The Little Red Schoolbook, 1969

The Introduction to The Little Red Schoolbook

Many of you think 'It's no good. We'll never get anything done. Grown-up's decide everything and our friends are either frightened or don't care'.

Grown-ups do have a lot of power over you: they are real tigers. But in the long run they can never control you completely: they are paper tigers.

Tigers are frightening. But if they're made of paper they can't eat anyone. You believe too much in the power of grown-ups, and not enough in your own capabilities.

Children and grown-ups are not natural enemies. But grown-ups themselves have little real control over their own lives. They often feel trapped by economic and political forces. Children suffer as a result of this. Co-operation is possible when grown-ups have realised this and have started to do something about it.

If you discuss things among yourselves and actively try to get things changed, you can achieve a lot more than you think. We hope that this book will show you some of the ways in which you can influence your own lives. We hope it will show you why grown-ups are paper tigers.

The Little Red Schoolbook
Copenhagen, 1969
Written by two teachers, Søren Hansen and Jesper Jensen

It was banned in France and prosecuted in the U.K where a judge (aged 57) found that the pages on sex were likely to 'deprave and corrupt' young people. Despite the prosecutiuon, a revised edition was published in the U.K. Apart from the infamous School Stopper's Handbook which was handed out by anarchists in the U.K in the late 80's, I can't think of any recent attempt to publish and distribute radically critical material on growing-up, school, sex, the family and work etc.