Africa’s first Little League baseball team to advance to the Little League World Series, the Rev. John Foundation Little League team from Kampala, Uganda, unfortunately won’t be able to appear at the series after all – the result of a lack of complete documentation for the children and complications with the United States’ visa and immigration policies, which prevent them from traveling to the annual South Williamsport, Pa., event.
A disappointment all around, but especially for the kids:
“It’s a shame,” [documentary filmmaker] Shapiro said. “Their country isn’t ready for this. The schools aren’t ready. The parents aren’t ready. The only thing that’s ready are the kids and their talent. They will make it one day, and if there is anything positive out of this, it’s for people to realize what wonderful things are happening with these kids. They’ve got their own little world growing here.”
UPDATE: More from the kids themselves, and a bit of history about the fledgling roots of Little League baseball in Africa, here.
Hopefully, when people watch ‘I Am Eleven’, it will remind them of the influence, both positive and negative, we can have on kids and how we should be empowering them and encouraging them, because they are the future. Sounds like a cliche, but they are.
– Filmmaker Genevieve Bailey, discussing her upcoming documentary about the lives of a group of eleven-year-olds around the world.
In a victory for free expression advocates everywhere, the Court recognized that government has the power to restrict children’s speech rights “‘only in relatively narrow and well-defined circumstances’… [rather than] free-floating power to restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed.”
The impulse to ‘protect’ children by restricting what they can read, see, and hear is pervasive, and the decision issued today makes it clear that vague assertions about harm, or social disapproval of certain kinds of material, do not justify government restrictions. That also applies to books in public schools and libraries, which are of course challenged regularly. […]
Whether it’s video games, movie, comic books, or music, parents and youth have a legitimate interest in making choices about what is appropriate without unwanted and unwarranted state interference.
Last October, a group of sixth-graders in Sweden filed an official complaint with their country’s advertising regulatory agency against the Toys”R”Us corporation. The reason for the complaint? Because the kids felt the toy company’s catalogue was gender-discriminatory.
According to the youngsters, the Toys”R”Us Christmas catalogue featured “outdated gender roles because boys and girls were shown playing with different types of toys, whereby the boys were portrayed as active and the girls as passive”, according to a statement from Ro [Sweden’s regulatory agency].
The group’s teacher explained to the local Smålandsposten newspaper that filing the complaint was the culmination of more than two years of “long-term work” by the students on gender roles.
Thumbing through the catalogue, 13-year-old Hannes Psajd explained that he and his twin sister had always shared the same toys and that he was concerned about the message sent by the Toys”R”Us publication. “Small girls in princess stuff…and here are boys dressed as super heroes. It’s obvious that you get affected by this,” he told the newspaper. “When I see that only girls play with certain things then, as a guy, I don’t want it.”
Classmate Moa Averin emphasized the importance of children being able to be who they want even if “guys want to be princesses sometimes”.
Two thoughts here, if I may…
First, how absolutely great is this? That a group of young kids not only took a big political step to advocate for an issue they cared about, but that the issue itself is what they felt was gender discrimination? I see what these kids did as many great things, but most important it was a bold declaration against adults trying to put them into a box – against a corporation trying to exploit them, by playing into and contributing to culturally defined childhood gender roles, all for the purpose of selling cheap toy products. If you don’t think kids are cognizant of the ways society tries to transmit cultural expectations like gender roles, and are fully active in questioning and challenging those expectations, then think again. Kids see the world in a whole new way, one that’s uniquely their own – and they won’t let anyone else dictate it.
Second, leave it to a country like Sweden to not only hear a complaint filed by a group of children but also eagerly embrace and encourage the children’s activism while doing so. Following a review of the case, Sweden’s regulatory agency chose to agree with the children, and they issued Toys”R”Us a public reprimand – echoing the children’s sentiments in it by declaring that the toy company’s catalogue “discriminates based on gender and counteracts positive social behaviour, lifestyles, and attitudes.” Apparently the kids aren’t the only ones who understand and value the importance of them having the freedom culturally to be whomever they want to be.
I’d say that deserves at least two big cheers – one for the group of children themselves and their hard work in making their voice on a topic known, and another for Sweden’s government for taking that voice so seriously.
