Children's rights - a Trojan horse?

[Ali P]

Neil's open letter to the APPG on home education has attracted wide support and several interesting comments, including this one:

"Children’s Rights itself starts to resemble a trojan horse when you see the principle use it is put to to drive a wedge between parents and their children, encouraging the idea that for example children’s rights have to be balanced against parental rights, as if there were some necessary conflict between the two. "

PLEASE be careful in your campaign not to seem to ally yourself with the anti-UN Convention on the Rights of the Child hysteria from the other side of the Atlantic. There quite a bit of the argument, which alleges that America finally signing the CRC will enable children to assert their rights over their parents (and other freakish warnings) revolves, for sure, around the child having a right to choose its own religion, and some of the home-schooling debate appears embroiled in the issue of faith and parental authority in this matter.

I have tried to engage with such folk and have yet to have an answer to the question I keep putting - do children have a right to choose their faith, as the CRC says they do? I have never had an answer.

The problem is that many people seem to equate general human rights and children's rights. If there was the basis for such equality between children, no separate rights would be necessary for them, but it is precisely because of children's vulnerabilities that they need the protection of a separate chapter of rights. Children will enjoy basic human rights because they are people, but other rights they cannot enjoy because of their minority.

The neo-con US hysteria reaches as far as a claim that if the CRC is adopted (and the US is now alone of all nations in having not done so) children will be able to go out to play and refuse school .... Oh dear

There has been discussion and debate of these issues on various HE mailing lists over the years, but I think it might be useful to revisit the issue.

What do people think about the UNCRC? Does it serve a useful purpose in terms of affording additional rights to children who are essentially more vulnerable, or is it routinely abused by the state to deny the rights of the very children whose interests it purports to protect?

[Elaine Kirk]

I see the main problem with the CRC as being how it is interpreted.
For example-
CRC says every child has a right to an education and yet the richer nations deprive children of that right. Richer nations teach children the subjects that will enable them in adulthood to contribute to the economic growth of the nation.
For a nation to achieve economic growth other nations have to be buying their products which means growth is slow or reversed in those nations. For every positive there has to be a negative. Simply put ''if economic growth is to be the purpose of every nation then WhoTF are going to be the buyers ? martians?''
So if economic growth for every nation is not feasible why is the crc being interpreted as saying every child should be taught how to become a 'national growth facilitator' ?.
A judge placed this interpretation on the word 'education'
R v Secretary of State for Education and Science, ex parte Talmud Torah Machzikei Hadass School Trust (1985) (Times, 12 April 1985). Mr Justice Woolf held that:

education is ’suitable’ if it primarily equips a child for life within the community of which he is a member, rather than the way of life in the country as a whole, as long as it does not foreclose the child’s options in later years to adopt some other form of life if he wishes to do so

So a nation that dictates what is a 'suitable and efficient education' on a national level is not crc compliant imho.
To be compliant I feel that the crc should be clarified and that nations should be facilitating education in communities not defining it .
And my interpretation is supported by the fact that the crc states that children should be educated within their communities.

[Neil Taylor]

First I must apologise to Ali for the old fashioned plain ASCI email mode of reply, but after several attempts now and beforehand to try to interject (more than one) responses in quoted post, I've had to give up I'm afraid, and do it the old fashioned way. If there is an easier way the forum software can be made to do this, please enlighten!


> Neil's open letter to the APPG on home education has attracted wide
> support and several interesting comments, including this one:
>
> Quote: "Children’s Rights itself starts to resemble a trojan horse when
> you see the principle use it is put to to drive a wedge between
> parents and their children, encouraging the idea that for example
> children’s rights have to be balanced against parental rights, as if
> there were some necessary conflict between the two. "
>
> PLEASE be careful in your campaign not to seem to ally yourself with
> the anti-UN Convention on the Rights of the Child hysteria from the
> other side of the Atlantic. There quite a bit of the argument, which
> alleges that America finally signing the CRC will enable children to
> assert their rights over their parents (and other freakish warnings)
> revolves, for sure, around the child having a right to choose its own
> religion, and some of the home-schooling debate appears embroiled in
> the issue of faith and parental authority in this matter.
>

Thank you Mr Jan Cosgrove for making the points that you do, and I fully understand your concern. It took a very long time for me to independently come to the conclusion that Children's Rights is a deliberately constructed Trojan Horse for the primary purpose of splitting the child away from the formative influence of the family, the better for the state to take direct control of the mind and body of the child. It is well documented that socialism's, fascism's and communism's goals are the destruction of the traditional family (this is easy to look up so I am hoping I don't need to reference every claim I make, but please ask if you need me to) and I believe that Children's Rights, which sounds on the face of it so unarguably right, and the UNCRC, and therefore the UN of course, I'm afraid are part of that agenda. It is an elite agenda. It is perhaps a cliche to point out that the address of the UN headquarters is Rockefeller Plaza, but no less irrelevant for that. The UN is ultimately just another elite instrument, fully under elite control, a tool of globalisation, and we revere it only because such post ww2 hope for peace between nations was placed in it. We should perhaps take the rose tinted spectacles off when we look at it.

