This is replying to a Canadian Press article, “Students failing because of Twitter, texting and no grammar teaching” from earlier in the month. Little or no grammar teaching, cellphone texting, social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, all are being blamed for an increasingly unacceptable number of post-secondary students who can’t write properly. It’s perfectly…
Recently, we sent out an email looking for your youth rights stories. The President of our board of directors, Jeffrey Nadel, shared the story of his fight against West Palm Beach and their youth curfew law. Your stories have begun to come in and we have enjoyed reading them. We look forward to receiving more…
When the new International Civil Rights Center and Museum recently opened their doors in Greensboro, NC they didn’t open them to everybody. NYRA’s executive director quickly realized what museum curators and planners could not — it’s wrong for a museum whose mission is to highlight the horrors of segregation to promote segregation. The museum believes…
Last month NYRA board member, Katrina Moncure announced plans to organize an awareness campaign for lowering the voting age. Named #16tovote on the 16th, the campaign had its first even on the 16th of February. Youth rights supporters are encouraged to “tweet” about lowering the voting age on Twitter and include the hashtag #16tovote. For…
The Coalition Against School Paddling filed discrimination complaints with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office on February 6, 2010, for Civil Rights against the state departments of education in the twenty states where corporal punishment is permitted. The twenty states that permit corporal punishment in schools are: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana,…
I’m pleased to say yesterday’s first run of #16tovote on the 16th was a complete success! Yesterday, as our newest voting age awareness campaign, many youth rights supporters posted to Twitter their feelings on lowering the voting age, as well as relevant links, and retweeted each other’s voting age tweets, all with the hashtag #16tovote….
Earlier, the ACLU blog posted about how vulnerable young people are in adult prisons: Regular readers of The New York Times know that columnist Nicolas Kristof is a forceful advocate on behalf of human rights around the world. In his column on Thursday, January 28th — “Kids in Crisis (Behind Bars)” — he addresses serious…
USA Today just came out with some horrible catastrophic news! Kids these days spend so much time with electronic media — cellphones, iPods, video games and computers — that it might as well be a full-time job: more than 53 hours a week, a study finds. Compared with peers a decade ago, young people spend…
Choose Responsibility (founders of the Amethyst Initiative) and the National Youth Rights Association are working together to pass legislation in Vermont that would open the door to lowering the drinking age in the state. This legislation is scheduled for a hearing on the 21st and we hope to have as many Vermonters as possible sign…
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…
