Children, Power and Schooling: How Childhood Is Structured in the Primary School

This is an exploration of childhood and schooling from the perspective of the children. The author has allowed the children to speak for themselves and reports their words and ideas in this important book. What the children say shows that it is the adults in the school who control their experience. These adults control not only their learning but the values they should imbibe, their experience of schools as well as their experience of themselves. Dympna Devine powerfully makes the case powerfully for children to have a more democratic and inclusive school experience that positions them as citizens and not just as potential citizens in the making. Children should be treated as full participants in school and have the right to expect their views to be taken seriously by the adults in their schools. And, as this book shows, they are eloquent about how this can be done. This is a book for policy makers, school managers and teachers. It will also be of interest to parents and to students of teaching and their trainers.

Dympna Devine is a lecturer in sociology at the Education Department, National University of Ireland, Dublin where she is director of the MEd programme.