My influences in coming to these shocking conclusions have not been any 'hysteria' from across the Atlantic, but sources which I believe deserve to be taken seriously. I am therefore happy to share something of how I arrived at this conclusion, and share my sources. There is always hysteria of course, so steering a course to the truth is always to negotiate a minefield.

For most of my children's lives, and our youngest is now 16, I have, like most people supported Children's Rights, and I suspect like most people, not thought to question an idea, a cause and a movement that seems so unarguably right. We still have the 'No Smacking Zone' sticker on the front door to our living room, from when we joined the 'End Physical Punishment of CHildren' (EPOCH) organisation, which it never occurred to me at the time was anything other than a genuine grass roots campaigning organisation. More about that later. I was also invited by friends to be a founder member of ARCH (Action for the Rights of Children), and although I declined, that was for purely personal reasons of doubting my own capacity and time available, and I was happy to support it to the best of my ability, and its emphasis is very pro family autonomy, and the family as the primary protector of children's rights. So those are my Children's Rights credentials if you like - certainly not a born sceptic. ARCH was born out of justifiable anger and shock at the gross invasions of privacy and autonomy of the child, imposed often without reference to parents, who were often the last to discover that their child had been fingerprinted for a school canteen pass, or who's personal details were suddenly being uploaded to central government in the annual school census (PLASC), which had previously only collected aggregate data, not personally identifiable information. Head teachers were explicitly instructed not to tell parents of this change, non-compliance with which was made a criminal offence, so just a couple of very good reasons amongst many why children should have rights, right? Yet somehow we have to square the anomaly of why the very institution that is busy violating children's rights in these ways is simultaneously apparently championing them!

> I have tried to engage with such folk and have yet to have an answer
> to the question I keep putting - do children have a right to choose
> their faith, as the CRC says they do? I have never had an answer.
>

Then I shall try to give you mine, if you will bear with me.

I think the first thing to say about this question is that if you had asked it a generation or certainly two ago, you would have been laughed at and looked upon as if you were mad. Which is not to refute the validity of asking the question of course, otherwise (some) men might still feel entitled to beat their wives (and children) as their property, but we need an historical perspective to these changes in social attitudes and to look closely at the forces and interests which brought them about. But just because not everything was right about the family in the past does not necessarily justify all the measures we see today to supposedly emancipate and protect women and children from the tyranny of men (or women of course).

We brought our children up without smacking them, and they are lovely people, so we need no persuasion of that 'cause', but it was somewhat disturbing to learn relatively recently that the first no smacking campaign in schools was run by the since outlawed 'Paedophile Information Exchange' (PIE), which was affiliated with the org that is now called Liberty, and had Harriet Harman for their champion! This organisation, which was originally a branch of gay rights campaigning, hoped for the same liberation and acceptance and legality for paedophilia, but of course the public quite rightly would not tolerate such danger to their children, and about the same time it started to emerge the extent to which the state children's homes were being run as brothels for paedophiles, and being closed down one after another. Now, did they 'love' other peoples children so much that they were motivated by a pure platonic love for them, and a desire to protect them from abuse, or were they in it for the potential a children's rights movement had for potentially gaining them access to children for their own perverted pleasures? I suspect both, but most certainly the latter. If children are to have rights independent of what their parents might think about that, then for these rights to have meaning they have to be protected, and (it is argued) that requires a certain access to the child to ensure their rights are protected, and the state inevitably steps into that 'ensuring' role, and before you know it breakfast TV this very morning reveals that the state, so roundly thwarted over trying to gain routine access to see children alone (there's a nice job for a paedophile) through the home education inspection route, has apparently changed tactic to wanting the same automatic access for social workers. Once again we are greeted by the spectacle of social workers' own professional body saying, no we don't want these powers, they undermine trust, we want better training and proper exercise of existing powers of access as a last resort only. But the NSPCC, which by now is so obviously a branch of government, lobbying it for what it wants to be lobbied for, and I am not going to apologise for saying that, wants routine access for social workers, just as it lobbied for routine access alone to the children of the home educated.

What is going on here, when the professional body for social workers is so permanently at odds with the government over what is really needed to protect children? There is a document online entitled something like 'Why social workers oppose the children's database/index/contact point/whatever they're calling it this week', which reveals that this key feature of Laming's reforms is seriously unwanted by the very professionals it is supposedly designed to help. And the tool they found most useful, the 'at risk register' was taken off them! This is a frightening level of disconnect between government child protection policy, and what the professionals on the ground doing the job are saying they need. It demands understanding.

But this is a very round about way of approaching your question, which was "do children have a right to choose their faith, as the CRC says they do?"

