‘The kid most likely’: Naming, Brutality and Silence within and beyond School Settings

‘The kid most likely’: Naming, Brutality and Silence within and beyond School Settings

Violence in educational settings is a complex issue, and the topic of a considerable body of international research literature (see, for example, Casella, 2001; Elliott,
Hamburg, & Williams, 1998; Mills, 2001). This volume of research asks authors and readers to rethink what is known and believed about school violence, and in this
chapter I draw on three narratives in order to query the brutality of discourses within which children are labelled and silenced. The chapter is concerned with systemic
violence (Watkinson & Epp, 1997) and its discursive effects, calling into question: labelling practices that name children as particular 'types' of social subject; silencing practices that denigrate, disregard and dismiss those most vulnerable in unequal relations of power; as well as those discursive silences that tacitly enable the
reproduction of violence. Through the figure of 'the kid most likely'—in other words, children who are constituted as those most likely to experience educational failure, to
commit criminal offences, to pose risks to themselves and others—the chapter considers how discursive practices of naming and silence powerfully reproduce and normalise symbolic and material violence within unequal relations of power.

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