Compiling decades of fieldwork, two acclaimed scholars offer strategies for strengthening democracies by nurturing the voices of children and encouraging public awareness of their role as citizens.
Voice, Choice, and Action is the fruit of the extraordinary personal and professional partnership of a psychiatrist and a neurobiologist whose research and social activism have informed each other for the last thirty years. Inspired by the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, Felton Earls and Mary Carlson embarked on a series of international studies that would recognize the voice of children. In Romania they witnessed the consequences of infant institutionalization under the Ceausescu regime. In Brazil they encountered street children who had banded together to advocate effectively for themselves. In Chicago Earls explored the origins of prosocial and antisocial behavior with teenagers. Children all over the world demonstrated an unappreciated but powerful interest in the common good.
On the basis of these experiences, Earls and Carlson mounted a rigorous field study in Moshi, Tanzania, which demonstrated that young citizens could change attitudes about HIV/AIDS and mobilize their communities to confront the epidemic. The program, outlined in this book, promoted children's communicative and reasoning capacities, guiding their growth as deliberative citizens. The program's success in reducing stigma and promoting universal testing for HIV exceeded all expectations.
Here in vivid detail are the science, ethics, and everyday practice of fostering young citizens eager to confront diverse health and social challenges. At a moment when adults regularly profess dismay about our capacity for effective action, Voice, Choice, and Action offers inspiration and tools for participatory democracy.
Felton (Tony) Earls is Professor Emeritus of Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Professor Emeritus of Human Behavior and Development at Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. Mary (Maya) Carlson is Associate Professor of Psychiatry (Neuroscience), retired, at Harvard Medical School and a Research Associate Emerita of the Department of Psychiatry at Boston Children's Hospital.
Title: Voice, Choice, and Action: The Potential of Young Citizens to Heal Democracy
Author: Earls, Felton,Carlson, Mary
ISBN: 9780674987425
Binding:
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Publication Date: 2020-09-25
Number of Pages: 336
Weight: 0.4871 kg
Earls and Carlson have discovered, studied, and advocated for an aspect of development previously unrecognized: how children and youth can find their voice, feel empowered to use that voice, and translate that voice into political action. This is a remarkable book, personally, scientifically, and politically. -- Gordon Harper * Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry *
This important book presents fascinating research about children's experiences under difficult conditions in several parts of the world. The book shines with rich detail, heartfelt concern, and deep insight. -- William Damon, Professor and Director, Stanford Center on Adolescence
Here is a compelling argument for the democratic capacities of children and youth. Science, philosophy, and two lifetimes of hands-on experience support its bold vision. -- Peter Levine, Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life, Tufts University
In this insightful and revelatory book, Earls, a psychiatrist, and Carlson, a neurobiologist-lifelong partners in work and love-sing a duet that blends empiricism and social activism, theory and practice, intellectual biography and interdisciplinarity. Their international journeys and projects, distinguished by scientific rigor, innovation, and discovery, offer strong evidence of the power and wisdom of children's voices, raised in disciplined and deliberative discourse, to the building of a more inclusive and just democracy. Voice, Choice, and Action is at once a richly detailed narrative, a discerning analysis, a moral declaration, a rigorous roadmap, and an urgent call to action. -- Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, Emily Hargroves Fisher Research Professor of Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education
A landmark work. Integrating neurobehavioral and social sciences, Earls and Carlson link theory and social action to offer a transformative vision of children as active agents in democratic societies around the world. -- Lincoln Chen, President, China Medical Board of Cambridge, MA; Chair, BRAC/USA; former Chair, CARE/USA
A wide-ranging and inspiring study of citizen engagement among young people...Earls and Carlson provide an educational program for improving children's communication skills and reasoning capacities in order to make them effective advocates for themselves and others...Readers interested in childhood development, progressive causes, and public health will want to take note. * Publishers Weekly *
Reflecting their years of research and dedication to an action-based, participatory approach, the authors provide specific guidelines for parents, teachers, police, and other authority figures in setting up a Young Citizens program, aimed at children ages 10 to 14, in their own communities...An inspiring vision of a newly inclusive democracy. * Kirkus Reviews (starred review) *
Voice, Choice, and Action is a book for these times as we confront the fault lines in our democracy. Tony Earls and Maya Carlson have written a cri de coeur, urging us to include children as full citizens, as participants in the public square. It's a deeply provocative work about the place of children in strengthening our sense of community. -- Alex Kotlowitz, author of An American Summer and There Are No Children Here
Aims to provide convincing proof that children are and can be political actors in their own communities, and attempts to show the tools required for child and youth citizenship to develop and flourish...It provides a comprehensive exploration of the potential for enabling children to develop into deliberative citizens...A valuable read for researchers on childhood in any discipline.
-- Nico Brando * Journal of Human Development and Capabilities *