Questions like this open a whole can of worms don't they? Do parents have the right to bring up their own children according to their own lights, their own values, religion, philosophy, as the UNHRC also states? If children suddenly have the right to choose their own religion, and where did that 'right' come from, then the answer to my question has to be no surely? I don't know if you would be happy for that to be the case, but I am most certainly not. If you teach that all religions deserve equal respect, does that necessarily entail that you also teach that your parent's religion is merely one choice amongst many of equal value available to them, and encourage them to feel free to reject their parent's teachings, and choose an alternative? And is atheism, or humanism equally on offer? And what will the devout parent feel about their child coming home and announcing that they have decided they are an atheist, and don't believe in God, when the whole family tradition and values are built on this foundation? As an adult I have my own beliefs, and I respect that others have theirs, but please don't make me place equal value on the beliefs of others to my own, because I believe what I believe, and I don't believe what somebody else believes, and it is in the nature of belief that it is mutually exclusive of the other because we all surely believe that reality is one thing and not simultaneously any number of probably incompatible things? If you tell the child that they have a right to choose their religion,and here they all are, which do you fancy?, then what are the (perhaps?) unintended consequences of doing this? Are you not in fact teaching ethical and religious relativism? That reality is whatever you want it to be, and it perhaps doesn't matter very much, any more than say the colour chosen for ones Ipod? A lifestyle choice? What happens then to the as many experiments in ways of living and ideas and values as there are families, when they become cut off from their roots in such ways? Generations within families learn from what was good and what was bad about their own upbringing, and in this way we evolve, hopefully better ways, better understandings to bring to our own parenting. I know my parents did that with me, and I know theirs did with them, because they overtly shared with me some of those lessons they had learned. As many experiments in ways to live as there are lives, as opposed to a one right way for all discovered by whom exactly?

I suppose in the end it comes down to whether you believe in the family as the optimal environment for raising the young of our species, and that strong bond of love when intact carries all the motivation, and focussed care that can never be replicated by the substitution of any institution, or even community, or whether you think the state can make a better parent, with its rule by experts in child psychology etc. Surely we know the answer to this Q already, and I don't have to argue for it here? Do we want the state to be 'parent of last resort' only where there is irremediable parental default of necessary care, or do we want the state as co-parent, or parent full stop? What is the state's record of care but a disaster for most in its care?

The infant and child grows towards full adult autonomy over the course of a childhood, but is not born with that full capability, and is dependent. It is natural for a parent to encourage and support this emerging autonomy, by allowing more and more freedom and responsibility by the child for their choices, and we know from our own experience that they may be remarkably capable of much at a very early age, yet remain in some unexpected ways perhaps, dependent, or desirous of being dependent for a while longer because it feels nice (don't forget choice). Parents are naturally best placed and motivated to respond to their child's development and help them to achieve full autonomy. But the family is not a perfect institution, and children will and do suffer injustices and harm in some families, perhaps even many or most to some extent. We live in an imperfect world, and before trying to remedy this shortfall, we need to ask what the alternatives might be. Do we really want to invite the 'we know best' nanny state to camp out on our shoulders and tell us how to be parents to our own children? And who exactly are these superior experts that know so much better than we do what our children need? Do some of them even have children of their own? And what were their childhoods like?

So I would say, a child's right to choose their religion, (does that include choosing no religion at all?), is a pernicious undermining nonsense, and it is highly unlikely that the emerging adult will be incapable of rejecting the religion or whatever beliefs of their parents as they emerge with the capacity to own their own minds, and most will be capable of that choice, even after being subjected to an absolutist instruction in the faith of their parents. Where the emerging adult's mind is near destroyed for its capacity for independent thought, this is far more ubiquitously the product of state compulsion schooling than of parental indoctrination, because it is so much more efficient, but at least where there is conflict allowed between the two, the child is forced to eventually resolve these differences for themselves. Silence the parents, and establish one source, one right way, and then you can really start to foreclose on the possibility later in life of 'adopting a different way of life', as the judge said.

The biography of John Stuart Mill is instructive in what can result from isolating and indoctrinating a child. His father Stuart and godfather Jeremy Bentham were his sole source of human interaction and instruction in utilitarianism. Only later in his childhood was he exposed gradually to other families and influences, and so far from him having internalised some impenetrable barrier to letting in this other source of influence, he drank from it like a man in a desert! Mill is misunderstood, and he also misunderstood his own childhood, and its legacy, and although he always tried to reconcile utilitarianism with his libertarianism, the attempt really fails. He so well understood tyranny, absolutism, yet never could bring himself to condemn his father and godfather for their tyranny over him, and which would merit a SS investigation these days. Blaise Pascal's mathematician father similarly went to the lengths of denying him paper and pen in order to prevent him from taking an interest in mathematics, so he reputedly rediscovered the first 12 laws of Euclid with a stick in the ashes of his bedroom fireplace. So this idea of indoctrination by parental isolation and incarceration turns out to be a chimera, if anything it achieves the opposite at the point where the child inevitably makes their own contact with the world. Emotional and psychological abuse is a whole other issue in such circumstances, but we were arguing about the right to choose a religion, and I am saying, there is the whole of the adult life for that. We are not moulded balls of clay, then fired in a kiln to become breakable at the prospect of change, although state compulsion schooling comes as close to achieving such fragility and rigidity as anything does.

continued............

