Children’s Education: From a Right to a Capability

Critical literacy: an approach to child rights education in Uganda and Canada

“…Child rights education alone is insufficient, as Spence (2021) decries, ‘there are problems with an unthinking, decontextualized promulgation of global children's rights norms’ (p. 144). Fostering a critical exploration of contextually understood rights may support them to ‘read’ their world better and instigate their desire to co‐create effective social justice approaches for social change: ‘When schools are thought of as offering training in the workings of democracy, … [it] can afford children the opportunity to learn how to use their voices, how to constructively enact their rights to the benefit of the entire community’ (Biffi & Monta, 2021, p. 80).…”

“…Critical literacy and child rights education are interdependent and complementary; they both provide opportunities to share, to listen, to learn more about others, to develop awareness and appreciation of diverse perspectives and experiences and to reflect deeply on the world—especially through the lens of social justice (Biffi & Monta, 2021; Covell et al, 2017; McDaniel, 2004; Vandenhole, 2020; Vasquez et al, 2019). Critical literacy encourages children to tussle with text (of all kinds) about important and complex issues such as diversity, equity, equality, justice, advocacy and voice, which are fundamental values espoused in the CRC and the Charter.…”

“…Education is ‘… a complex dialogical process of co‐construction between adults and children [b]ecause content alone is not enough to create democratic, empowering classroom settings or to prepare students to become active agents of social justice in their lives and communities’ (Biffi & Monta, 2021, p. 81). Thus, a classroom setting where children and their teachers are encouraged to bring, generate and acquire knowledge is conducive to ‘… begin[ning] from learners' worldviews, in effect turning them into inventors of the curriculum, critics and creators of knowledge’ (Luke, 2012, p. 5).…”

“…As such, children's action to promote social justice should be informed by their awareness (in age‐ and context‐appropriate ways) of laws, policies and international commitments on rights such as the CRC, the Charter and the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, which outline rights for all people but also intimate a social contract. UNESCO's Education 2030 (2015) asserts that exercising rights is critical to child rights education and that it should focus on how children ‘… learn how they can enact their rights in the here and now’ (cited in Biffi & Monta, 2021, p. 81).…”