Abstract
This chapter examines how the notion of children and young people’s ‘voice’ is reiterated in the field of children and young people’s participation. The chapter argues that the word is often used to emphasise children and young people’s voice as pure , fixed and conveniently in line with what is ‘right’ for society. In examining these assumptions, the chapter draws on five examples of situations where children and young people’s voices did not comply with these assumptions or were more ambiguous. More specifically, the chapter draws on examples of children and young people’s voices ‘we don’t want to hear’ in Australia, children and young people’s voices in legal proceedings in Europe, children and young people with special communication needs in England, children and young people’s silences in New Zealand, and children and young people’s voice, and resistances to voice, in schools in the United States.
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Notes
- 1.
See for example, the UN’s State of the World’s Children reports (e.g., UNICEF 2003, 2006a, 2010) or the NSW Commission for Children and Young People’s Built4Kids: a Good Practice Guide to Creating Child-Friendly Built Environments (2009).
- 2.
While it may be argued that there is a significant difference between the ‘gazed’ and the ‘voice’ (the former is visual and the latter is aural), so often in children and young people’s participation the voices of children and young people are reproduced in a visual/textual form. It is in this context that children and young people’s voices are primarily cast under the gaze of adults.
- 3.
Typically seen as the ‘opposite’ of voice, it is often seen as a negative consequence of children and young people who are not given a voice (i.e. children and young people who are ‘silenced’).
- 4.
A response to voice. Many of the informants did not directly refer to voice, but in describing ‘listening’ to children and young people, the reference was implied and consequently worthy of inclusion here.
- 5.
This report is a notable example of the way in which knowledge is increasingly produced and disseminated through a network of different sites and spaces. According to the introduction, the report was born when a number of government and non-governmental agencies came together to identify effective mechanisms whereby different ‘youth provider’ groups could collaborate to support service providers in developing the capacity to engage children and young people in their processes.
- 6.
Part of the Teaching and Learning Research Programme Network on Consulting Pupils about Teaching and Learning (2001–2003).
- 7.
Bragg cites the earlier work of Willis (1977) as an example of a time where this form of resistance would have been more positively received.
- 8.
The data for this example has come directly from media sources rather than the literature on children and young people’s participation specifically. This difference aside, the story is relevant here because it is a contemporaneous example that emerged in the popular media during the time of writing.
- 9.
Channel Nine’s A Current Affair.
- 10.
The basis for the entry’s deletion came after a lengthy discussion from Wikipedia (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Corey_Worthington_%282nd_nomination%29). Two comments that neatly reflect the differing views in the discussion are: “Keep. Like it or not the main stream media keeps devoting time to this guy, see google news. He is famous for being famous. Wiki pages are devoted to people who died drinking water in an attempt to win a video game. I agree, he doesn’t deserve to be famous, so what, he is famous. It might be better to call the page “The corey Delaney incident”, and revisit devoting a personal page a year from now if Mr. Delaney’s fame has legs”; “Speedy Delete. Yawn. Nothing’s changed since the last AfD except that he got a job. There’s *less* attention to him now than before. He’s little different than most teenagers that host a party without their parents knowledge, even if he does wear big glasses and make an ass of himself on TV”.
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Hartung, C. (2017). Selective Hearing: Rethinking Children and Young People’s ‘Voice’. In: Conditional Citizens. Perspectives on Children and Young People, vol 5. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-3938-6_5
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