[Neil Taylor]

...............continued from Part 1

> The problem is that many people seem to equate general human rights
> and children's rights. If there was the basis for such equality
> between children, no separate rights would be necessary for them, but
> it is precisely because of children's vulnerabilities that they need
> the protection of a separate chapter of rights.

I don't think they do. I think they need the protection of unmolested parents as their best guarantor there can ever be of healthy growth, and of getting their real needs met. The state (perhaps) as parent of last resort only. There has to be some rescue, some backup obviously.

Children's autonomy is an emergent capacity, it isn't fully formed. Of course mistakes will be made by parents, but if you allow those mistakes within bounds, then you allow for the possibility of species evolution itself. If you substitute for that, a nanny knows best authoritarian state, complete with parenting classes, you rob the species of that rich resource, and are in the business of human cloning. Choices of religion, divorced from the cultures and groups children grow up in become meaningless, trivialised.

> Children will enjoy
> basic human rights because they are people, but other rights they
> cannot enjoy because of their minority.
>

And their incapacity don't forget! Or perhaps that's what you meant?

> The neo-con US hysteria reaches as far as a claim that if the CRC is
> adopted (and the US is now alone of all nations in having not done so)
> children will be able to go out to play and refuse school .... Oh dear

In so many ways, the strongest proponents of ideas are often those idea's worst enemy. One has to learn to rise above not liking very much the folk who seem to be championing certain ideas, and hear what they have to say anyway. The idea that a global elite promoted children's rights agenda, is going to result in a mass breakout from that same global elite's schools is a contradiction that if you just dismiss it, is likely to result in you being taken for a ride! Is this happening in Germany? Enough said.

There is a little book written by one of those easily dismissable 'right wing Christian fundies', which although it only takes a couple of hours or so to read, who bothers, they're just so wrong, right? Well I bothered, but only because someone who couldn't bring themselves to finish it because of revulsion over the 'chastisement' advocacy, mentioned something about it that aroused my interest. It is written by the pro 'reasonable chastisement' (bear with me please, you can do it) author Lynette Burrows, and is entitled 'The Fight for The Family'. It is a piece of research into the origins of the Children's Rights Movement, and for anyone who would like to sorely test their own prejudices, or not, I would recommend getting hold of a copy, the text of which is not online as far as I know. According to Lynette's research which revealed the PIE origins of the anti smacking lobby, something like the first eight children's rights organisations in the UK were all started by or had prominent in them the same individual, and a lot of others were involved in most of the others as well - it was pretty incestuous.. The funding came always from the same two elite foundations and the government, who put up the major stakes. When you consider that public opposition to government-imposed anti-smacking measures were initially greeted by about 80% against, this was clearly no grass roots movement, but the project of a tiny handful of individuals and 3 funding sources, made to look like grass roots membership organisations, which they then eventually enjoyed some support of, and we joined one of them in the unquestioning belief in their grass roots origin. That is the UK picture at least. I don't know the history of the emerging children's rights movement in other countries, but would be intrigued to discover them if anyone can enlighten me. I would expect it to be a similar story.

Well, so what, if the cause is right? you may ask. As I revealed, we have no regrets over the no smacking rearing of our own, and I would go so far as to say I think it extremely doubtful that any family could not benefit from abandoning this unhappy practice at best, and harmful at worst. Does this empower me to seek laws banning everyone else from smacking their children as a way of correcting their unwanted behaviour?

I am aware that some children are very disturbed through whatever misfortune of birth, and a real handful to control, and that their parent might not know how to cope without being able to smack. Maybe there is still a better way for them too, but I can't tell them what it is because their situation is not the easy one we had. But a legislature knows all about this, and has all the answers and can just impose a new way which will work, just like that can it? I very much doubt this. I would rather the results of no smacking upbringings were allowed to be seen, and dispel the myths about spoiling children by sparing rods, than see authoritarian rule and policing intrusion into the family, which is itself abusive, to ensure it. Such heavy handed measures cannot achieve the supposed aims surely, and seem more likely to drive abuse further underground.

The essence of a trojan horse is that it is something that appears to honour you, something which is something you might want. But it contains predators!

The UNCRC was successfully used in the Leuffen case in Germany to uphold Hitler's outright ban on home education in Germany. I think this huge shock, and certainly not some supposed neo-con hysteria from across the pond was what really exercised home educators, and lead to an inevitable questioning, first of the possible misuse or weakness of the Children's charter, and then to questioning the origins of the charter itself, and it does so happen that some of the early originators of the children's rights charities, mentioned above had a hand in its drafting, so the links are clearly there. What if such uses for the charter were intended, and not a misuse?

