The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child has 40 substantive

articles in addition to 14 more which can be considered procedural or pro-forma. In

adopting this document on 20 November 1989, the UN General Assembly enshrined in
law and in fact something that can be called “Children’s Rights.” It is a long distance
from de jure to de facto but this document does present a conception of Children’s
Rights, while reflecting the core of a broad international consensus of the concept, and set
out an ideal for policymakers and state agents to work to implement.
Naturally, normative questions persist. Does the term “rights” make sense with
the child as rights-bearer? Would the differences in a conception of rights be differences
of degree or of kind? If children qualify as rights-bearing persons in any meaningful
sense, what qualifies them? While children clearly have “interests” that ought to be
protected, what role does choice play in their existence as moral agents?
More questions: What are the humane alternatives to granting rights to children?
Since they cannot make political decisions by convention, how can children’s legitimate
interests, if not their rights, be duly protected? How can the evolving “agency” of the
child—which will be fully recognized upon adulthood—not be stifled during maturation?
These are the deepest questions in the political understanding of the child and
many of them abut directly against questions regarding human development which are
still ambiguous, the subject of broad and intense scientific inquiry. The normative
questions which are directly parallel have persistently troubled adult society throughout
the history of political thought and remain contentious today. Still, if political
philosophy is to be useful it must confront these questions in a manner which can be
defended by reason rather than ceding questions surrounding childrearing to tradition,
habit, custom, and, ultimately, the continuation of harmful or even abusive practices.
Paradoxically, it may be the case that the approach that is most useful to
answering stubborn questions is a circumscribed and a minimalist political framework.
This entails preferring simple explanations with high ratios of positive to normative
statements should be high and demanding an even higher ratio of evidence to assertions.
Moral theorists are likely to claim that a normative framework is literally indispensable
and that theorists who claim the title of “positivist” or “realist” are very likely sneaking in
normative assumptions while claiming an unearned moniker “value-free” science.
Normative theorists may continue by claiming that even the selection of the
questions to be answered is a normatively fraught and there is an additional danger of
overweighting quantifiable metrics. The validity of metrics can always be challenged on
technical or normative grounds. Measurement methods are not self-justifying any more
than any other sort of argument.
Prudence dictates that we should be wary of the influence of moral, social, and
political theories in dictating and justifying the “ends” of education. We ought not take
the parent-child relationship as license to merely reinforce prejudices on the weaker party
through plain domination. Instead, we should rely on a consensus that is more
latitudinarian in its understanding of the multiple possible positive outcomes for the
child, more humble in its understanding of the causal mechanism of direct parental
influence, and yet more scientifically-grounded in relying on evidence about human
development in structuring parent-child interaction. Normative theory, tradition,
background cultural norms, community standards are not to be discarded but must be
relegated to second-order standing in comparison to scientific consensus and minimal
moral universals.
The two starting points, then, would be (a) evidence on the development of
children (analyzed with an emphasis on validity and robustness of the literature) and (b)
explicitly drafted, broad conventions which present a different sort of evidence—that of
prior human agreements.
Using the law and other formal agreements as a starting point for interpretation
presents the hope for genuine progress on the normative frontier. Combining a close
reading of ratified texts with careful handling of empirical evidence and carefully
revising the latter to match the former is the surest way to have our academic inquiry
yield useful results. Although positive findings are not self-interpreting and do not
univocally prescribe a particular path, general rules can and must be tailored to reflect
increasing scientific understanding of the process of human development.
Recognizing this principle requires the repudiation of a prior practice. By
longstanding custom, emphasis on children (surprisingly) has been superseded by an
emphasis on adults and their preferences, ideologies, and goals as the motivation for
educational policy. Children have been treated as a vessel, or a vehicle or a blank slate
for the fulfillment (or expression) of adults’ strongest desires. This is understandable—
but not justifiable—since children are not the fully-formed rational beings in the same
way as adults. Overemphasis on adults’ concerns is inadequately respectful of the
personhood of the individual child and therefore unreasonable and unjust. The basis of a
new theory of education for liberalism should be focused on findings identifying
regularities in the psychological development of the child’s capacities.
The UN convention on the rights of the child can be understood as a first stab at a
consensus document. What is agreed upon with regards to education? Education takes
