Children's right to religion and spirituality: legal, educational and practical perspectives
Title:
Children's right to religion and spirituality: legal, educational and practical perspectives
Author:
Schweitzer, Friedrich
Appeared in:
British journal of religious education
Paging:
Volume 27 (2005) nr. 2 pages 103-113
Year:
2005-03
Contents:
The attempt to establish children's rights can be called one of the major twentieth-century projects, with the 1989 United Nations Convention on Children's Rights as one of its most important results. Yet while the issue of spiritual development has played a clear role in the struggle for children's rights ever since the ground-breaking Geneva Declaration of the 1920s, the 1989 declaration does not include a clear reference to children's right to religion or spirituality. The aim of the present article is to investigate the possibilities for establishing such a right, not only in legal terms but also on pedagogical grounds and in terms of religious education. How can children's needs be taken seriously, for example, vis-a-vis death and dying? How does a children's rights perspective affect the understanding of religious education? What could a more formally established right to religion and spirituality really mean for the child, as well as for educational institutions? The article discusses such questions in conversation with educational authors such as Janusz Korczak, the pioneer of 'children's right to respect', as well as with psychological theories of individual, social and religious or spiritual development.
Journal description