In early November, NYRA’s project, the Community Alliance for the Ethical Treatment of Youth were invited to speak at the North Carolina conference of the Independent Educational Consultants Association (IECA). IECA is a trade organization representing educational consultants, many of whom refer parents (and their teens) to abusive behavior modification programs. These referrals constitute a…
So I came across this little gem while skimming through my Twitter feed, from user @youthvoices, a young girl’s blog post on their site: Why do teenagers rush to be adults? Well I came up with this question because me and my mom were talking about it. In a movie it would show a girl…
It is not often a political candidate comes along who challenges the norm; politics in general is a fairly routine affair. Then there is Brett McClafferty. At the age of 19, he ran for mayor of the city of Streetsboro, Ohio. After the election – an election he lost by a single vote – the…
Content warning: this article discusses murder, racism and antisemitism. Our country is shaken up today and trying to find answers, one day after the horrifying shooting at the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC by a racist, anti-semitic extremist, killing an innocent security guard named Stephen Johns, and it happened not two weeks after…
A number of news stories have come out lately about concerned groups seeking to ban books they find objectionable or inappropriate for kids, for a variety of reasons. One group in Wisconsin successfully got several teen books banned for depicting homosexuality. In Tennessee, some parents are trying to get books removed from library shelves for…
I’m going to ask a question that is often asked in regards to issues with youth: where are the parents? Of course, this question is always asked with very different meanings. Just today, two sources have inspired me to ask this question. The first was this blog post by a feminist blogger I’ve been following…
The Florida Commission on Human Relations is holding a contest inviting high school students in Florida to submit 25-second public service announcements about discrimination. The winning PSAs will be used to raise awareness of discrimination in Florida, and the winners will receive media attention. The public service announcements can be about age discrimination, so this…
There’s a disturbing pattern in the anti-drug ads appearing on TV and radio and other media. A boy is apparently traumatized after looking into his sister’s room while she is smoking a joint. A 14-year-old is stealing his grandmother’s prescription medications. Parents boast about how they do not trust anything their teens say and regularly…
As part of the lengthy, ongoing debate about the voting age on Facebook in response to NYRA-Southeast Florida’s awesome voting age ad, one person (trying to sound much smarter than he is) posted something about women & youth. While this isn’t the best articulated version of this argument it is one that we get quite…
Someone on Yahoo Answers recently asked a question to the effect of, “Do you consider 16-year-olds to be adults?” As of this writing, I’ve not been able to get my rather lengthy response through Yahoo’s wall of technological uselessness to actually post it, but I was rather pleased with myself, and Alex agreed, so I…
