Response to Review of The School I'd Like: Children and Young People's Reflections on an Education for the 21st Century

Children, Youth and Environments. Vol 14, No.1 (2004) ISSN 1546-2250 Response to Review of The School I'd Like: Children and Young People's Reflections on an Education for the 21st Century Catherine Burke School of Education University of Leeds, UK Ian Grosvenor School of Education University of Birmingham, UK Citation: Burke, Catherine and Ian Grosvenor. (2004). “Response to Review of The School I’d Like: Children and Young People’s Reflections on an Education for the 21st Century.” Children, Youth and Environments 14(1). Listening and attending to the voices, views and imagined visions of children and young people as expressed during the first quarter of the year 2001 was and continues to be a challenge. Sifting, selecting, and searching out representative samples from this vast archive of materials was influenced by the abiding presence of the work of Edward Blishen before us (Blishen 1969). In Blishen’s time, children voiced similar, sometimes identical ideas for change and advancement and their wisdom was in most cases neglected. The consistencies across time are clear; at this stage we can only guess at the consistencies across cultures which one might go on to explore. As the review implies, a book like this does show the value of listening to and allowing space for the expression of reflections, opinions, anger, and hope and this is of course to be welcomed. However, it is evident from the introductory piece, “Neglected Voices” that there is a history of not attending to the expressed experience of children within schools. Everyday neglect in this sense has become institutional. The total collection of contributions to the competition including art pieces, essays, photo essays, montages, models, plans, alternative timetables, video, dynamic power point projections, wall displays and records of focused activity of all 264 kinds remains intact as the “Guardian School I’d Like 2001 Archive.” Its home is the School of Education at the University of Leeds where there is a commitment to care for the archive over the forthcoming decades. The book reviewed here is merely a starting point. There remains the potential for this collection to be explored with eyes other than the authors’ by those whose varied and specialist research interests, scholarly involvement or strategic concerns can be advanced by collaborative consideration, discussion and dissemination of the material today and in the future. One can imagine a further book of edited essays contributed by architects, planners, teachers, environmental psychologists, sociologists and “border crossers” which might take the listening a stage further. The words of children, penciled, crayoned or typed are exceedingly powerful and as wordsmiths, those who initially examined the contributions were moved by the power of these words; indeed, it was the essayists who drew most attention. This had the effect that the large or small drawings and pieces of art or sculpture were neglected in the initial review. The logistics of handling the often fragile structures and assemblages meant that they could be overlooked, confined as they were to the corners of the sorting room. This seems to have occurred in the 1967 event which led to Edward Blishen’s The School That I’d Like as well, as the words carried such meaning and the editors were purveyors of books, radio broadcasts and newspapers. Since the 2001 competition generated the Guardian archive, these images and three dimensional objects have developed a more powerful presence in the collection as the authors found themselves impelled to draw these to the attention of architects and education designers and planners involved in mapping out the learning environments of the future. The publishers, Routledge Falmer, should be congratulated for recognizing that the book should hold has many of these striking images as possible and together, with the words of the children, their visual literacy and spatial imagination is demonstrated: a powerful reminder for architects to consult with the young who might be 265 considered natural builders and constructors of their own worlds. Reference Blishen, Edward (1969). The School That I’d Like. London: Penguin Books. Catherine Burke is an historian who received her doctorate in political history in 1983 from Sheffield Hallam University. She is currently lecturer in Education at the School of Education...

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