Books, S. (Editor) (1998). Invisible children in the society and its schools

	Books, S. (Editor) (1998). Invisible children in the society and its schools. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum and Associates. Pp. xxxii + 214 $27.50 (Paper)       ISBN 0-8058-2368-9 Reviewed by Julie A. Hollitt Charles Sturt University January 15, 2003 The contributing authors of the text, Invisible children in the society and its schools examine the “invisibility” of children within and outside of social institutions and contexts, and the investment society and its institutions have in maintaining the “invisibility” cloak that leaves children unnoticed, excluded, dislocated, disengaged and isolated. The editor has collected a diverse range of chapters which provide very tangible and disturbing indicators of, and insights into, the dynamics of specific social contexts that create (and maintain) the invisibility of socially marginalised children (children with AIDS, Appalachian children, white girls from homes of hidden family violence, children under 18 who are parents, homeless children; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender youth; poor children; illegitimate children). It in essence examines the dynamics of social constructions which view children as used, useful, and useless as opposed to young people with identities, aspirations and active inner worlds. The central thrust of this publication is the exploration of the systematised mechanisms which deliberately marginalise beyond any focal point the plight of already isolated children. Polakow asks the question: “What are the child losses that our current society can tolerate?” (p.3). Her short answer to this question is that it seems our current society is willing to sustain high losses which it prefers to make invisible. She illuminates some chilling statistics in the USA as to where children are, what they are doing, which if any of their rights are protected by law and supported by resources and funding, the percentage of the poor population made up of children (Polakow reports a sobering 40%), and the percentage of homeless families that consist of single mothers and children (70 – 90 % in USA). Polakow thoroughly reviews some of the current forms of legislated invisibility and casting off of children in the USA. While her summary is vital to the credibility and urgency of response to the invisible children, it is distressing news and of such a nature as to make the reader want to skip ahead, or ironically avert one’s eyes. The social support and mental health needs of children who live with AIDS are the focus of Geballe and Gruendel’s contribution to Invisible children in the society and its schools. The demands of this disease on a family member can result in the children in that family feeling invisible in relation to social / familial support and being marginalised in wider social settings. After the death of the family member (particularly if the family member is a single mother), it is not uncommon for children to be ushered off as wards of the state Geballe and Gruendel examine the lot of these children as they live behind the stigma of AIDS and the isolation and secrecy that the “short hand” of this stigma brings about. Children who live with AIDS, or who have lost a close family member with AIDS, are likely to be labelled as learning disabled (many children who experience social dislocation are). Labels such as these are another form of short hand which aid the avoidance of seeing a child and their needs and propensities. Short hand labels are more easily dealt with: they transform the child into the problem that the label is intended to describe and thus hide the other realities of the child away from eyes that find it painful to look on. Finkelstein, Mourad and Doner analyse in more detail some of the legislated “transformation of children into dollars” and, therefore, the transformation of isolated and invisible children into zero dollars. “Serial generations of social reformers have invoked the needs of children to justify an array of contradictory social policies and forms of intervention into the lives of families and children” (p. 169). Finkelstein et al trace a brief history in the USA of how the “plight of children” and the “guilt” of their parents have been maximised and manipulated for divergent political purposes for a number of decades. Some of the policy and legislation has clearly not been in the interests of children, nor in the interests of their protection against isolation and poverty. They provide specific examples in recent USA history of the political manipulation and pressure that has been brought to bear on marginalised children and their families in order to move towards and achieve various types of social reconstruction. (They suggest that the most damaging has been President Clinton’s Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (1996).) Finkelstein et al. assemble a thorough and detailed coverage of the between-the-lines implications of this legislation which effectively makes invisible the illegitimate child, the child in a one parent family, and the female child under 18 who is a parent…they are afforded zero dollars, and therefore they are afforded zero visibility in relation to any public register. “Children have disappeared as objects of national concern” (p. 182); they are no longer seen as the future of the community, the vision of a society evolving towards a common good, but rather they are perceived as units of viable investment (or not). Of course for legislation to advantage itself with this much power, a powerful and dominating language in relation to children and youth has preceded and enabled it. Books comments about how we as a society think and speak about youth. She considers the impact of our use of language on the lives and development of our young. Her words are worth their weight in gold: “’Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also’ (Matt. 6:21). I read these words as a comment on language – a treasure in the sense that language functions as a form of social currency. With respect to public talk about young people, where is our language? How is it used? What does it accomplish? And what does it suggest about our collective heart?