Child Rights in Practice

Gerison Lansdown

Measuring Child Participation

A number of people suggested that it would be helfpul to open up a discussion on the tool for measuring child partcipation that I shared at Whistler. I would be very interested in any thoughts/ideas people have for strengthening the tool, opportunities for piloting it, suggestions for how ot take it forward.

I am attaching the ppt I presented in the workshop as well as a version of the tool amended following our disucssions there

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Gerison LansdownPermalink Reply by Gerison Lansdown on December 17, 2009 at 12:29am
thanks for this David - it look really interesting - but unfortunately I cannot get the sound to work!! Not sure what the problem is. Any suggestions as to the reason???
Gerison
DavidPermalink Reply by David on December 17, 2009 at 1:13am
Hi Gerison, here everything is working alright - sound included. Try not to miss the interview. You can still click on the video or on the URL, and the Youtube version will download.
Gerison LansdownPermalink Reply by Gerison Lansdown on December 17, 2009 at 12:31am
I have just come from a meeting on child particpation in Brussels and learned that a colleague in Warchild has been using the measurement tool for assessing the paritcipation work they are doing in the field and have found it extremely useful. An encouraging feedback!! Gerison
Sarah FieldPermalink Reply by Sarah Field on April 7, 2010 at 5:48am
Dear Gerison,
As part of my research project, I am presently developing child-rights indicators to measure the effectiveness of legal and policy responses for realising children's right to be heard in peacemaking and peacebuilding . The objective is to measure the effectiveness of specific legal and policy responses at a local level with reference to the CRC and children's lived reality . I would be most interested to engage in further discussion with you. Also, do you know which countries Warchild have been assessing their participation work?
Sarah
DavidPermalink Reply by David on December 17, 2009 at 4:51am
Why should little children be allowed to make their own decisions and to participate.

"By age four or thereabouts, human beings have a fully developed communication system which, for all intents and purposes, makes them mature persons. They are capable of expressing themselves, of understanding what's said to them, and of structuring continuous thought; and they are capable of doing things with their environment. You could ask whether a person age four and up belongs at all in a book on child rearing, because I don't consider someone over that age to be a child. To a certain extent the subject doesn't belong here, and yet society considers people to be children until a much older age than four, and so we have to discuss this largely because society forces it on us.

I want to explain what I mean by a person over four being mature......."

".......Now, you have to be careful not to draw the wrong implications from this conclusion. Thus, it would be catastrophic to deny children what is due them. All people, regardless of age, have needs which should not be overlooked......"

Read more: "Ages Four and Up," from Child Rearing, by Daniel Greenberg.

~ David
DavidPermalink Reply by David on December 18, 2009 at 3:49am
Can Kids Teach Themselves?

Sugata Mitra shows how kids teach themselves (video – 20:59). Sugata Mitra's "Hole in the Wall" and Minimally Invasive Education (MIE) experiments have shown that, in the absence of supervision or formal teaching, children can teach themselves and each other, if they're motivated by curiosity.

Kids participate in making the decisions that influence their lifes. Children make vital decisions for themselves in ways that no adults could have anticipated or even imagined.

The requirement that adults be able to act independently does not mean that they must be loners, or even be "able to go it alone" in life. It means, rather, that they have the wholeness to deal with life without being dependent on others for their basic decision-making processes. Because man is a social animal, it can be taken for granted that independence implies and includes the skills necessary for cooperation with other people to attain aims that are mutually beneficial and better achieved in conjunction with others.

~ David
DavidPermalink Reply by David on December 18, 2009 at 8:40am
"Hole in the Wall" project (video 5:29)

Golam MostafaPermalink Reply by Golam Mostafa on December 25, 2009 at 11:41am
Dear Gerison Lansdown

Thank you very much for bring the issue in the discussion. Save the Children developed instruments to measure the child participation. But all those are not suitable in many settings. Children can be involved in developing the tools for measuring participation.
DavidPermalink Reply by David on December 29, 2009 at 2:54am
We take it for granted that schools should foster good citizenship. Universal education in this country in particular always kept one eye sharply focused on the goal of making good Americans out of us all.

We all know what America stands for. The guiding principles were clearly laid down by our founding fathers, and steadily elaborated ever since.

This country is a democratic republic. No king, no royalty, no nobility, no inherent hierarchy, no dictator. A government of the people, by the people, for the people. In matters political, majority rule. No taxation without representation.

This country is a nation of laws. No arbitrary authority, no capricious government now giving, now taking. Due process.

This country is a people with rights. Inherent rights. Rights so dear to us that our forefathers refused to ratify the constitution without a Bill of Rights added in writing, immediately.

Knowing all this, we would expect - nay, insist (one would think) - that the schools, in training their students to contribute productively to the political stability and growth of America, would

* be democratic and non-autocratic;
* be governed by clear rules and due process;
* be guardians of individual rights of students.

A student growing up in schools having these features would be ready to move right into society at large.

But the schools, in fact, are distinguished by the total absence of each of the three cardinal American values listed.

They are autocratic -- all of them, even "progressive" schools.

They are lacking in clear guidelines and totally innocent of due process as it applies to alleged disrupters.

They do not recognize the rights of minors.

All except Sudbury Valley, which was founded on these three principles.

I think it is safe to say that the individual liberties so cherished by our ancestors and by each succeeding generation will never be really secure until our youth, throughout the crucial formative years of their minds and spirits, are nurtured in a school environment that embodies these basic American truths.

[excerpt, Back to Basics - Political basics, by Daniel Greenberg, The Sudbury Valley School Experience ]

The Choices We Face:

Schools Fit for a King or for a Citizen ?

Melting-Pot or Multi-Culture ?

Federal or Local Control ?

Today or Tomorrow ?

~ David
Lakshmi.P.MPermalink Reply by Lakshmi.P.M on July 8, 2010 at 1:52am
Hi, Thanks for very good informative Slides and material on Measuring the Child Participation. Nice initiative to measure it. Good Work dear...

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