education is a child rights essay in english

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Essay on Child Rights for Students in English [500+ Words]

January 3, 2021 by Sandeep

Essay on Child Rights: The sound development of a child in terms of physical, mental, emotional and social growth is the essential right of every child. Children can express their claim to these rights without any hesitation. Right to education is also a fundamental right, and these factors have been placed on world agenda tables. The UN General Assembly has adopted these rights as universal claims, and any form of discrimination/ violence against children can attract penal action against offenders.

Essay on Child Rights 500 Words in English

Below we have provided Child Rights Essay in English, suitable for class 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 & 10.

Child rights are the sub-category of human rights catering, especially to the children in terms of their health, education, recreation, family, etc. It also highlights their development and age-appropriate needs that change a passage of time. Three general principles foster all children’s rights,

Non-discrimination – under this, every child is treated equally and has a right to strengthen their potential at all times. For instance, every child will gain access to education irrespective of its gender, nationality, caste, disability or another status.

Opinion of the child – the child wants to be heard and understood; that’s why the voice of the children is pivotal in their overall development. For example, the parents or the elders of the house should take into consideration their children’s needs before making decisions that will further cause damage.

Right to inclusive education – A child with a disability should receive equal access to training and development without being neglected.

United Nation Convention has listed the below rights for the children who come under the age of 18. These rights embody the freedom of children, favourable family environment, leisure, education, health care and cultural activities.

Right to Survival

• Right to live with respect.
• Right to be born.
• Right to have access to basic food, clothing and shelter.

Right to Protection

• Right to be protected from violence.
• Right to be protected from drugs.
• Right to be protected from exploitation.
• Right to be protected from abandon.

Right to Participation

• Right to freedom of voice.
• Right to freedom of expression.
• Right to freedom to form an association.
• Right to information.

Right to Development

• Right to learn and explore.
• Right to rest and play.
• Right to seek education.
• Right to overall development-emotional, physical and psychological.

Significance of Children’s Rights

Children’s are not a commodity or an item to be owned by the parents or the society, but an individual who possesses equal status as a member of the human race. They have their likes and dislikes, which assists them to harness their energy for future growth. Parents can love, care and nurture children through guidance and advice gradually. They need to be thrust towards independence continuously. The sense of accountability needs to be developed by providing necessary tasks so that they realize their value and voice.

The course of their progress determines the future of the children and the country as a whole. The devastating changes like climate change, globalisation, the disintegration of the family, mass migration, etc. affects children to a massive level crippling their identity and social welfare. In situations like armed conflict and other national emergencies, the conditions worsen. Children are vulnerable and susceptible to health risks. The repercussions of disease, malnutrition and poverty endanger their future potential.

They fall prey to sordid living conditions, poor health-care, lack of safe water and housing and environmental damage. Because of all these reasons, children are deprived of the proper home as they are left on the streets. Not only the government but also the citizens of the nation should take charge of enhancing their requirements and taking an initiative to bring change. It is paramount to show respect and appreciation towards children as it helps them to develop healthy mentally. By doing so, their personality is not disabled, and they feel part of society.

10 Lines on Child Rights

• The declaration of Child’s Right was established in the year 1924.
• The rights were formulated by saving the children founder, Eglantyne Jebb.
• The most important rights are- survival, developmental, protection and participation rights.
• It is an extension of human rights, especially for children below 18 years of age.
• These rights emphasize on the age-appropriate needs.
• The violation of the rights includes violence, poverty, and discrimination.
• The United Nation Convention has further elaborated the rights for better understanding and knowledge.
• Through these rights, the government is encouraging people to contribute through donations, adoption and sponsorship.
• Also, these rights stress on having their opinion and say in every decision taken for their betterment.
• The government, through its efforts, is urging people to be vigilant around what is happening and report if there is any violation regarding the rights of the children.

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Understanding education as a right, 116328scr_india_pupils.jpg.

Education is not a privilege. It is a human right.

Education as a human right means:

• the right to education is legally guaranteed for all without any discrimination
• states have the obligation to protect, respect, and fulfil the right to education
• there are ways to hold states accountable for violations or deprivations of the right to education

Human rights are inherent to all human beings, regardless of nationality, sex, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, language, or any other status. They cannot be given or taken away.

Human rights are the foundation for freedom, justice and peace in the world.

They are formally and universally recognised by all countries in the  Universal Declaration on Human Rights  (1948, UDHR). Since the adoption of the UDHR, many treaties have been adopted by states to reaffirm and guarantee these rights legally.

International human rights law sets out the obligations of states to respect, protect, and fulfil human rights for all. These obligations impose specific duties upon states, regardless of their political, economic, and cultural systems.

All human rights are universal, indivisible, interdependent, and interrelated ( Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action , 1993, para. 5).

Equality and non-discrimination are foundational and cross-cutting principles in international human rights law. This means that all human rights apply to everyone.

International human rights law guarantees the right to education. The  Universal Declaration on Human Rights , adopted in 1948, proclaims in Article 26: 'everyone has the right to education'.

