Let's Talk about ADULTISM

 First heard this word on Nigeria Info an interactive radio station here in Nigeria,didn't pay attention to know what it was all about. But I had an experience yesterday which led me to write this piece.
Here in Nigeria,because we young people are expected to respect our elders,the word respect has been abused if not taken advantage of by the elders(pardon my language).an Elders would rather command you to do something for him or her rather than say please,they insult you at any slightest provocation rather than correct you and a whole lot more.
Adultism could be referred to all those behaviors and attitudes which flow from the assumption that adults are better than young people and entitled to act upon young people in a myriad of ways without their agreement.”
If we are to be successful in our work with young people, we have to tackle the pervasive existence of adultism.

- John Bell, Co-founder of YouthBuild, USA

Adultism could also be defined as "the power adults have over children". More narrowly, 'adultism is prejudice and accompanying systematic discrimination against young people'
we tend to experience this one way or the other,either in our families,work, even in our society.
The Academy for Educational Development’s Center for Youth Development and Policy Research USA has assembled a basic primer that outlines some of the ways in which we understand adultism.

There are several basic assumptions that underlie adultism:

Youth are troublesome and hence adults need to deter and correct youth’s problems and stop youth from “acting out”
Youth are poor investments because they offer little to society
Youth do not desire to become contributing members of society
Youth do not care about their community
These assumptions have several effects on society:

We hold lower expectations for youth and expect them to fail or just subsist
We fail to provide youth with the resources and opportunities to participate
We fail to empower youth to make full use of their skills
Adultism can take several forms, independently or all at once, which are important to recognize as we try to achieve a positive developmental environment for youth. That is to say that in order to encourage youth we need to make sure that we are not subconsciously or overtly suppressing youth.

To combat all forms of adultism, youth workers and e-mentors can adopt a set of alternate “caring behaviors” which mitigate the impact of adultism in their interactions with youth.
For more info log on to www.hopeworks.com