interesting thought to me, which had become more concrete in recent days...

FREE THE CHILDREN!

~M~