This book is an ethnography of teachers and children in grades 1 and 2, and presents arguments about why we should take gender and childhood sexuality seriously in the early years of South African primary schooling. Taking issue with dominant discourses which assumes children s lack of agency, the book questions the epistemological foundations of childhood discourses that produce innocence. It examines the paradox between teachers dominant narratives of childhood innocence and children s own conceptualisation of gender and sexuality inside the classroom, with peers, in heterosexual games,...

This book challenges readers to recognise the conditions that underpin popular approaches to children and young people s participation, as well as the key processes and institutions that have enabled its rise as a global force of social change in new times. The book draws on the vast international literature, aswell as interviews with key practitioners, policy-makers, activists, delegates and academics from Japan, South Africa, Brazil, Nicaragua, Australia, the United Kingdom, Finland, the United States and Italy to examine the emergence of the young citizen as a key global priority in the...