Children's Experiences & Rights in Urban Public Space: A School Geography View, Lecture notes of Geography

Download Children's Experiences & Rights in Urban Public Space: A School Geography View and more Lecture notes Geography in PDF only on Docsity! 1 Connecting with children’s geographies in education John H. McKendrick and Lauren Hammond “Don't wait for extraordinary opportunities. Seize common occasions and make them great” (Orison Swett Marden, 1917, p.5) The premise for this article is a reworking of these sentiments from Marden, one of the leading proponents of 19th Century New Thought Philosophy. The extraordinary circumstances surrounding the coronavirus crisis present an opportunity for school geography to reconsider the relationships between a child’s everyday life and their education. In this article, we examine the value of supporting children to engage with their everyday neighbourhood geographies through disciplinary thought. To the trained eye, the coronavirus crisis has confirmed the necessity of geographical analysis. For example, there has been much concern with the diffusion of the virus, with geographical variation in incidence and mortality, with the environmental impact on our cities due to our changing patterns of behaviour, and on the micro-geographies of maintaining 2m (or 1m) of personal space in public. The public response to the pandemic has also impacted on children’s everyday lives in ways which challenge thinking that prevailed beforehand. Most significantly, the majority of children temporarily lost access to schools, community centres, streets, playgrounds and other social spaces that were central to their everyday lives and identities. For some time, contrasting concerns have been raised about children’s presence in public spaces. On one hand, there are those who lament children’s withdrawal from public space, citing concerns for public health given children’s increasingly sedentary and home-based leisure, and observing an impoverishment of community life that comes with the absence of children’s presence. On the other hand, there are those who express concerns at the 2 behaviour of groups of children who occupy public space, sometimes looking to enforce their withdrawal and curtail their presence. During the coronavirus times, these concerns have been transformed. Concern over children’s over-use of screen-based technology in their leisure time have dissipated, as home learning through technology is promoted, and the driver for restricting children in public has been to protect children, rather than protect others from children. These everyday geographies have relevance that extend beyond concerns for children’s wellbeing. School geography can contribute to helping children and young people understand and recover from this crisis. Critical examination of the crisis’ core geographical issues can support children in better understanding the world in which they live and contribute to. The pandemic also offers an opportunity to consider the value of everyday geographical citizenship to school geography - through considering children’s relationships to places and spaces – and how these relationships have changed through the coronavirus crisis. Drawing on the work of Anderson et al. (2008), we acknowledge that citizenship is a complex and contested idea which extends beyond political constructions and identities related to the nation state. Citizenship is ‘constructed, embodied, experienced, performed and understood’ (p35) in different spaces and places, and at different scales (Ibid.). In this article, we focus on children’s experiences of, and right to, public space - specifically in urban areas – considering how school geography can be used as an exploratory and explanatory tool to enable children to critically engage with their everyday geographies. The power of schools Children shape, and are shaped by, the spaces and places they inhabit. Exploring children’s rich and varied geographies, and enabling children to share their experiences of, and perspectives on, the world has been a significant area of research in geography since the 1970s (McKendrick, 2000, 2003). This potential of children’s geographies for schools is acknowledged, although not necessarily embraced and utilized, as we have explored in a recent paper in Geography (Hammond and McKendrick, 2020). 