"Sit Still and Be Good": Silencing Bodies of Learning in Early Childhood

• In Event: 41.083 - Roundtable Session 15
  In Roundtable Session: 41.083-13 - Creativity and Agency as Resistance to Governing Discourses in/Outside of the Early Childhood Classroom: Interrogations and Transformative Imaginaries

Abstract

How is the body restricted in formal schooling? What are the impacts of these limitations and regimentations placed upon young children’s bodies? This paper frames the body as a tool that children use to make sense of the world, and to communicate their knowledge and ideas. Looking closely at the rigid physical limitations placed on children in schools (walking in line, raising hands, sitting quietly), I examine the ways children are silenced through these limitations. Using a case study, I address the ways that children are framed as incapable or unable due to the systematic silencing of physical communication in formal school settings.

Author

• Dana Frantz Bentley, Buckingham, Browne, and Nichols School