…Youth bashing diverts attention from a much- needed focus on the suffering of children and young people, makes harsh policies appear justified, and threatens to erode the moral foundations of public schooling and social supports for the young”. (pp. 196- 197). As other authors from Invisible children in the society and its schools address the issue of language in relation to young people, it is not only youth bashing that hides behind the use of language and “invisibilises” real children within the society and its schools. Language is used to stigmatise children, invisibilising individuals into an undesirable mass, assigning a social category which may then be more easily disposed of (Coleman, 1997). Lesko analyses the language used in relation to “before their time” school-aged mothers. Her exploration of the language used by schools and educational bodies in this area indicates that school-aged mothers are perceived as “disordered chronologies,” “sexual deviants,” and as maturing “all of a sudden.” On the other hand, schools (as social institutions prescribing the “norm”) ignore the visibility of sexuality and sexual practice amongst school-aged adolescents and, in some cases in the US, prohibit education around birth control and safe sex while actively teaching abstinence. Friend analyses how language in schools is often unconsciously (and dangerously) heteronormative, and how, in a subtle way, this use of language makes school life unsafe, silent, and disintegrative for students who are lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender (l/g/b/t). Hetero- normative language creates a silence and dark void around the existence of l/g/b/t students, and around their legitimacy as learners and human beings in their social context. These students are offered a heteronormative mirror in which they can never see themselves. Subsequently, they are expected to remain silent, and to act as though their view and image is clearly visible in that mirror. Without the words ever being specifically uttered, l/g/b/t students can be asked to pretend their identification is as heteronormative as the language says it is meant to be. Then, as Friend describes, there is the conscious and deliberate use of language that is vilifying, discriminatory, violent and all too often endorsed by school management and educational systems in states and counties. Bennett deMarrais’ depiction of the Appalachian students she has worked with is the extreme in demonstrating the enormity of the alienation caused by a blatant normative / majority use of language, and by discrimination between “inferior” language and dialect and the use of “proper” English in schools. Igoa reports on her supportive and inclusive work with marginalised immigrant children using their natural and reflective art as a “language” form, a vehicle through which they become visible and speak out about who they are and what they aspire to. Igoa explores a form of language in which the invisible and silent are both seen and heard. In one way and another, the authors of the different chapters of this text consider some of the schemas that are learnt and perpetuated inter-generationally both in the invisible children and in the contexts and systems in which they find themselves. As such, the content and sway of this book are a challenge to educators at all levels of education. This text should present an uncomfortable landscape when held before the face of educational institutions and before educators who work as instruments in the hands of what can be an unreflective system manipulated by unethical social reformers and reconstructionists. There are suggestions that the level of invisibility of children is perhaps higher than ever before in history. In the introduction, Books (1999) writes: “Rarely ever, I suspect, has there been so much good work waiting and needing to be done by so many people” (p. xxxi). I wonder at this. I have no doubt after reading Invisible children in the society and its schools that the experience of learning some facts, figures and influences in one nation of the world has been overwhelming. It generates a painful awareness in the reader of the devastation of children abandoned to the blindness of social institutions which ironically are intended to represent the hope and vision of the societies in which they flourish. I agree that the schemas which “invisibilise” children and that are apparent are new in that they are the current manifestations of society annihilating the felt presence of children who are isolates and voice- less. However, at least in Western experience, I tend to follow Miller’s (1997, 1985) thoughts on the matter, believing children have been subjugated to being unseen and unheard over an extensive period of history. I would like to suggest that it is more accurate to consider that the historically recent discourse of child rights has heightened