Finally, there was another link that enabled me to name for myself Children's Rights as a Trojan Horse, before inevitably discovering that others had come to the same conclusion in the same words before me. It was the obscure, and perhaps equally offputting, but for different reasons, work of a Polish psychiatrist and academic, Andrew Lobaczewski in his book 'Political Ponerology'. This is not an easy book to read, at least I found it hard going as well as occasionally inspiring and passionate, but it is the culmination of his life's work with others to try to achieve an academic, scientific understanding of the phenomenon that overtook his country with the communist invasion, and weirded them out and deeply disturbed them, motivating them to undertake this very dangerous study. They quickly discovered that all the books in their university library on psychiatry that were still card indexed, had mysteriously disappeared from the shelves - permanently! Indeed communism effectively prohibited the pursuit of this science entirely, so Lobaczewski's work was largely conducted in isolation from Western advances in understanding, and results in his own idiosyncratic and East European terminology, further adding to the difficulty of a lay understanding. It lead them to the discovery that they were enduring rule by identifiable types of psychological deviants, with psychopaths at the top of the heirarchy. He coined the term 'pathocracy' to distinguish this kind of rule from what he contrasted as 'the society of normal men', a problematic ideal I'm not sure it is possible to illustrate with any examples, except in matter of degrees I suspect. Indeed, once you understand the basic landscape of psychopathy and psychopathic rule, and the classics by Cleckley and Hare are invaluable here to understand the psychopath, it is possible to see its legacy infesting every institution in our own country, although full blown fascism or communism is pathocracy fully developed. This is where we are headed, and many Eastern Europeans who have been there can see what is facing us, where too many of us can't. The fundamental character of the UK government is becoming increasingly psychopathic, with a number of psychopaths in key ministerial positions. That is with no capacity whatsoever for human empathy, nor any conscience, which is what defines the psychopath. The successful ones though become extremely good at faking those very qualities that they do not possess, yet we still instinctively recognise that something is wrong with them and what they are trying to foist. Developing that ability to suss them is actually not that hard, which is encouraging, to discover their potential achilles heel. They are the ones that know they are right and just bulldoze through fake public consultations without taking a thing from them beyond a measure of the opposition to their plans for us all. Consultations are really SATS, we really should try to give them up, LOL!

The fatal mistake that 98% of us always make is in assuming that this 1 or 2% of the population that find power easy to acquire and exercise is that they are essentially the same as us. They are not. The bits that we consider make us human - define our humanity, are missing through physical or psychological damage, sometimes amongst the ruling class deliberately induced. This results in psychopath's motivation to understand the bits they don't have, and to learn to fake them not just for their own survival, but their successful dominance of the rest of us. They have no fear, they do not blush, their confidence knows no limits, their ruthlessness is unconstrained by conscience. They are charming and plausible, and attractive quite often, and at ease socially. And they are often intelligent, but if we recognise that real intelligence is more than the function of the neocortex, and involves other centres of the brain that include the ones they do not have functioning, we can learn to recognise the deficiency underneath the surface plausibility. But we who are 'lumbered' with low self esteem and confidence admire them, and wish we were like them. We choose them for our leaders. We never suspect. Machiavelli understood this when he described the psychopath as the ideal Prince:

"...it is unnecessary for a prince to have all the good qualities I have enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have them. And I shall dare to say this also, that to have them and always to observe them is injurious, and that to appear to have them is useful; to appear merciful, faithful, humane, religious, upright, and to be so, but with a mind so framed that should you require not to be so, you may be able and know how to change to the opposite."

Given that he was writing tactfully for a Prince in the hope of obtaining a position, it should be obvious that 'to be so' was a dispensable flattery!

The same principles apply today to our current leaders to the extent that we fail to understand what Machiavelli understood about successfully faking humanity as superior to possessing it for the successful exercise of power! A key characteristic of psychopaths is their belief that the normal rules don't apply to them because of their natural superiority, so an institution that offers them 'parliamentary privilege' for example is going to be very attractive to them, and confirms them in this belief. It may even have had psychopathic origination. Just one example of how this new understanding which has eluded 'the society of normal men', but not psychopaths, for centuries if not millenia, is overdue to be remedied!

But yet again, that Ronnie Corbett monologue moment as I bring a huge diversion back to the point I started out wanting to make about Trojan Horses. This was specifically, by name a concept which Lobaczewski provides, and having read Lynette Burrow's account of the worrying genesis of the Children's Rights movement, I could see this was a prime example of what he describes:

http://la.indymedia.org/uploads/2007...ponerology.pdf

" The phenomenon of pathocracy matures....... an extensive and active indoctrination system is built, with a suitably refurbished ideology constituting the vehicle of Trojan horse for the process of pathologizing the thought of individuals and society. The goal is never admitted: forcing human minds to incorporate pathological experiential methods and thought patterns, and consequently accepting such rule."

