Education, Voice and Empowerment: Learning with and from Children in Poverty

Abstract

The social construction of childhood as a period of dependence, innocence and passivity often works to silence children’s voices and undermine the contributions that they can, and do, make to their social worlds. Children in poverty face a double disadvantage in this regard. On the one hand, they are viewed as incapable of participation for their alleged incapacities due to being young. On the other, these children are framed through deficit discourses that identify them as sites of problems in need of external interventions. In this chapter, we interrogate some of these discourses. We engage with accounts from five children living in an urban slum in Bangladesh to examine their experiences in the context of their flexible education program. We contend that valuable insights can be gained from listening to these children about their aspirations and what they value in their education. By engaging with the ‘subaltern’ voices of children in poverty, we highlight their aspirations for futures free of poverty and as contributing members of community. We also discuss the importance that these children attribute to their school as a space of belonging which fosters caring relationships, and nurtures their sense of safety, protection and wellbeing.