Katie Roiphe, on the unusual cultural phenomenon of Go the Fuck to Sleep – the new “children’s picture book for adults” by Adam Mansbach:
The odd, rageful, beautiful little book’s inspiration lies in the commingling of insipid bedtime story rhymes with the inner monologue of the wildly irritated parent: “The owls fly forth from the treetops./ Through the air, they soar and they sweep./ A hot crimson rage fills my heart, love. / For real, shut the fuck up and sleep.” The stylish parody relies for its humor and frisson on a certain level of frustration, an over- the- top, pent-up fury toward one’s children, because without that fury, it’s simply not that funny. […]
Here of course, that anger or hostility is aimed at children, at big-eyed toddlers padding around in their strawberry pajamas, and that is what is both exhilarating and disturbing about the book. There is a nastiness in Go the Fuck to Sleep, an undercurrent of resentment that is comic, or “cathartic,” as another Amazon reviewer put it, only to parents who are pretty radically subjugating themselves to a certain kind of kid-centered drabness, and judging from the book’s runaway success, that would be a lot of parents. […]
One wonders if this hostility toward the child, who is naturally and rightfully manipulative, is just a tiny bit misplaced. If we are raising a generation that sees the whole world as an expanse of devoted maids and butlers, if we ourselves are overly beholden or enslaved to our children’s anxieties and desires, isn’t it our own fault? Likewise, if we can’t manage to hire a baby sitter and get out of the house, if we have made of the conventional nuclear family structure something stifling, airless, it can’t really be the fault of a 4-year-old, resourceful and mischievous as he may be. We are, after all, to blame for our own self-sacrifice, and if we are being honest and precise, it’s not exactly self-sacrifice, tinged as it is with vanity, with pride in our good behavior, with a certain showiness in our parenting, with self-congratulation.
Whether it’s in the service of cathartic relief or something else, Go the Fuck to Sleep seems to demonstrate an almost violent antipathy toward children – and an ‘Othering’ of them that seems to claim they are far removed from the human (implicitly, ‘adult’) experience. As much as the book might act as a token of a solidarity in modern parents’ collective tribulations of dealing with children, this empathy with parents comes at the direct expense of empathy with children and their experiences. As Ben Delaney tweets, Go the Fuck to Sleep almost seems to be “a strange celebration of our culture’s lack of empathy toward kids.”
Roiphe does begin to unravel the roots of this antipathy in her article, when she begins to examine the dogged, often self-sacrificing efforts across a particular segment of society and parents – well, she rather unflatteringly calls them “yuppie parents” – to be ‘child-centered’ in our actions and parenting. Go the Fuck to Sleep is simply the point where it all erupts, the point of backlash where the cultural burden to be the ‘perfect parent’, with all the “enlightened, engaged, sensitive parenting practices” that go along with the role, as Roiphe elaborates, causes them to go unhinged and unleash all the built-up repressed rage.
What we don’t regularly realize is that in focusing so intently on (what we presume are) children’s particular needs and characteristics, we’re ultimately doing them harm by moving them farther and farther from the center of our society – from the society they exist in both currently and as future members of society. A separate, conceptual ‘Land of Childhood’, one which inevitably emerges alongside the increased societal expectations and burdens of ‘Parenthood’ and good parenting practice, serves no one – not least of whom the parents themselves. But it’s vital to know that becoming a parent does not mean your life is now a forsaken one, a now desolate bond of servitude toward your child. Nor, indeed, does the arrival of kids in your life mean that your child might not appreciate and wish to participate in aspects of the life you had before, or that the world of children is ultimately incompatible with the world of adults. Mansbach’s book may portray the life of a parent as one of “Sartre-like bleakness and claustraphobia” – but it need not be that way. I propose that by embracing children themselves, by listening and empathizing with their experiences, and embracing them in the folds of all of life – and ultimately society at its whole, not just relegating them to the far-removed ‘Land of Childhood’ – children can be the greatest joy of all in life.
You always hear stories about the 70s. The first time I got on set, the set dresser and costume people were just amazing. I literally put the clothes on and I felt like I was instantly there. I think it was a really cool time, because things were a lot simpler, you know? I kind of wish I could experience it more.
– Fourteen-year-old Ryan Lee, one of the stars of the new film "Super 8," responding to a question about its 1970s period setting.
A 12-year-old boy from Impington, England, decided to protest a ban in his school’s dress code against boys wearing shorts – by exploiting a loophole in the code that allowed him to wear a skirt.
Chris believes that forcing boys to wear long trousers during the sizzling summer months affects concentration and their ability to learn.
He said: ”In the summer girl students are allowed to wear skirts but boys are not allowed to wear shorts.
