by Alexander Khost
“We stole countries with the cunning use of flags. Just sail around the world and stick a flag in. “I claim India for Britain!” They’re going “You can’t claim us, we live here! Five hundred million of us!” “Do you have a flag …? “No…” “Well, if you don’t have a flag, then you can’t have a country. Those are the rules… that I just made up!” ― Eddie Izzard, Dress to Kill
In most places in the world, children are regularly discriminated against simply for being children. This form of prejudice is called Adultism. Youth rights work looks to counter adultism by providing safe, nurturing spaces for young people to develop, but since these spaces and this kind of work is typically so unusual, it is often misunderstood and goes against conventional rules. And as the comedian Eddie Izzard’s joke shows so well, oftentimes those in power manipulate the game by making their own rules that always go in their favor. One of those rules is accreditation and youth rights workers can take advantage of it as well… if we want.
When I was running a youth rights space, a question I would often get from prospective families was, “Are you accredited?” I knew I wasn’t but didn’t know how to be or– more importantly– what it would even mean if I had it (other than a greater chance to have that family say “yes” to enrolling!) The term accreditation is one often thrown around and recognized as important but is seldom actually understood. The Cambridge Dictionary defines it as, “the fact of being officially recognized, accepted, or approved of, or the act of officially recognizing, accepting, or approving of something.” In other words, it is the act of gaining outside recognition for one’s actions. Or as a wise person once explained to me, “It’s someone approving that you are doing what you say you do.” So why is this important? And how can this be useful? I’ll give two personal examples of how accreditation could be useful to the youth rights movement:
The first example is about my own family. I began thinking about the privilege the term accreditation provides over the decade of my life in which I was in and out of court, mediation, and collaborative law seeking the power of decision-making over my children’s education so that I could allow them to unschool themselves. I had spent decades prior researching and cultivating spaces that supported young people’s rights to make their own decisions. I was convinced that what I was doing with my own children was in their best interest and would help them grow into secure, impassioned, empathetic, and creative adults. But I also had to convince a judge and attorneys and mediators and my ex-wife that this was true. I remember thinking to myself, if the self-directed space my children were in was accredited, this process would be so much easier. It would be a simple and direct translation to the conventionally-minded that what my children are doing– the space that they are in every day– is a healthy space for them to grow.
Youth Rights Accreditation is indeed crucial work because it has the potential of helping to provide youth rights opportunities to many people who otherwise would not be able to do so and to help sustain those that already do.
Despite not having accreditation, the court amazingly granted me educational decision-making and now, years later, my two older children involved in that court case are both still directing their own lives and doing wonderfully by any measure. I have testified in three other cases since then as an expert witness in the field of Self-Directed Education and sadly not one of them ruled in favor of the parent seeking the youth rights path for their child. As convincing as the testimony was, I surmise that ruling in favor of such an unconventional approach to child rearing simply was too much to ask of the judges. I consider myself and my children so fortunate to have been given a judge willing to withhold judgment until she heard all of our case and to have the openness to consider our alternative story. I wonder if those other cases would have turned out differently had they been able to see the outside recognition of an accreditor.
The second example is a more recent one: I now live in Romania, where my wife runs a school based on youth rights principles. Comparatively, Romania is actually one of the more open minded EU countries with regard to education, but homeschooling here is illegal and schools using alternative methods have to find loopholes in the law in order to make things work. In my job at the Alliance for Self-Directed Education, I have come into contact with people in countries like Greece, Germany, and Turkey, where youth rights education methodologies are outright illegal and in extreme cases, children have even been separated from parents who have tried to do so. Compared to these countries, where I grew up in the United States, parents and care providers have so much more choice over how to raise and educate their children.
In the case of Romania, if the school were accredited, it would receive partial public funding, making the sustainability of the school that much greater. In the case of the many other countries, where this form of education is outright illegal, I can only speculate, but I surmise it would help considerably in gaining them recognition and helping them on their way to supporting the rights of the young people growing up in their countries. If it could help even just a handful of communities, offering an accreditation service is well worth the effort.
In a similar way to how young people might seek out the services of a facilitator but learning can happen in other ways as well, Youth Rights Accreditation is here for those who feel it can help them or their community but is not professing that all youth rights spaces must have accreditation; this is a service, not an authority. It is a service that will only work if enough of those involved in youth rights work acknowledge our work as valid and relevant in being an outside source that can validate this crucial work. Youth Rights Accreditation is indeed crucial work because it has the potential of helping to provide youth rights opportunities to many people who otherwise would not be able to do so and to help sustain those that already do.