5 Children and public space Public spaces are spaces that are open to all – they include connecting spaces through which people travel e.g. pavements and streets, as well as places such as parks or town squares which people visit to exercise, play and/or socialise. When critically considering the nature of public spaces and how they are experienced, it is helpful to first consider social space as a social product (Lefebvre, 1991). Put another way, a public space is not merely a point on the Earth’s surface that a person might visit, but also a social space that is produced, sustained and evolves. If we consider Lefebvre’s argument on social space in relation to public spaces, then it is of critical importance to recognise that public spaces “have always been a matter of state power and public administration” (Harvey, 2013: 72). In making this point, Harvey asserts that just by having public spaces within a society “does not necessarily a commons make”. In considering the right to the city, Harvey uses the idea of commons to reflect social and spatial practices that are open to, and created by, all – these commons often give places their unique character. However, whilst public spaces such as the street are in theory open to all, in practice they are often subject to (explicit and implicit) social rules and expectations, regulation and policing, and they are sometimes privately managed (Ibid.) – they are political and contested spaces. Young people have sometimes been represented negatively in their use of public spaces and even portrayed as ‘apart from the urban realm’ (Bourke, 2017: 93). The value of exploring children’s experiences of public space in school geography lies in enabling them to use geographical thought to situate and explore their own geographies, and supporting children to critically consider the type of spaces and places (including in schools, neighbourhoods and beyond) that they would like, and enabling them to make informed contributions to debates and shaping the worlds they live within both today and in the future. We now move on to suggest three activities that can be used by teachers in this regard. Each of these activities can be used as independently (for example, within a sequence of lessons on urban geographies or changing places), or could be sequenced as part of a larger examination of children geographies, perhaps drawing on some of the other resources that were 6 introduced in Table 1. These activities can be readily adapted for children of different ages – for example, through changing the wording of the suggested geographical questions. Challenging geographies for children: Three activities for school children Activity one: Control over children’s use of space Bringing children in through pedagogy (Catling, 2014), can enable them to share their experiences and imaginations of urban and public spaces. Roberts’ (2013) examination of how geographical knowledge is constructed through questions geographers ask when shaping their research is helpful here. Drawing on Neighbour (1992) Roberts explains the importance of exploring ‘the nature of geographical knowledge and how the scope of the subject is changed by the questions asked’ (pp17), arguing that considering this with children, can support them in understanding both that knowledge is not neutral, and enhancing their understanding of the procedures through which knowledge is produced. Asking geographical questions about public space, can enable children to explore how space is produced and the power relations that exist within it. Using the example of two neighbourhood playgrounds from central Scotland (Figure 1) we show how teachers could draw on the work of Roberts (2013) to encourage a critical discussion about the ways in which, extent to which, and validity of, adults controlling children and young people’s use of neighbourhood space. These images show how behaviour is formally controlled (through direct instruction and physical barriers in Figure 1a) and informally controlled (through not maintaining the space in Figure 1b). Although we suggest the use of a photograph, this technique might also be considered in relation to an immersive experience in fieldwork, or by engaging in participatory approaches with children (e.g. by encouraging them to map or photograph spaces and places in their local area they feel included). This type of participatory approach is often used in children’s geographies to enable children to share their perspectives. 7 Insert figure1 about here with questions below Geographical questions that might be asked include: • How is the place represented in this image? • Might the place change at different times of the day (e.g. at night or school pick up time)? What impacts might time have on how this place is used and by whom? • How, and why, might different people use or view this place differently? Try to give three examples – you might consider social categories such as age, gender, class, ethnicity and (dis)ability in your response • Might some people feel more included or excluded here? If so, how and why? • Would you use this place? If so, how? • What rules do you think exist in this place? Who makes these rules and why? • Would these rules impact on how you use this space? Explain your perspective • Would you change this place? If so, how and why? • How and why might lockdown have affected