“Justice and Security For Our Children”: The Rights of Children and Education

Jean Jacques Rousseau is arguably the grandfather of the modern discussion amongst educational theorists regarding the rights of the child. His own childhood was by contemporary standards a disaster and that of his own children even more so; nevertheless Rousseau laid down a programme for the education of one fictional male child, Emile. The proposal was radical in as much as it implied a child-centred focus for learning rather than a content-centered approach associated with the classical and mediaeval curriculum. Writing just before the dawn of modern democratic practices and two centuries before conventions of human rights, this romantic rogue reformer, was midwife to the tradition in education which focusses on the child. The discussion of this paper emerges from that tradition.