Wow! This is fascinating. I am passionately interested in this area. Indeed, it was my fascination in this that became one of my prime motivators for leaving my educational advisory post in Newport, South Wales to come to do a PhD. For a few years, I had been an educational advisor responsible for 'inclusion, diversity, equality and achievement' for 3 to 16 year olds across Newport City. It was a wonderful job and the remit of the job was one concerned with the way in which issues of social justice and 'politics' were 'fitted in' and experienced within the formal and informal curriculum as part of a wider countrywide focus upon social justice (for a short period, at least...between about 2003 and 2007).
In the more optimistic years of early New Labour, before the recession, we worked with some amazingly passionate teachers, youth workers, young people and head teachers. I have so many examples of just how the political interests and agency of children and young people came to shape both pedagogic school practices and aspects of the curriculum. I firmly believe that children as young as three have political sensibilities making judgements about 'fairness', exclusion/inclusion, discrimination, and 'how things ought to be' from my teaching, advisory experiences and from having three children of my own. I also found, that handled well, very many children become passionately interested in 'politics' as a facet of the 'everyday'. I feel very sad about the way in which - almost without comment - the possibilities for this seem to have been removed as a 'legitimate' dynamic of what should/can be done with children and young people in the public arena of schooling in the UK (Wales included, sadly). Certainly, my post within the Local Authority has 'gone'. The focus on 'achievement' has now been coupled with 'raising standards'. I know that this is the sorry story in many other places.
The point of that pre-amble is that I would be really, really interested in supporting, working with you on this in any way that may be/become appropriate.... And on to the question you posed! Yes, I do believe that I can identify a particularly significant 'political' moment for me at the age of 8 in 1971. A bit of background...I had grown up in Brighton with my mother and two grandparents in during the 1960s. My father had died when I was two and my brother newly born. My early memories are of being very happy and secure but I realise now that there was very little money and that it must have been very hard for my mother. When I was eight my mother married 'Uncle John' and we moved to a farm in the Cotswolds. Our lives changed dramatically. There was a financial stability hitherto unknown. Uncle John and my Mum got married and my brother and I accompanied them both on their Honeymoon (by aeroplane - imagine...) to Sorento (lucky them!) I realise now that I had led the sort of sheltered life that many lower middle class families led in the 1960s. I can remember walking through Sorento - holding tightly onto my mother's hand (I can still sense the grip. It all felt very exotic). But what I remember more than anything was the shock and pain of seeing an old lady begging on the pavement so close to us as we walked past that I could smell her old, decaying body. I can still sense the smell of her and the shock and sadness. I was pulled past but I remember tugging at my Mum's hand and asking her for money. I took it back to the old lady and gave it t her. I can remember very intense feelings. I really don't believe I was frightened. I think I was appalled at the human degradation. I was upset afterwards I seem to remember. My mother has said that I kept asking, 'why' and what she would do with the money and whether we could go back and give her more and if we could go and see if she was alright...
Of course - this was a long time ago and I am now unsure just how much of this I remember 'in my core'. Clearly, it struck my mother as a significant moment and it is something that we have talked about since. I suspect that she was very good at engaging with me as best she felt she could. It's interesting that I recall it as something 'exotic'. Was I 'protected' from such sights in Brighton? Were there fewer homeless people in Brighton then? I don't know. I do know that my new life in the Cotswolds meant that I didn't see anyone in the same condition for many, many years. But I do believe that it was something that became part of me...although I went to quite a 'posh' private school through my adolescence, as soon as I got to university I became involved in a 'student community action group' in the early1980s in a way that led me into student politics, combining ideology and practice (and many arguments about it with my lovely Uncle John, who was very much my 'Dad' by then...)
Sorry, I hadn't meant to write that much. I do apologise. I'm not quite sure that I have ever written that down before. It is a special memory.
Thank-you for giving me permission to remember it and accord it some value.