”We think that this discriminates against boys. […] ”I will be wearing the skirt at school all day in protest at the uniform policy and addressing the assembly with the student council, wearing a skirt.”
Good on Chris for gaming the system, I say. Here he is, in all his skirt-y glory:
Moonwalking with Mr. Rogers
I grew up with Mr. Rogers. He was a constant figure in my life – a real neighbor in the truest sense – whom I would regularly tune in to watch on PBS most mornings (“Channel 7,” as my brothers and I knew it back then). Mr. Rogers was a bit like that kindly old lady on your block who would let you visit after school and always have cookies ready for you, or the uncle at family reunions who would let you accompany him to the lake for a round of fishing while all the other cousins were forced to endure endless cheek-pinching by distant relations. In spite of his quiet demeanor, or perhaps because of it, Mr. Rogers always drew me in – and always garnered my full attention, to the point where I even forgot there was a TV set in between us. I remember feeling so distinctly as a child that here was a man who was talking directly to me – and perhaps even more importantly, seeming to listen fully to to me in return.
Oh sure, I’m not alone in this sentiment. Like me and many others, Peter Hartlaub is another fan of Mr. Rogers, a profuse apologist of Mr. Rogers’s ‘Hood – and so it was to Peter’s surprise as well as mine when he recently discovered and shared video footage of Mr. Rogers actually moonwalking during one long-past TV episode. Yes, as in Michael-Jackson-is-alive-and-well, wow-this-is-really-the-’70s moonwalking. Take a look:
As Peter recalls:
I’m a huge Mr. Rogers fan, but I somehow wasn’t aware of this video’s existence until this afternoon. Of course it only makes me love the guy more, if that’s possible. This just proves that Fred Rogers was physically incapable of being patronizing or self-conscious. He clearly knows nothing about breakdancing – and may have never seen a boombox. (“How do I turn your music on?”) This was a time when most squares in Middle America equated breakdancing with drive-by shootings and crack sales. But Fred Rogers was game anyway. And he looked cool trying to do it, because children are excited about it, and he was excited about children.
“Because he was excited about children.” Excited about children. I can’t think of any better attribute in a person.
Scott Steinberg, an author and advocate for the video game industry, in an op-ed for CNN:
In 1993, the Senate’s hearings on video game violence gave birth to the Entertainment Software Rating Board and the industry’s current rating system: E for everyone, M for mature (17 and older) and so on. Later this year, the U.S. Supreme Court will test the constitutionality of a California law that would make it illegal to sell violent video games to minors.
But what gaming insiders find most surprising isn’t that such arguments remain topical. It’s that some 30 years after video games became a popular form of mainstream entertainment, we’re still liable to hear less about games’ positive impact on kids’ lives than sensationalistic accounts of their hidden dangers.
“Games are an amazing invention that entertain and inform in ways different than traditional media,” says Joseph Olin, president of the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. “But many critics have little or any experience with them and therefore don’t understand where there could be artistic or educational value. No different than with film and TV, media sensationalism and ignorance can contribute to the fear that games are harmful to children.
Maegan Carberry responds to the pessimistic belief that young Millenials, who showed up in full force in 2008 to vote Barack Obama into office, have since stopped caring:
Many say that the historic election was an isolated moment in time and that momentum has plateaued, but 2008 was the beginning of something that will manifest itself in the coming decade, starting with November’s midterm election, to 2012, 2014 and beyond as our nation’s demographics shift toward majority Millennial voters. It was the arrival of a generation that has since taken action to support our values system and vision for the future. We are often criticized as disappearing acts, or celebrity-crazed misanthropes who want the posters for our walls more than we respect the politics.
I don’t believe we disappeared. We went to work on the issues we care about. I don’t believe we disappeared. We went to work on the issues we care about. We demanded marriage equality, participated in the health care debate, fought for the rights of our peers who are veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, called for an independent energy future, demanded fiscal responsibility, rallied for access to higher education and pushed for a more transparent government free to utilize the digital tools that are unique to our communications.
This is absolutely true from my experience as well. I’d say this ‘departure’ from politics isn’t actually a sign of us not caring anymore, but rather us showing our skepticism of top-down mechanisms of social change. We still care; we just want things to be done differently, in ways that are connected and in tune with the local level, and we want to be involved in that change. We’re a Grassroots Generation; we’re not going to sit idly by and entrust the well-being of our futures to politicians and corporate-sized nonprofits. We’re going to get out there and make change ourselves. Look no further than youth-led (and radically successful) organizations like Invisible Children and Krocket Kids for proof of that.
