Weiss, J: Breathe Easy

The second edition of this text offers a series of reports by scholars writing in the field of education on groups of children and young people whose complexity, strengths, and vulnerabilities are largely unseen or unheard in American society and its schools. The metaphors of invisibility and visibility are used to explore the social and school lives of groups of children and young people in North America who are socially devalued in the sense that alleviating the often difficult conditions of their lives is not a priority. This includes children who are subjected to derogatory stereotypes; children who are educationally neglected in schools that respond inadequately, if at all, to their needs; and children who receive relatively little attention from scholars in the field of education or writers in the popular press. These chapters detail oversights and assults - visible and invisible - but also affirm the capacity of many of these young people to survive, flourish and often educate others, despite the painful and even desperate circumstance of their lives.