up surprisingly little of the document on the Rights of the Child. Articles 28 and 29 are
devoted to education with the first of these being broadly devoted to delivery of
education and the second being mainly devoted to education’s ends. Article 28 mandates
compulsory education, encourages the development of diverse forms of secondary
education including “general” and vocational, requires promotion of higher education
accessibility, encourages dissemination of information and guidance, and requires
monitoring of attendance and drop-out rates. In short, it requires full participation of
(loosely-defined) “minors” in a state-mandated education system.
Article 29 focuses on the “development” of the child in terms of her mental and
physical abilities; as well as respect for her parents, language, culture, and values; general
human rights; the natural environment. It devotes only subsection to the development of
the child as a responsible member of the free society and then reemphasizes the need for
peace, tolerance, and understanding and “friendship among all peoples.”
The UN Charter is simultaneously amorphous and explicit. It refers to what a
broad range of ratifying parties can agree upon: the administration of compulsory
schooling that is widely distributed and relatively; a cursory nod at developing a child’s
potential; a respect for the “building blocks” of society, whether they are liberal or
illiberal, and an embrace of undefined human rights, environmentalism, and a
commitment towards peace and friendship. The very conventionalism makes this “the
standard view.”
 However, this conception neatly demonstrates much of what is wrong with the
standard conception because it recognizes no place for the child except as something that
will be treated in a certain way by the state, society, parents, society, and the school. The
child’s personhood, dignity, agency, responsibility, etc.—all the things that make her a
person albeit not fully-formed—is ignored.
This sort of mistake is perfectly understandable in a context such as the United
Nations, whose entire purpose is to facilitate agreement across the wide spans which
separate independent states, societies, and cultures.
This is where political philosophy has traditionally picked up the slack. In its
academic isolation from worldly pressures, the discipline of philosophy can search for
coherent guiding principles without regard to prevailing fashions, opinions, or
constellations of power (in theory). While political philosophy has the advantage of
being privileged by academic freedom to be unpopular, it also has the unfortunate
tendency to believe eschew reliance on empirical facts since they are, after all,
incomplete, subject to change, possibly tainted by imperfect measurement or another
undetected flaw. These concerns, however, do not justify a turn away from empiricism.
The growth of data and the specialization of knowledge is an opportunity for better
science, notwithstanding occasionally conflicting data.
There are numerous questions that need to be asked about child development in
order to facilitate this line of inquiry. The first regards the “periodization” of childhood.
When does childhood emerge from infancy? When does it give way to adulthood? Are
there distinct periods of childhood when certain morally relevant capacities of childhood
are manifest? Which capacities of childhood would qualify as morally relevant? Is there
some aspect of human development that is not captured in the concept of “capacities” but
is central for making distinctions?
The purpose, then, of discussing the child is not affirming or repudiating any
particular existing theory of the methods or purposes of education. Rather, it is directly
to the evidence itself—to the most robust and current finding of child development--that
we should appeal; and it should be of relatively less concern whether there is agreement
with the theory of Aristotle, Plato, Augustine, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, Mill, Nietzsche,
Dewey. Rather, it is in between the evidence on child development and the
understanding of controlling contemporary law that we should describe something akin to
“best practices” and “actual practices” and contrast them with a conception of what may
maximize the development of capacities of the child. In important ways, this will reflect
conceptions which can be called eudaemonist, perfectionist, and liberal. However,
conformity with the guidance of the writings of Aristotle, Locke, Mill will not constrain,
only describe, the outcome of this constructive exploration of the evidence.
Finally, there can be the question if this theory of education is liberal or
conservative (in the political theory, not popular, sense of the word. With regards to
education, additional prepackaged categorical characterizations are sometimes on offer:
functionalist (often closely related to Marxist), multicultural, or democratic.
Readers may infer from my tone that I am dissatisfied with the reification of these
artificial categorizes and disturbed by the rigidity and the willful blindness that they too
often produce. Defenders of such categorizations might be apt to retort that they are a
simple way of describing and grouping theories that already exist so that entrants into the
conversation can learn, participate, and contribute in a faster and more fruitful way.
While I admit that this may be the good intention of the creation of the
categorizations—to handle a large number of theories more efficiently—I cannot shake
the idea that they have imposed excessive clannishness, obstinacy, contention, and the
false piety of dogma onto a critically important debate; Nero fiddles while Rome burns.

