Institutional rights and rites: a century of childhood : based on a inaugural professorial lecture delivered at the Institute of Education, University of London on 4 June 2003. This was the seventh in a series of lectures marking the centenary year of the Institute of Education

Over the past century in Britain, adults' rights have completely changed so that, at least in theory, all adults are respected choice-makers and not submissive dependents.

Yet children and young people are still excluded from many areas of society - as women used to be.

They are seldom seen as real, thinking, competent people, but rather as pre-persons, puppets twitched by nature or nurture, needing firm adult control while their minds grow as slowly as their bodies.

The Institute of Education has played a leading part in inventing, testing and trying to organise this supposedly gradual growth.

Newer research methods of working with young children are re-discovering how highly competent, organised and motivated they can be.

In this millennium, it is time to adopt up-to-date research methods, theories, and findings to inform all its work in order to promote every person's rights to respect for their worth and dignity.