I submit that Children's Rights is such a Trojan Horse pathologising our thoughts, and I'm going to give the last word to Lynette Burrows for what struck me as a good answer to this false dichotomy being inserted into our minds, but I have to paraphrase I'm afraid, as I don't have time to re-read the whole book to find the quote. She said something like 'children do not crave rights, they crave love and security'. What is making us forget such a simple truth, and place our faith in a state bureaucratised and administered policing of children's rights that as time passes more and more appears to threaten that very love and security as we progressively hand over those we bore to the variable and oft dangerously unreliable mercies of strangers?

Neil T

[Ali P]

Neil, that was a joy to read. Thank you.

[JanCosgrove]

Neil equates the origin for the quest for children's rights with PIE and Adolph Hitler. Strange company indeed. What he writes I find extremely alarming because it does confirm my worst fears.

There is a valid debate about home-schooling, and the issue of to what extent parents have that right is one I agree is vexing not only the UK but other countries as well. However, to drag the UNCRC into the debate as if it automatically supports the state in denying parent's wishes is misleading and dangerous.

The Konrad case in Germany - the UNCRC is cited in this as having supported the German Government's actions but it was the European Court of Human Rights that heard the case and which gave the judgment that the parents rights were not absolute in this matter, based on ECHR articles not the CRC.

I think the question I asked about children having the right to choose their religion is both valid and basic. That it was not asked 2 decades ago can either be seen, as per Neil, as proof that things have gone to the dogs or, as I see it, that we have made some progress.

What is the status of the child re its parents? I will make some statements which might describe that status - and these will conflict:

• ? Wholly owned by the parents, to be disposed of totally at parental will, the child having no rights and being totally under the control of the parents.
  ? Not owned by the parents but totally under their control without rights but having entitlements as to care and protection.
  ? Having rights and held in trust by parents because of their minority.
  ? Having rights and total independence regardless of parental authority and having the right to demand parental care.

The latter I think we call "spoilt brat" ....

How many still believe the first definition? Neil may well say that this view is no longer held - I am not sure that can be said in every country of the world. For many children world-wide this means they are subjugated, exploited, abused, sold, denied even the most basic of rights. We can't magic that fact away, and there are those who say that children occupy today the status of slaves and women in the past, in effect, owned by others. This status leads to the worst forms of child labour, child soldiering, child trafficking. In fact all the conditions which have led to the creation of the UNCRC and its status as the world's most signed convention.

But for us here in this debate, I think it is the 2nd and 3rd definitions which will concern us. They are not compatible with one another. [I am happy to see other definitions promoted in this discussion of course.]

Which definition does Neil support? Or has he another to add? Obviously the CRC must relate to the 3rd or 4th definitions but it is clear that the CRC does not, and cannot, be used by anyone supporting the 4th (and I would suspect that the deluded thinking from PIE would tend towards the 4th which is a self-justifying rationale for their inclinations. PIE's support for children's rights is indeed suspect, but that is no case for saying children's rights are a suspect concept. "PIE supported children's rights. The CRC supports children's rights. Therefore the CRC is a paedophile plot." ????? Too paranoid, and likely to get your arguments dismissed in general, I'd say.)

The CRC clearly recognises the primary position of the parental role, but it also clearly does not invest them with 'supreme' or sole authority. I do not know of any national code of law that does so, not in the US, the UK, Germany etc. The state has a role also and where the boundaries lie is the nub of one debate.

However, the UNCRC says to state and parents that, as regards the child, when they take action re the child EACH has responsibilities under the CRC towards the child. In general, these should be exercised together not in opposition, but when that breaks down, then we have the vagaries of differing national laws, and that is where the German Basic Law was in conflict with the wishes of the Konrad parents. The European Court of Human Rights supported the state saying that parents' rights under the ECHR are not superior to those the state has a duty to protect: "Therefore respect is only due to convictions on the part of parents which do not conflict with the right of the child to education": http://www.alliancealert.org/2006/20060926.pdf

This is the Court judgment and it has revealing things to say about the way the court regards the status of the children. See page 7, 2nd para - here the ECHR says the children have basic rights regardless of their minority status and that the court comes down on the side of the German court. There is no mention at all of the UNCRC in the judgment, and I am not even sure whether Germany has actually incorporated the CRC into its domestic law or like the UK, regards the CRC as 'aspirational' only. So Neil, you cannot use such cases to berate the CRC. It's the ECHR you should be targeting perhaps? After all, such a judgment will be of direct relevance in the UK especially as our courts will have to take the ECHR and its judgements into account by dint of the Human Rights Act which incorporates the Euro convention into our domestic law.

