Adam F.C. Fletcher > Quotes

“It is not enough to simply listen to student voice. Educators have an ethical imperative to do something with students, and that is why meaningful student involvement is vital to school improvement.”
― Adam Fletcher, Meaningful Student Involvement Guide to Students as Partners

“Everyday more educators are showing that they value students by involving them in meaningful ways in school. These teachers and administrators say that it is not about ‘making students happy’ or allowing students to run the school. Their experience shows that when educators partner with students to improve learning, teaching and leadership in schools, school change is positive and effective.”
― Adam Fletcher, Meaningful Student Involvement Guide to Students as Partners

“The single problem plaguing all students in all schools everywhere is the crisis of disconnection. Meaningful Student Involvement happens when the roles of students are actively re-aligned from being the passive recipients of schools to becoming active partners throughout the educational process.”
― Adam Fletcher

“Meaningful student involvement is the process of engaging students as partners in every facet of school change for the purpose strengthening their commitment to education, community & democracy.”
― Adam Fletcher

“Young people everywhere are fighting blatant hatred against them because
of their ages. They are challenging apathy toward them because of their race,
gender, and sexual identities, and making active, engaged, empowered choices to
secure freedom in this generation and beyond. They are doing all of this despite
and because of the oppressive forces they face. They are doing all of this because
of democracy.”
― Adam F.C. Fletcher, Democracy Deficit Disorder: Learning Democracy with Young People

“The adultist political hegemony has forced autocratic homogenization, alienation, and oppression into the hearts, minds, and hands of children and youth everywhere, and it can only be stopped with democracy.”
― Adam F.C. Fletcher, Democracy Deficit Disorder: Learning Democracy with Young People

“Occurring in every situation throughout society—including home, school, the community, government, and elsewhere—the adult fragility that leads to adultism can pummel organizations, institutions, communities, and individuals everywhere.”
― Adam F.C. Fletcher, Democracy Deficit Disorder: Learning Democracy with Young People

“Defeating the values of democratic society, neoliberalism actively teaches young people that their intuition, knowledge, ideas, and actions are wrong. These values, including truth, freedom, fairness and equality, respect for others, the promotion of well-being, and tipping the balance of power and control are not just irrelevant, but are actually seen as negative because they challenge the democracy deficit disorder.”
― Adam F.C. Fletcher, Democracy Deficit Disorder: Learning Democracy with Young People

“Throughout society, adultism is an oppressively nefarious reality facing young people at home, throughout society, across government systems, and beyond.”
― Adam F.C. Fletcher, Democracy Deficit Disorder: Learning Democracy with Young People

“Challenging the ineptitude of adults and common intransigence toward the changing abilities and roles of young people throughout communities requires pushing back against age-based assumptions that have nothing to do with the capacity of learners today.”
― Adam F.C. Fletcher, Democracy Deficit Disorder: Learning Democracy with Young People

“Throughout society, children and youth routinely experience alienation, segregation, and silencing. This discrimination has stifled and damaged democracy for generations. Today, that damage is in hyper speed, with the needs of young people cynically and brutally belittled by adults everywhere, all of the time.”
― Adam F.C. Fletcher, Democracy Deficit Disorder: Learning Democracy with Young People

“Democracy deficit disorder happens when classrooms, programs, roles, and activities actively raise the barriers to sustainably connecting youth with the world around them.”
― Adam F.C. Fletcher, Democracy Deficit Disorder: Learning Democracy with Young People

“It's really seeing student involvement … as a variety of opportunities that are appropriate for each given student and responsive to their individual needs and their desires for their educational experience.”
― Adam Fletcher

“Young people everywhere are fighting blatant hatred against them because of their ages. They are challenging apathy toward them because of their race, gender, and sexual identities, and making active, engaged, empowered choices to secure freedom in this generation and beyond. They are doing all of this despite and because of the oppressive forces they face. They are doing all of this because of democracy.”
― Adam F.C. Fletcher, Democracy Deficit Disorder: Learning Democracy with Young People

“[A]dults today have been enculturated by a society where the language used, the built environment, policy-making, healthcare, school curriculums, afterschool programs, mental health counseling, libraries, and parenting can all invalidate the worth, depth, ideas, knowledge, actions, and opinions of children and youth.”
― Adam F.C. Fletcher, Democracy Deficit Disorder: Learning Democracy with Young People

“The work of meaningful student involvement is not easy or instantly rewarding. It demands that the system of schooling change, and that the attitudes of students, educators, parents and community members change.”
― Adam Fletcher, Meaningful Student Involvement Guide to Students as Partners

“[Y]oung people of all identities and communities worldwide continuously reveal
themselves to be more capable, powerful, active, and progressive than they are
ever given credit for.”
― Adam F.C. Fletcher, Democracy Deficit Disorder: Learning Democracy with Young People

“[Y]oung people of all identities and communities worldwide continuously reveal themselves to be more capable, powerful, active, and progressive than they are ever given credit for.”
― Adam F.C. Fletcher, Democracy Deficit Disorder: Learning Democracy with Young People

“Adultism is bias towards adults, which happens anytime the opinions, ideas, knowledge, beliefs, abilities, attitudes, or cultures of adults are held above those of people who are not considered adults. It is obvious in the language, actions, policies, and many other elements of society which adults use to emphasize their bias toward themselves.”
― Adam F.C. Fletcher, Democracy Deficit Disorder: Learning Democracy with Young People

“Democracy is on the ropes, with double- and triple-blows punching at it from crass consumerism, commonplace fascism and runaway capitalism. All of this leaves young people in the cross-hairs of politicians, executive directors, funders, and evaluators, each of whom is ready and eager to pull the trigger. By doing this, they lay waste to the present as well as the future, sacrificing children and youth to line their own pockets, perpetuate their missions, and dismantle society as we have known it.”
― Adam F.C. Fletcher, Democracy Deficit Disorder: Learning Democracy with Young People

“When children and youth are engaged throughout democracy, they are more engaged throughout their families and communities and the organizations that directly affect them. As a result they become better members who contribute actively and achieve success benefiting everyone. Because adults are more respectful of young people and more fulfilled in their membership in families, communities and organizations, the ethos of democracy is improved. That improved ethos is the cure for the democracy deficit disorder.”
― Adam F.C. Fletcher, Democracy Deficit Disorder: Learning Democracy with Young People

“In the lives of young people, democracy is a living, breathing function that can constantly guide their lives, inform their thinking, and drive their actions. While that is not the reality for most young people today, it is the possibility of that reality that drives so many children and youth today to take action to change the world.”
― Adam F.C. Fletcher, Democracy Deficit Disorder: Learning Democracy with Young People

“Adult fragility is a state in which even a minimum amount of age-based stress can become intolerable and trigger a range of emotional and behavioral reactions intended to restore a sense of age-based comfort.”
― Adam F.C. Fletcher, Democracy Deficit Disorder: Learning Democracy with Young People

“Conditioned by popular media’s consistently negative portraits of children and youth, adults today have been doubly misled about their own children and youth.”
― Adam F.C. Fletcher, Democracy Deficit Disorder: Learning Democracy with Young People

“Children and youth around the world have been assaulted by neoliberal forces hellbent on destroying the imaginations of young people and the democratic empowerment they were supposed to inherit.”
― Adam F.C. Fletcher, Democracy Deficit Disorder: Learning Democracy with Young People