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'Children's Voices'

Exploring the complexities of voicing.

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Gender And Sexuality Education Philosophy with Children Reflections on Pedagogy

RHEA KUTHOORE

September 26, 2022 · 8 min read

When doing philosophy with young people, I try to write down everything I hear and see. I then read my notes to think more deeply about the perspectives shared during class. I also carefully pick the insights that I consider meaningful and share it with the readers of my blog in an attempt to put forth the ways in which young people’s philosophical questions and ideas can speak to new, old and current ways of experiencing different lives and the world. As I read James and Spyrou, I began wondering more about the ways in which I had been voicing ‘children’s voices’: what was I not seeing and hearing in class? What was I not sharing with my readers and why not? By choosing phrases and questions that were insightful to me, was I somehow imposing my own frameworks of meaning onto what I had witnessed and thereby misrepresenting what had been voiced? What are some better ways of voicing ‘children’s voices’?

The articles raise a plethora of problems when it comes to representing ‘children’s voices.’ Some of them include: glossing over the diversity of children’s lives and experiences (James 262), making use of children’s voices to further an agenda of empowerment as understood by the researcher, overlooking how voices are multi-layered (Spyrou 157), ignoring the non-normative voice (Spyrou 157) and failing to illuminate other possibilities for interpretation (Spyrou 158). In all these issues, the common feature is that ‘children’s voices’ is somehow not already considered to be representative of meanings, diversity, power, empowerment, etc. As a result, ‘children’s voices’ is perceived as that which requires representation through the process of ‘voicing (i.e ascribing meaning, interpreting, setting agendas, etc) children.’

In this paper, I aim to borrow Bakhtin’s theoretical insights on voice to show how the dichotomy between ‘children’s voices’ and ‘voicing children’ can be resolved by recognising how children are always and already voicing (and hence, representing) themselves. The responsibilities of researchers (adult or child), in this view, should no longer be understood as representing another’s voice but as sharing what is being mutually understood through the process of research.
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Voice,’ as advanced by Bakhtin, is speech that is social and co-constructed, rather than individual, fixed, straightforward, linear or clear (Komulainen 18,23). The social nature of ‘voice’ is based on the idea that speech is moulded by multiple factors such as our own assumptions about each other, our particular use of language, the institutional contexts in which we operate and overall ideological and discursive climates that prevail (Spyrou 152).

Spyrou uses examples from research to instantiate the above features of ‘voice’ in more concrete ways. In one example, wherein children had voiced themselves differently when they were at school (Spyrou 155), we learn about how institutional contexts affect voice. In another example, wherein children were using the phrase ‘Turks’ to mean ‘some Turks’ and not ‘all Turks’ (Spyrou 156), we see how the particular use of language plays out in voicing. In yet another example, Spyrou was surprised that children could not explain who the Turkish-Cypriots were, even though the category was extremely important to their lives. However, instead of dismissing the responses from children as being ignorant, he paid attention to the reason for the inconsistency in their responses. On doing so, he was able to see how the authoritative discourses, i.e the way in which educational systems were concerned with pure national categories like ‘Turks’ and ‘Greeks’ rather than hyphenated ones, affected voices and also revealed the importance of looking beyond the actual words to understand voice (Spyrou 158). Finally, Syprou cites the example of a 6 year old who claims ‘I am big now’ after joining primary school to show how the use of language reveals information about the interests, values and assumptions of particular groups (Spyrou 159). In this particular case, we can understand the larger historical, cultural and socio-political contexts of voice by inquiring into cultural beliefs that link ideas of maturity to progress at school or into assumptions made by developmental psychology when linking age with specific competencies.

By substantiating the features of ‘voice’ proposed by Bakhtin, the above examples demonstrate how voice is indeed social and co-created rather than individual. Moreover, by emphasizing how voice only exists in the interactions amongst individuals/groups/spaces/times/etc, this conception urges us to turn our attention to meanings, agendas, interpretations, etc., (representations) arising within each and every interaction. Expanding our horizons to notice how ‘children’s voices’ embody such meanings, agendas and interpretations of their own enables us to shift our perspectives on ‘voicing children.’ In this view then, by assuming that children’s voices are linear, fixed, straightforward and clear and that which requires voicing through attribution of meanings, agendas and interpretations, researchers are doing an injustice to children’s voices.

So what would it look like if we were to do research with children ‘in a better way?’ How can we relay ‘children’s voices?’ One way suggested by Spyrou is to become more familiar with the discourses that inform children’s voices as well as those that inform one’s own voice (Spyrou 160). Another method suggested by James is to try and understand where children are coming from and why their positions may be subject to change and variation through time (Spyrou 269). My own suggestion is to progress towards research that involves deciphering, together (researchers and researchee), the assumptions, interpretations, meanings, etc., influencing voices. Furthermore, relaying the many-meanings, ambiguities and messiness involved during the process of research would allow for reflections about the features of voice as understood by Bakhtin.

In my own work of doing philosophy with young people, I am interested to co-author my blog posts in a way in which we can co-decide what and how we choose to share with our readers. I am also curious to learn more about our interpretations of each other’s voices. Moving forward, I wish to pay more attention to our use of language as well as the assumptions that underlie our interactions. Finally, I think it is crucial to have shared knowledge about the ideological and discursive climates that mould us.

Citations

(1). Allison James, "Giving voice to children's voices: practices and problems, pitfalls and potentials"

(2). Spyros Spyrou, "The limits of children's voices: from authenticity to critical, reflexive representation"

RHEA KUTHOORE is an educator who is passionate about facilitating philosophical and feminist thinking amongst young people.

Thinking Rhizomatically

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