By the way, this notion of separate but maybe contending obligations to protect children's rights can as well apply, in my view, where parents separate. One indeed may have custody but do courts then say that parent has the sole right to determine faith upbringing?

You will notice, by the way, that I have not mentioned any reference in the ECHR judgment on Konrad to the CRC. There isn't one.

Back to the CRC itself and the issue of parental rights especially and e.g re religious upbringing. Where do we stand anyway as regards a child's right to choose its religion? Reading Neil, it sounds like he says 'over my dead body'. But can I gently challenge the foundation of that premise that parents have the right solely to determine a child's religious upbringing?

For a start, if you live in a German state today you have a disadvantage - the state constitution may well say nuts to that, and if you are a citizen, short of constitutional change or seeking asylum or emigrating, that is where you are, and the ECHR so far has not come to your rescue.

But that is <i>Force majeure</i> I know, hardly an automatic testimony to fairness and justice. So can I be practical and take us through 'a childhood'? In the Loving family, Mr and Mrs Loving (let's <i>not</i> complicate this with Mr and Mr Loving or Ms and Ms etc), they have a Loving child, little Jeremy. As JL grows, they bring him up in their faith, the Church of the Sky Pixie, and they do all they can to ensure his upbringing is godly and pixiful. Now JL lives in the real world where not everyone has seen the light of the Sky Pixie. Mummy and Daddy Loving are worried JL will come under other influences, it's a natural parental instinct to wish to protect your child and Mr and Mrs Loving are convinced that the SP upbringing is the only moral path to ensure this for little JL. But one day JL comes home and says 'Mummy, Miss Leading our teacher says we don't have to believe in the Sky Pixie and some people believe in the Water Goblin. I don't want to go to Sky Pixie Church anymore I want to go with my friend the Paul Lee to the Water Goblins." Poor Mummy and Daddy Loving, what to do do ....?

The scenarios can range from .... beatings, no supper, grounding for a week, angry tears, after all we've done for you, oh dear darling, you must not play anymore with the Paul Lee, that's enough this is sinful talk, go to your room and read the Book of Sky Pixie, oh that atheistic teacher, it's a world plot .... right through to "oh, well, so what does Miss Leading say about the WGs", yes people do have other ideas but here's why we believe what we do and why we want you to be happy and believe in SP, one day darling little JL you will have to decide for yourself, Daddy and I believe very much in SP though I am sure the WG are nice folk, now you invite the Paul Lee for tea, such a nice boy.

Hmmm? Of course, Neil, it can all end in tears. You invest all your energy in raising your child and at 18, sorry dad, I'm off to the WG's. It happens. You can't guarantee the outcome and that JL remains your child as an adult. Suddenly he acquires that right to decide at 18 years and 1 second but didn't have it before? Nearly everyone recognises the concept of 'growing independence' in later childhood (a lovely term that, either growing <i>independence</i> or <i>growing</i> independence, if you take my meaning). So,where do we stand on this, CRC and ECHR apart? Does a child have <b>any</b> say? The CRC appears to say yes he does but it cannot be read, as the neo-cons proclaim, that the child can defy its parents and ignore their guidance.

Taking my above 'growing independence' example, I think it follows the common sense approach adopted, for their own sanity, by the majority of parents, that as a child grows in maturity and understanding, the parents' direct say diminishes, as the child develops its autonomy on the path to adult independence, which surely is the goal of good parenting regardless of belief. The CRC, in my view, completely supports that practicality. That is because it sees parenting as 'holding in trust' not 'owning'.

The lobby that condemns the CRC because they fear anything which may challenge their wish for their child to follow fully in their faith is dishonest because it uses any argument bar the actual reason. "It means the state will be allowed to take away our children" Baloney. "It means the US is being taken over by the world conspiracy of Water Goblins" Hogwash. "Hitler was a Water Goblinist" Be honest, all this diatribe, Neil, is about your fear about children and your faith.

I understand how threatened you may feel, and you may have good cause, that is for you and others to argue. But to cast those who passionately believe children have <i>children's</i> rights as hostile to the idea that parents have a right to raise their children in their faith is a grave error and liable to alienate them if you appear to be denying that children <i>also</i> at the same time do have choice. These two do not have to be/should not be in conflict, they ARE always in a balance which surely as the child grows MUST tip towards the child, and your case is damaged by exaggeration and paranoid claims.

Regards
Jan

[Earthtracer]

For what it is worth, the Baha'i view is that (for a child brought up in a Baha'i family) they are free to decide for themselves whether or not to declare that they accept the teachings of Baha'u'llah when they reach the age of maturity. This is on their 15th birthday.

Problems only arise when adults/parents try to force their view on their young. Fifteen seems a reasonable age to be allowed to choose.

[Amy Thomson]

I am writing about human rights in more detail at the moment (trying to anyway: morning sickness and back/hip pain are making sitting at the computer difficult ) but would like to add something quickly.

