I think I first noticed something "wrong" with the way school
was done way when I was about 8 years old; some things just
didn't make sense.* It grew in me.* At 14, I wrote a letter to
the school newspaper about it.* at 17 I revisited it and wrote a
letter to my local newspaper.* but by then, online existed and I
was on it.* I took the fight there. At 18, back in 1990, I
started, "The Children's Rights List" out of my college home
account.* There was no WWW yet; there was e-mail (and mailing
lists), chat rooms, and Usenet - public discussion groups that
were pretty much identical to google+, facebook etc; (you could
download pictures but not view them with the message - this was
a long time ago :P ) Anyway, I gathered a few hundred people
rather quickly; and appealed to System Admins at different
Universities to get it hosted; it was exhausting constantly
forwarding messages I received to the whole group.* Finally, I
found one and he set me up, even though I didn't go to his
University. So I founded Y-RIGHTS; Youth Rights; where we
discussed everything from academic rights, to bullying, gay
rights, the law, parenting, education, etc.* My only rule was
that nobody talked too 'acadmically" on the list; a few members
left because of that; but it was important that what you say
could be understood by younger members with lesser vocabularies.
Here I am - 18 year old, telling 40-50 yr old college professors
what to do; but they listened.* We had members from age 11-80 at
least; all around the world, all walks of life; and ended up
with over 3000 members within a few months; and this is with no
website (Tim didn't start the WWW thingie yet); but there were
other ways to get the word out that worked perfectly well. I ran
it from when I was about 18-24 yrs old; then I passed it on to a
teenage activist in California and a University professor
working in Australia; they had the right "temperment" to run a
huge list of people discussing all sorts of topics.** And they
ran it for about 4 more years without me until at some point, it
closed. I had moved on to other things. Anyway; I'm 42 yrs old
now. The issue never left me; and it blows my mind that
education hasn't been fixed yet. But the problem with this is
all too common; a) You don't have the power to have a decent
voice before you're legally an adult.* b) Once you are legally
adult, the issues of kids and teens don't matter as much to you
because, they're not your problems anymore. That happens so
commonly; and I think it keeps good change from happening. I
never forgot.* It never left me.* I mean, it was nice to legally
drink and vote and drive, sign documents and have it mean
something, get credit cards, a mortgage, earn money, be
respected. But I never felt like I earned any of it.* I'm still
that 8 yr old kid looking around going, "Something is wrong with
the world", the 14 year old who is writing about it, the 18 year
old who is encouraging people to talk about it. So far it's been
the best I can do; help ppl cope with the shitty system they're
stuck inside of.* I'd dream of a world of Minecraft; where you
could just punch holes through systems and reconstruct them;* I
have the greatest hope for the generation you're in , and the
generation younger than you especially; because they really grew
up online; and if the systems don't suck their creativity away
from them, you and they have the greatest chance of making the
world better for the generations to come. And, even if you can't
make the world better; at least make your world better.* I never
want someone to "feel trapped"; there's always a way to stay
positive and succeed; finding the route may not be easy; but
it's there, somewhere, buried just behind a block of dirt, or
hiding in a forgotten corner of a dusty room.
