ABSTRACT
This chapter explains young people's control of what may be argued is the major contexts of their lives: education, schools and schoolyards. These are concerns of global import; although a large preponderance of shootings are in the United States, schoolyard violence is a problem affecting many countries. The existence of playgrounds or schoolyards attached to a school building has been part of educational environments since at least the 1th century. In 1799 Robert Owen erected a 'new educational institution' as part of New Lanark, his experiment for a planned industrial village to the east of Glasgow. The spatial contiguity of Owen's cotton mill and his new educational institution is worth considering in terms of the dissolution and segregation of public and private spaces. Disruptive events on schoolyards may result from complex relations presupposing seemingly endless numbers and types of activities students engage in with peers, adults and the non-human.
