Troublemakers: Lessons in Freedom from Young Children at School

How might discipline practices in schools reflect and reproduce larger social inequalities around race, gender, and class? What changes could make school culture more just and inclusive?

Compare and contrast the reasons Zora and Lucas resist conformity at Forest School. How do their personal identities and school context shape their modes of protest? Whose “songs” does the school fail to hear and why?

How do Sean’s and Marcus’s bids for power at Crossroads Elementary illustrate William Ayers’s argument that “disrupting order” is a way for children to be heard? Do their attention-seeking strategies achieve voice and visibility?