Miss me? In case you hadn’t noticed, I skipped sending a missive two weeks ago. While I usually write about politics and policy, this time around I’ll talk a bit about process. Specifically, my process of learning about children’s rights, because that’s what has been occupying me of late. I’ll be back to current events next time.
Every once in a while I get asked how I came to be doing what I’m doing. For those new to my musings, what I’m doing is a Ph.D. in law, with a focus on children’s rights in education law in Canada. As for how I came to be doing that, I usually tell a meandering story about the various paths and experiences that brought me where I am. Eventually, however, I get to the heart of it…
I once had occasion to ask an educator if they had spoken with a young learner about the learner’s views regarding a difficult situation related to their schooling. The seemingly knee-jerk response I got: we can’t ask the young learner! I was stunned. While in retrospect, asking the educator to speak directly to the young learner about the difficult situation was likely unrealistic in the circumstances, the swiftness and dismissiveness of the educator’s response made me wonder what an education system that treats children as experts in their own lives might look like. So I decided to dig into that in my graduate legal research. I’ve been digging ever since.
What I’ve discovered while digging into children’s rights is how pervasive children’s issues are in the world around us. Indeed, that’s the whole point of this little writing project: to highlight children’s rights in our everyday lives. But making children’s rights real in everyday life is not an easy proposition. The world is designed by adults for adults, even the parts that are supposed to be for children. Finding ways out of that default to something that treats children as valued community members means taking active and deliberate steps, both individually and as parts of larger systems.
Some places are attempting to do just that. Last year, the Scottish Parliament passed legislation that incorporates the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (child-friendly PDF) into Scots Law. While there is still some legal uncertainty about the extent of the legislation’s effects, it seems that elected officials in Scotland at least have shown the political will to acknowledge that children’s rights are important and worth protecting in all areas of law and policy.
(Canada’s not there yet, though it’s not for a lack of suggestions.)
Alongside that bit of learning about Scotland came some deeper learning about my emerging scholarly life. After digging into children and freedom in one context and children and violence in another, I spent much of the past few weeks digging around on a ‘quick’ project about building systems of accountability for children’s rights. I got that project through an email that landed in my inbox from someone who knows my work and thought I might be a good fit. I jumped on the opportunity.
But I failed to realize what it would mean in terms of all the other things on my plate. I missed my writing goal in this space two weeks ago, fell behind on personal and professional correspondence, and ended up pushing back some other deadlines. Despite two decades of work experience and multiple framed pieces of paper on my walls, I’m still figuring out how best to manage my time and energy.
I am glad to be learning about ways that children can be treated as experts in their own lives. I am also glad to be learning what it means to become an expert in children’s rights. In the process, I’m learning what it means to be an expert in my own life.