how different people access and use this place? What impacts might changes in access have had on different people? • Considering the example of public space, how do the concepts of place and space help us to better understand people’s lives and geographies? Is this important – if so, why and to whom? Activity two: What children value in their neighbourhood The Place Standard (Table 1 and Figure 1) is a tool that can allow classroom exploration of (i) what children want from their neighbourhood; and (ii) how well their neighbourhood delivers what they want. Encouraging young people to rank their neighbourhood (or school, town, city, etc.) across fourteen domains, each on a seven-point scale generates a visual summary of children’s perspectives. This exercise could be time-bound to focus on their neighbourhood experiences during the coronavirus crisis. Comparative geography can be facilitated either by asking children to rate neighbourhoods from other parts of the world (using film and/or imagery), or by finding ways to have their own neighbourhood rated by 10 References Anderson, J. Askins, K. Cook, I. Desforges, L. Evans, J. Griffiths, H. Lambert, D. Lee, R. MacLeavy, J. Mayblin, L. Morgan, J. Payne, B. Pykett, J. Roberts, D. Skelton, T. (2008) ‘What is Geography’s Contribution to Making Citizens? In Geography 93(1)pp34-39 Aitken, S. (1994) Putting Children in Their Place. Washington D.C.: Association of American Geographers. Aitken, S. (2018) Young People, Rights and Place: Erasure, Neoliberal Politics and Postchild Ethics. Abingdon: Routledge. Bourke, J. (2017) ‘Children’s experiences of their everyday walks through a complex urban landscape of belonging’ in Children’s Geographies 15(1) pp93-106 Catling, S. (2014) ‘Giving Younger Children Voice in Primary Geography: Empowering Pedagogy – A Personal Perspective’ In International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education 23(4) pp350-372 Dorling, D. Tomlinson. S. (2019) Rule Britannia: Brexit and the End of Empire. London: Biteback Publishing Ltd Hammond, L. and McKendrick, J.H. (2020) ’Geography teacher educators’ perspectives on the place of children’s geographies in the classroom’ in Geography 105(2) pp86-93 Harvey, D. (2013) Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution. Verso: London Lefebvre, H. (1991) The Production of Space. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Marden, O.S. (1917) Pushing to the Front or Success Under Difficulties. Revised Second Edition New York: Thomas Y. Crowell. Massey, D. (2008) World City London: Polity Press McKendrick, J.H. (2000). ‘The geography of children: an annotated bibliography’. Childhood, 7(3), 359-387. McKendrick, J.H., eds. (2003) First Steps: A Primer on the Geographies of Children and Youth. London: GCYFRG, RGS-IBG [online]. Available at: http://www.balticstreetadventureplay.co.uk/sites/default/files/content-files/first- steps-childrens-geography-papers.pdf. (accessed 14 June, 2020). Roberts, M. (2013) Geography through Enquiry: Approaches to Teaching and Learning in the Secondary School. Sheffield: Geographical Association Wood, D., Beck, R. J., & Wood, I. (1994). Home Rules. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. 11 12 Table 1: Geographical Resources from Scotland to Promote a Everyday Geographical Citizenship Organisation Authoring Resource Description of Resource Access Rights Respecting Schools Rights Respecting Classroom. Among the RRS resources is a poster outlining the features of a rights respecting classroom. https://www.unicef.org.uk/rights-respecting-schools/wp- content/uploads/sites/4/2015/06/Rights-Respecting-Classroom- Features.pdf Children in Scotland The evidence bank is a collection of direct quotes from children in Scotland on eleven themes, including ‘places and spaces’ and ‘education and learning’ https://evidencebank.org.uk/evidence/ CPAG Scotland Cost of the School Day project. A series of short films from young people in school around Scotland, explaining ways in which their school is tackling the hidden costs of schooling. https://cpag.org.uk/scotland/CoSD/resources Children and Young People’s Commissioner Children’s right to play, culture and the Arts. A report, published in 2014, written for children and young people. https://cypcs.org.uk/wpcypcs/wp- content/uploads/2020/03/Right-to-Play.pdf Scottish Youth Parliament Transport in Scotland. The SYP report from a discussion in 2019 to discuss the future of the transport system in Scotland. https://syp.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/SYP-Discussion- Day-on-NTS2.pdf Children’s Parliament (Scotland) Coronavirus Crisis Experiences. A report on how almost 4000 children in Scotland are managing the coronavirus crisis. https://www.childrensparliament.org.uk/wp- content/uploads/How_are_you_doing_Results_April_May_2020 _Childrens_Parliament-Updated.pdf