This theory of education does not set out to be iconoclastic but that appears to be its fate.

Theories of education are said to be liberal when they privilege the development
of autonomy; when they recognize the rights of the child within the school setting; when
they promote values that are universal rather than particular, leveling rather than
hierarchical, and embrace critical thinking rather than obeisance.
Theories of education are dubbed “conservative” when they reinforce the ancient
and traditional elements of society; when they undergird patriotism, morality, obedience
as well as service and sacrificial deference to legitimate authority of the family and of
religion.
 Functionalist theories of education prefer to look at the “real” effects of education
—the “function” it serves in the system of broader society. In this sense, they categorize
education as a means of social reproduction and believe that any analysis which cuts it
off from the current objective conditions of the operations of society is dealing with
something akin to the Marxist superstructure, a miasma of ideas enveloping a few core
realaties. (“At the root of the problem,” claim the seminal and insightful theorist Samuel
Bowles and Herbert Gintis, is “the capitalist economy.” They go on to assert that “the
people production process…is dominated by the imperatives of profit and domination
rather than by human need.”)
Whereas functionalist theories often provide specific, falsifiable critiques of
American education system, the critique of so-called “democratic” theories of education
is that they’re “not even wrong” in the sense that they sometimes achieve their goal by
relabeling their conclusory assumptions with “persuasive definitions.” Appeals to loyalty
to community and country; social cohesion and integration; constructive participation in
civic life and political processes have the flavor of being morally akin to a tautology or
assuming the conclusion without doing the hard work of discovering—or postulating and
then arguing for, demonstrating, or testing the appropriate means.
The “multicultural education” movement can be seen as an educational movement
that runs parallel to the political cleavage between (social democratic) Old Left and
(Postmodern) New Left. Its aim was to achieve a society of racial justice by resisting
conventional measures to counter the achievement of traditionally disadvantaged
minorities by criticizing the traditional metrics, or standards of success, rather than
redoubling efforts to improve achievement within the traditional framework. Three
“streams” of thought that feed into the multicultural movement are (1) the idea that
previously-designated “underperforming” minorities were different, not deficient; failure
to learn was the problem of a system ill-suited to teach perfectly adequate students (2) the
celebration of ethnic distinction as ipso facto desirable and assimilation as a force to be
resisted and (3) the idea that overt linguistic separatism as an educational tool. The stated
goals of multicultural education are relatively innocuous: (a) celebrating dultural
diversity (b) highlighting the contributions of different groups (c)illustrating the
importance of seeing events and conflicts from multiple perspectives and (d) seeking to
structure classroom instruction around explicit discussion of how individuals are
culturally-bound and formatively –shaped by experiences of discrimination and
oppression. (Fullwinwider) More radical versions of the multicultural approach eschew
cultural pluralism for ethnic pluralism by “focus[ing] on groups which experience
discrimination in American society” and explore in depth discrimination, prejudice and
alienation with a practical aim to promote respect for and “[reform] the total educational
environment for…African Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, women and
individuals with disabilities.” (quoting Fullinwinder quoting Banks)

The purpose of this long digression into ideological approaches to curriculum and
instruction is to illustrate how quickly educational theory can become divorced from the
appropriately preeminent role of the child. Given even slight latitude to act as ideologues
and powerbrokers, adults conceive of and implement complex sociopolitical theories
based on grandiose and arcane theories of social interaction, power dynamics, historical
contingency, objective economic conditions, cultural imperialism and so forth. It is
worthwhile to accurately describe these theories since they are influential and directly
consequential in today’s educational practices. But, as quickly as we capture the central
tendencies of these inert and ill-focused theories, we should run fast and far in the other
direction. We should focus on naturalistic description, epistemic humility connecting
assumptions and causal reasoning, scientific testing of practice, testable common sense,
and a deep and abiding respect for the child as a locus of moral concern, value, and
agency—an incomplete person who is, nonetheless, completely human.