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15 - Young people's participation in constructing a socially just public sphere

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2009

By
Sharon Egretta Sutton  and
Susan P. Kemp
Edited by
Christopher Spencer  and
Mark Blades
Christopher Spencer
Affiliation:
University of Sheffield
Mark Blades
Affiliation:
University of Sheffield
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Summary

‘Well the children because they were nice and … they were very idealistic, and they had some ideas that were out of the normal thinking. The adult community members … did provide some more practical information about the neighbourhood and that kind of thing. The practitioners were helpful in that they were, I don't know. Obviously the students were able to learn, the young kids were able to take a look at their neighbourhood and see how they might be able to improve it. And the adults would get a little taste of that idealism and maybe try to pursue something that they wouldn't have normally.’ (university student)

This student's reflections on how children's idealism can nudge adults out of sedimented ways of thinking provides the central theme of this chapter. Youth not only have a right to participate in social decision making, they benefit from such inclusion and can make valuable contributions to playful, transformative thinking. Youth participation yields collective and individual benefits, and is ‘part of the process and part of the answer for social inclusion’ (Hill et al., 2004). Yet, a powerful ontology of childhood delimits young people's opportunities for activism, framing them as adults-in-waiting (Wyness, 1999), rather than as social agents capable of bringing a uniquely valuable perspective to civic discourse (see also Francis and Lorenzo, this volume).

Type
Chapter
Information
Children and their Environments
Learning, Using and Designing Spaces
 , pp. 256 - 276
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2006

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