Children, Youth and Environments Vol. 14 No. 1 (2004) ISSN: 1546-2250 The School I’d Like: Children and Young People’s Reflections on an Education for the 21st Century Burke, Catherine and Grosvernor, Ian (2003). London and New York: Routledge Falmer; 162 pages. $24.95. ISBN 0415301157. We don’t need no educationWe don’t need no thought controlNo dark sarcasm in the classroomTeachers leave the kids alone…All in all you’re just another brick in the wall - Pink Floyd, The Wall, 1979 In my ideal school…we will no longer be treated like herds of an identical animal waiting to be civilised before we are let loose on the world. It will be recognized that it is our world too. - Miriam, 15, 2001 At last we have been consulted. I, an average fifteen-year-old public schoolgirl, am now allowed to voice my opinion on the school that I would like. - Judith, 15, 2001 What do children and teenagers really think about the education and the schools they must attend for so many hours every week? Suppose they could design the curriculum and school campus themselves– what would schooling look like then? In 1967, Britain’s The London Observer conducted a nation-wide contest for hundreds of children to write about their reactions to and ideas about schools. In 2001, another British newspaper, The Guardian, repeated the contest, this time reaching out to thousands of school children, supported by the universities at Leeds and Birmingham. More than 2500 elementary and secondary students responded with essays, poetry, and drawings. The School I’d Like is a wonderful collection of what these students said and drew, pulled together by excellent short theoretical state-of-the-art pieces on education in 265 1967 and today, written by Burke and Grosvenor, two leading educators in England. For those who want to read the book as a piece of research on children’s “neglected voices” (1), the impetus and design of this qualitative study are well discussed in the preface and introduction. These are followed by ten chapters divided into four parts, covering school buildings, lunchrooms, yards and playgrounds, knowledge and curriculum, learning, teachers, identities and equalities (school uniforms, ideology, etc.), survival as individuals, and flexible contexts (time, tools and furniture). The first third of each chapter is a literature review and theoretical argument by the book’s primary authors that beautifully summarizes what the children and youth had to say on the issue addressed, and integrates the students’ comments and the problems in school today with the history and philosophy of education and schooling in England (and elsewhere), curricular and political debates about school, and recent events in “school reform.” My use of quotation marks around “school reform” is to emphasize– as the authors do – the typically shallow nature of reform efforts. Burke and Grosvenor argue that little is different today from 1952 when the great educator John Dewey observed that changes from research and educational reform have been merely “atmospheric” and that the “fundamental authoritarianism of schooling survived unscathed” (149). The final two thirds of each chapter are unedited comments from children about schools and schooling that often pierce the reader’s heart. What do children think and want? They are remarkably aware and astute about the hidden curriculum of power and control, and that schools everywhere are seriously out of date with the lives they will live as adults. Students who answered the survey in 1967 believed in the possibility of transformation, but students in 2001 had become resigned, even cynical about the possibilities of their voices being listened to. Responses to the 2001 study came from students across social class divides, and a large proportion were from students in disadvantaged schools. Whatever their circumstances, however, British school children seemed aware of the four main issues the book addresses: the nature of the spaces they are educated in; the manner in which knowledge and learning are 266 conceptualized and realized in schools; issues of identity, equality, and individuality; and the rigidity of school contexts. The authors point out that the spaces in which children are educated are recognized by children to be in disrepair in most schools, and the...