Well-timed to serve as a coincidental but completely appropriate follow-up to the piece I wrote earlier today (wherein I rant about how much other people rant about children), Richard Louv shares the right way to think about the topic of children, technology and nature:
Many people believe that technology is the antithesis of nature. Here’s an alternate view. A fishing rod is technology. So is that fancy backpack. Or a compass. Or a tent. When boomers my age ran through the woods with play guns (as distasteful as that might be to some people), they were using technology as an entry tool to nature.
Today, the family that together goes geo-caching or wildlife photographing with their digital cameras, or collecting pond samples, is doing something as legitimate as going fishing; both involve gadgets that offer an excuse to get outside. Young citizen naturalists are bound to have a different attitude about technology from many older people — and that could be an advantage.
Louv, as you may know, is a renowned environmentalist and a prolific writer – perhaps best recognized for his tremendous book Last Child in the Woods. Needless to say, it’s nice to hear words like these coming from someone like him, who is regarded as the perennial expert on the subject of children and nature.
Henry Jenkins questions what was so wrong about the He-Man action figure toys that his son used to play with back in the day:
I never understood the parents who feared such toys would stifle my son’s imagination because what I observed was very much the opposite - a child learning to appropriate and remix the materials of his culture. The fact that these stories were shared through mass media with other kids and that they were some vividly embodied in the action figures meant that it was easy for children to have intersubjective fantasies, to share their play stories with each other, and to pool knowledge about the particulars of this fictional realm.
Jenkins’ thoughtful reflection made me thrillingly happy, because it’s a nostalgic reminder of the way things were for me growing up – and an important statement about how the things kids love – the video games, the action figures, the mass-mediated toys, and all the stuff we adults can’t see a value in – aren’t ever necessarily bad or good, in and of themselves. Rather what matters more is what kids do with them. I’ve become so exhausted lately of hearing about how video games and media are keeping our kids indoors and depriving them of nature. The sentiment may be well-placed indeed, but it’s aggravating to see the issue simplified, and to have a category of things demonised – especially when very few people making the statement have used or played what the kids are playing with, or understand the attraction they may hold for kids.
Nature and video games and cheap plastic toys can co-habitate our children’s lives very happily together, thank you very much, and in any case it’s never for us adults to decide what’s intrinsically valuable or worthwhile. Kids can make the most out of what adults perceive as utter crap; I know I did, as did Henry Jenkins’ son, as did every generation before. I think it’s time we start showing kids just a bit more trust when it comes to what and how they play.
In a piece commenting on the supposedly “closed” nature of Apple’s iPad, John Gruber has (somewhat inadvertently) written a stirring defense in testament to the capacity and ingenuity of children.
The criticism around Apple’s new device centers around it’s “closed, consumption-oriented nature” and what this means for the future of computing – not only for adults, but for children, where they might supposedly no longer allowed to hack, program, and tinker their time away with only an iPad at their disposal. Cory Doctorow, of Boing Boing, sees the iPad as perhaps too “perfect” – too complete, too closed off to exploration. And here’s what Mark Pilgrim wrote about it, in a piece entitled “Tinkerer’s Sunset”:
Once upon a time, Apple made the machines that made me who I am. I became who I am by tinkering. Now it seems they’re doing everything in their power to stop my kids from finding that sense of wonder. Apple has declared war on the tinkerers of the world.
It’s a fair criticism – but as Gruber argues, it’s not quite the full picture. Not only is the iPad just one device among several that we use, but here’s the important bit: Kids will always find a way to make things work for them. We just have to show a little trust. As if to illustrate the point, Gruber shares the story of 13-year-old Sam, who recently wrote him to introduce an iPad app that the boy wrote himself. Gruber:
He’s 13 years old and he has created and is selling an iPad app in the same store where companies like EA, Google, and even Apple itself distribute iPad apps. His app is ready to go on the first day the product is available. Not a fake app. Not a junior app. A real honest-to-god iPad app. Imagine a 13-year-old in 1978 who could produce and sell his own Atari 2600 cartridges.
Somehow I don’t think young Mr. Kaplan sees the iPad as hurting his sense of wonder or entrepreneurism.
13-year-old iPad programmers? Absolutely. And Sam’s not the only one out there – not at all.
Yes, as it turns out the kids are, indeed, alright.
