Students in History

In recent history students as a group sometimes have played an important role. France and US in the 1960s and India especially Bihar in the 1970s, Bengal in 1960s and 70s and more recently Delhi in the arly 1990s were political situations where students took the lead and attempting a social change. Often violating established norms and structures of authority and power is such acts as defying teachers, elders etc.
The fact that students are a volatile but peaceful lot who occasionally surpise elders and teachers by acts of violence and politics, is a "modern" concept. I do not know what students in madrasas and pathshalas did in India in the medieval India, but if you were to read the most fascinating account of Childhood "Centuries of Childhood" by the renowned historian Phillipe Aries, you would be amazed by the fact that most of the attributes of a child or of a student and or very recent provenance [I am tempted to call it theVictorian conceot of childhood, more accurately it is the modern perception of childhood and students.
Aries recreates the concept of childhood precisely to question the Modern notions of childhood and suggest that at least in medieval France, childhood an sudents meant something altogether different from the 19th and 20th century notions. The book is a very vivid in desciption, rich in information and subtle in argument.
But Aries makes it clear that there never was in history a qunessential notion of childhood and that our current notions of childhood are recent constructs. Here is just one example of from Aries: Apparently it was common among 12 13 year old student in French schools to carry swords to school and it was not uncommon for them to nick a teacher should the excitement of an argument demanded such an action.... Can you imagine doing that to your teacher? Certainly not!
More recently it would seem that we have come full circle, incidents of students carrying guns to schools [in delhi] and using those guns to kill [in the US] are not too uncommon...