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A divisive paradigm

Visiting children's rights advocates are in New Zealand this week, promoting the integration of children's rights education into the school curriculum. Children are vulnerable and need protection, but teaching them about their value in a rights paradigm only serves to introduce a feeling of entitlement and an environment of critique into families, risking increased conflict.

Katherine Covell and Brian Howe, from the Children's Rights Centre of Canada's Cape Breton University, are in favour of rights based education to be taught in all schools, and have been integral in formulating proposed curriculum to meet this goal. They have been brought here in response to concerns that "only three 11-12 year olds out of five classrooms in Auckland had heard about children's rights, as had only 15-16 percent of school children surveyed across the country." The Building Human Rights Communities in Education, a joint initiative in New Zealand between organisations such as the Human Rights Commission and Amnesty International, is also in favour of bringing in such education.

The curriculum designed by Covell and Howe includes various scenarios and sets of questions that are given to children to initiate discussion. One question, targeted at 10-12 year olds, asks them to compare the following three scenarios: a boy suspended from school for sexual harassment after he kisses a girl on the cheek; a two-year old who is spanked by her mother following a tantrum in the supermarket; and a group fined and banned from a beach for leaving behind rubbish. The question states "these scenarios demonstrate the fact that abuse can take many forms," and asks the children to rank the examples according to "the most appropriate outcome." Another question asks whether children should be removed from their parents if the house is left "extremely dirty" and they do not give their children "any rules to live by."

Some of the topics addressed by the curriculum are important ones and the intention behind it may be to empower children, but the framework in which it is set actually politicises them. Children are young, susceptible members of our society, and should be treated as such; instead the underlying ideologies of this curriculum encourages children to be critical of their parents and introduces uncertainty into their thinking about their family. Such questions go beyond the capability of children and fail to present to them a helpful picture of the nature of relationships. Healthy families and communities are made up of relationships which involve compromise and selflessness; focusing on rights creates absolute expectations, as opposed to needs which encourage us to consider other people. In an individualistic society such as ours, we need less focus on individuals and more on the give and take which makes long-term relationships viable.