public awareness of the plight of current day invisible children. In Australia, McCallum (1990) suggests that the establishment of educational systems in the 19th Century was an attempt to make invisible some of the children by “normalizing” or stratifying them and society even though social reformers built up the system under the premise of liberating them from a life of “invisibility” as exploited units of labour or poverty-ridden units of social responsibility. By way of establishing how old stories of social invisibilities are, it is timely to recall the story of Joseph the youngest son of Jacob (of biblical fame), sold off by his mainly adult brothers to slavery. They did not want to see him or his diversely coloured coat any longer (Genesis, 37). Ironically, his brothers found him many years later in a position of great power and influence while they were in great need. I would suggest that children have been made invisible in general over a long period of time and that there are some children who are made even more so on account of their contextual lives. They are seen neither in their present day, nor envisioned in the future. When it was first presented in this volume, I balked at the thought that we live perhaps in unusual times in relation to the enormity of the social neglect and abandonment of children. Sad to say, but I still remain sceptical that these times are unusual. Worldwide, I think children have very often been seen as useful or useless, and rarely foreseen as messengers or angels or people of power and energy. There is much to be done in relation to marginalised and disadvantaged kids and their rightful place in society and in its schools, however I am doubtful that this is a rarity when considered in the larger historical and international context. Nonetheless, I am convinced by this text that the systematic establishment of mechanisms causing children to be invisible is historically new and rare. A silent, unseen dragnet gathers these children up and spits them out in such a way that there is no institutional accountability or acknowledgment of what is happening. In effect, the danger of these times I would suggest is not just that these children have been made invisible, but that the institutions of society (such as schools and welfare) have systematically “blinded” and “deafened” themselves (by the formalisation of rhetoric, policy, and legislation) to the very existence of these children. The institutionalised mechanisms put in place ensure that the sight and sound of these children is kept away in another corridor without doors or windows. Herein lies the danger (and the historical and international rarity of this particular danger)…these children do not appear in the school systems (or not for long), their parents are kept off unemployment lines while remaining for the most part unemployed, their homelessness makes them “unfindable” (no home, no address, no post box, no mail, no bills, no place, no connection, no existence, no engagement), and their subsequent mental and physical health problems are not acknowledged nor registered in any census or health report. Social reconstructionists have managed to institutionalise and mass produce Harry Potter’s invisible cloak to the extent that a high proportion of marginalised kids have been assigned one each, free of charge and in such a way that they, their families and the wider society may not have seen it happen. The text, Invisible children in the society and its schools, provides an empathic collection of work around the theme of children remaining unseen. It is, I think, lighting up the faces of invisible children and breaking the silence shrouding them. Although this text is not intended to review the situation of children and their invisibility in societies and institutions internationally, it has left me with questions and reflections that are disturbing if extrapolated to an international, cross-cultural level. Consequently, it has been invaluable reading this text as a non-resident of the USA as it represents similar dynamics in policy and legislation as those occurring in Australia, from which soil this reviewer looks on. Books has given us a text which indicates some clear directions as to the type of analyses and discussions that the children of yesterday might be better off having about the children of today and about the type of leaders desirable in the halls of tomorrow. References Coleman, L. M. (1997) Stigma: An enigma demystified. In Lennard J. Davis (Ed.), The disability studies reader. New York: Routledge. McCallum, D. (1990) The social production of merit: Education, Psychology and Politics in Australia 1900 – 1950. London: The Falmer Press Miller, A. (1997) The drama of being a child: The search for the true self. London: Virago Miller, A. (1985 ) Thou shalt not be aware: Society’s betrayal of the child. London: Pluto About the Reviewer Julie A. Hollitt Associate Lecturer in Special Education, School Counselling School of Teacher Education Charles Sturt University Panorama Drive Bathurst NSW 2795 (02) 6338 4196 Julie Hollitt is an Associate Lecturer at Charles Sturt University, Bathurst, a rural university in eastern Australia. The areas she currently lectures in are inclusive education and school counseling; she has lived and worked across Australia as a teacher, counsellor and psychologist. Areas of interest in research include learning difficulties, “seeing” school-aged youth, educational systems and paradigms, mentoring, and power difference in electronic correspondence between educators and their students.