The ‘good-enough society’,the ‘good-enough citizen’ and the ‘good-enough student’: Where is children’s participation agenda moving to in Brazil?

Abstract

This article discusses how the new paradigm of children’s participation rights and competence has maintained unchallenged the subjectivity considered apt to be included as an opinion giver in the polity. ‘Developmentalism’ continues to feed as a theoretical input and a practical regulation of adult–children relationships. The article, based on an empirical investigation with Brazilian children, discusses how participation views of students and school staff, premised on the ‘good-enough student’, commit participation to an unchallenged school hierarchy and non-reciprocal adult-child relationships. This single standpoint from where one envisages the educational process leads to a de-politicization of school life. Consequently, the effective inclusion of children in society, constituting an important political challenge of our time, must be faced so that children’s participation can become more real and less rhetorical.