Commitment or Public Relations? A Review of Empowering Children: Children's Rights Education as a Pathway to Citizenship

Commitment or Public Relations? A Review of Empowering Children: Children's Rights Education as a Pathway to Citizenship, R. Brian Howe and Katherine Covell, University of Toronto Press (0802038573, $45.00, £28.00), 28 May 2005. Here we have an issue in development, potentially one of the most far-reaching that can be seriously considered, and one that will require extensive and unavoidable educational action. For readers of this journal, the book does not, however, invoke ICT - apart from a couple of remarks to the effect that a government's putting some material on a web-page is hardly an adequate fulfilment of its responsibilities in this area. But ICT-enhanced educational activity can certainly form a significant part of any adequate response, so perhaps we should look more closely. For one outside the children's arena, perhaps the most striking fact Howe and Covell report is the near-universal ratification by members of the United Nations of the 1989 on the Rights of the Child (apart from two rogue states, Somalia and the United of America, that have only signed - full details are available at )1. Ratification, as Howe and Covell explain, means that parties officially committed themselves to a policy of recognizing and implementing the of the not merely to aspiring to practise children's rights. Ratification constitutes a legally binding commitment, obligating states parties to bring their laws, policies, and practices into line with the standards set out in the Convention (p. 25). The British, is said, acquired their empire in a fit of absence of mind; one wonders whether the 192 ratifiers of the 1989 were similarly afflicted: serious endeavour to undertake, or even to publicize the nature of their legal commitments is surprisingly hard to discern.2 Publicity is certainly required, for the adopts a way of thinking about (i.e. persons below the age of 18 years) that is by no means widely accepted or understood. I would guess that the normal reasonably enlightened view is a version of the assumptions about parental and state paternalism in regard to children (p. 26) that Howe and Covell see rejected by the in favour of a view that it now is who have fundamental rights, and is parents, adults, and state authorities who have obligations to respect and provide for those rights (p. 26), that will be implemented in age-appropriate ways (in a manner consistent with the evolving capacities of the child, Article 14). Related to this, Howe and Covell contrast a view of as becoming-citizens or not-yets, on the way to acquiring full status in the community, with as being-citizens, already citizens with definite rights. The recognises both aspects (p. 62), but again I suspect most people would not venture far beyond what is appropriate for becoming-citizens.3 Education is then needed, not only for the children, but for the adult populations whose views have largely been superseded by the framers of the Convention. It is mandated by Article 42: States Parties undertake to make the principles and provisions of the widely known, by appropriate and active means, to adults and alike. But, given that a primary concern for at least part of childhood is with education in some sense or other, the very allotted to by the speak centrally to a right to education (Articles 28 and 29), and, as Howe and Covell argue (p. 29ff), several other articles implicitly require or impinge on educational action. The main concern of the book is with the nature of the children's education that has been offered so far and that might go some way to fulfilling the obligations entailed by the Convention. After an introductory chapter, the book's second chapter briefly describes views about the status of - very roughly a historical sequence starting with their being the property of their parents, through their being immature beings with to be cared for, to the Convention's individual and independent persons with of their own (p. …

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