Be honest, all this diatribe, Neil, is about your fear about children and your faith.

I can't (and would never presume to ) speak for Neil or for anyone else, but I really must take issue with this. For the record I am agnostic in principle, atheist in practice. I am deeply concerned by increasing government intrusion into family life, and the undermining of parents ability to do what's best for their own children and to raise them according to their own beliefs and values. This includes religious beliefs. It's unwise to make assumptions about people's motivations for expressing such concerns, and anyway there is absolutely nothing wrong with acting out of 'fear about children and your faith.' Or have I missed something? Is ignoring a fear about your child's wellbeing and trusting to the all-knowing state the mark of a responsible parent these days?

[JanCosgrove]

national@fairplayforchildren.org

Amy

I am unable to fathom why a concern for government intrusion into our lives can justify Neil's attitude towards Children's Rights. That is what I meant by the comment you make, that much of the argument coming from the States against Children's Rights, which I feel Neil appears to share, is about parents, their children and faith.

Mine is not a question about Govt intervention in this but about what right a child has re belief. The Govt part may well come in terms of what information a child has a right to receive in order to exercise a right to choice in faith. I suppose the opposite argument might go like this .... by parents having the power to deny children such information and thence the basis for making an informed choice, it could be claimed that such parents as do this deny their children such a right.

Is such a right one which a child should have respected on account of their minority and vulnerability? If we apply this to a situation where there is a sect which the vast majority believe is a cult, then most people will agree there should be a curb on how far parents can go. But this is a grey area, for one person's sane beliefs may be another's harmful cult.

My argument, by the way, applies to political beliefs of parents.

It's no easy area, but the starting point is to decide whether one accepts that there are a valid, distinct set of Children's Rights or not. Every government bar the US of A says they accept the UNCRC as such a statement, all the faiths and denominations as well. Where do people stand on this in this debate here?

[Amy Thomson]

Originally Posted by JanCosgrove

national@fairplayforchildren.org

Amy

I am unable to fathom why a concern for government intrusion into our lives can justify Neil's attitude towards Children's Rights.

It is the duty of parents to see to the upbringing and welfare of their children. When government defines a separate set of rights for children and gives itself the role of protecting these rights, the balance is shifted away from parents having primary responsibility. This should not happen except in the most extreme circumstances.

That is what I meant by the comment you make, that much of the argument coming from the States against Children's Rights, which I feel Neil appears to share, is about parents, their children and faith.

And what's wrong with that? Is it fundamentally wrong to argue from a position of faith? Does it automatically render their arguments invalid?

Mine is not a question about Govt intervention in this but about what right a child has re belief.

So are you talking about a purely theoretical right?

The Govt part may well come in terms of what information a child has a right to receive in order to exercise a right to choice in faith.

Or maybe not?

I suppose the opposite argument might go like this .... by parents having the power to deny children such information and thence the basis for making an informed choice, it could be claimed that such parents as do this deny their children such a right.

And how would do you discover if a child is being denied this right, or how would you ensure they were not? Would you take each and every child aside, at intervals, and ask if they feel their rights are being denied? Would you hold compulsory 'choose your faith' days in community centres?

Some people believe that children have a right to sex education. Some parents believe their children should not receive it. There is a big push for compulsory (ie government mandated) sex education at the moment. Is this right? I certainly don't think so.

At any rate it is difficult to compel anyone to believe, or to disbelieve, anything. Ultimately what a person chooses to believe is up to them. It is possible to prevent someone from practicing certain rituals required by their faith. Which raises another question: if, say, a child wishes to convert to a faith which requires them to be circumcised, should parents be compelled to consent to the procedure? If they should, should the parents of girl who wants breast augmentation also be compelled to consent to it? Or if a child wants to attend a certain church should parents be compelled to allow them? If so, what if the child didn't want to attend church, but dancing lessons? Would the secular situation posed above be any different to the religious ones, or does a child's autonomy take precedence of parental authority only in matters of religion?

Is such a right one which a child should have respected on account of their minority and vulnerability? If we apply this to a situation where there is a sect which the vast majority believe is a cult, then most people will agree there should be a curb on how far parents can go.

It really doesn't matter what the majority believe. If the majority decide it's immoral to wear clothes, should we all be forced to walk around naked?

But this is a grey area, for one person's sane beliefs may be another's harmful cult.

What do you believe constitutes harm?

My argument, by the way, applies to political beliefs of parents.

If the parents' political beliefs are mainstream, should they then be compelled to provide information on anarchism, for example? I can't imagine government wishing to protect that right Or is it those who hold minority opinions who should be made to offer an opposing viewpoint?

It's no easy area, but the starting point is to decide whether one accepts that there are a valid, distinct set of Children's Rights or not. Every government bar the US of A says they accept the UNCRC as such a statement, all the faiths and denominations as well. Where do people stand on this in this debate here?

Personally, no, I do not.