Since then, the right to education has been widely recognised and developed by a number of international normative instruments elaborated by the United Nations, including the  International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966, CESCR), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989, CRC), and the  UNESCO Convention against Discrimination in Education  (1960, CADE).

The right to education has also been reaffirmed in other treaties covering specific groups ( women and girls , persons with disabilities , migrants, refugees , Indigenous Peoples , etc.) and contexts ( education during armed conflicts ). It has also been incorporated into various regional treaties and enshrined as a right in the vast majority of national constitutions.

See our pages on international law and national implementation  for more information.

Both individuals and society benefit from the right to education. It is fundamental for human, social, and economic development and a key element to achieving lasting peace and sustainable development. It is a powerful tool in developing the full potential of everyone and ensuring human dignity, and in promoting individual and collective wellbeing.

• it is an empowerment right
• it lifts marginalised groups out of poverty
• it is an indispensable means of realising other rights
• it contributes to the full development of the human personality

For more details, see the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights'  General Comment 13 on the right to education  (1999, para. 1).

The right to education encompasses both entitlements and freedoms, including the:

right to free and compulsory primary education

right to available and accessible secondary education (including technical and vocational education and training), made progressively free

right to equal access to higher education on the basis of capacity made progressively free

right to fundamental education for those who have not received or completed primary education

right to quality education both in public and private schools

freedom of parents to choose schools for their children which are in conformity with their religious and moral convictions

freedom of individuals and bodies to establish and direct education institutions in conformity with minimum standards established by the state

academic freedom of teachers and students

The 4As were developed by the first UN Special Rapporteur on the right to education, Katarina Tomaševski, and adopted by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in its General Comment 13 on the right to education  (1999, para.6). To be a meaningful right, education in all its forms and at all levels shall exhibit these interrelated and essential features:

Available – Education is free and there is adequate infrastructure and trained teachers able to support the delivery of education.

Accessible – The education system is non-discriminatory and accessible to all, and positive steps are taken to include the most marginalised.

Acceptable – The content of education is relevant, non-discriminatory and culturally appropriate, and of quality; schools are safe and teachers are professional.

Adaptable – Education evolves with the changing needs of society and challenges inequalities, such as gender discrimination; education adapts to suit locally specific needs and contexts.

For more details see:

• Primer 3  Human rights obligations: making education available, accessible, acceptable and adaptable (RTE, Katarina Tomaševski, 2001)

When a state has ratified a treaty that guarantees the right to education, it has obligations to respect, protect, and fulfil this right. Some obligations are immediate. Others are progressive.

Obligations to respect, protect, and fulfil:

• respect: refrain from interfering with the enjoyment of the right (e.g., the state must respect the liberty of parents to choose schools for their children)
• protect: prevent others from interfering with the enjoyment of the right usually through regulation and legal guarantees (e.g., the state must ensure that third parties, including parents, do not prevent girls from going to school)
• fulfil: adopt appropriate measures towards the full realisation of the right to education (e.g., the state must take positive measures to ensure that education is culturally appropriate for minorities and indigenous peoples, and of good quality for all)

Immediate and progressive obligations:

As with other economic, social and cultural rights, the full realisation of the right to education can be hampered by a lack of resources and can be achieved only over a period of time, particularly for countries with fewer resources. This is the reason why some state obligations are progressive, for instance, the introduction of free secondary and higher education.

However, no matter how limited resources are, all states have immediate obligations to implement the following aspects of right to education:

• ensure minimum core obligations to meet the essential levels of the right to education, which includes prohibiting discrimination in access to and in education, ensuring free and compulsory primary education for all, respecting the liberty of parents to choose schools for their children other than those established by public authorities, protecting the liberty of individuals and bodies to establish and direct educational institutions
• take appropriate steps towards the full realisation of the right to education to the maximum of its available resources. A lack of resources cannot justify inaction or indefinite postponement of measures to implement the right to education. States must demonstrate they are making every effort to improve the enjoyment of the right to education, even when resources are scarce
• not take retrogressive measures. This means that the state should not take backwards steps or adopt measures that will repeal existing guarantees of the right to education. For instance, introducing school fees in secondary education when it had formerly been free of charge would constitute a retrogressive measure

States have the primary duty to ensure the right to education. However, other actors play a key role in promoting and protecting this fundamental right.

According to international law, other actors have responsibilities in upholding the right to education:

• the role of multilateral intergovernmental agencies, such as UNESCO, OHCHR, UNICEF, is of particular importance in relation to the realisation of the right to education in providing technical and financial assistance
• international financial institutions should play greater attention to the protection of the right to education in their policies, credit agreements, structural adjustment programmes and measures taken in response to the debt crisis
• private businesses also have the responsibility to respect human rights and avoid infringing on the rights of others. For more information, see UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights , Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights' General Comment 24 , Committee on the Rights of the Child's  General Comment 16 , and our page on Privatisation
• civil society plays a crucial role in promoting the right to education and holding the state accountable for its obligations
• parents have the responsibility to ensure that their children attend compulsory education. They cannot deny their children access to education

Violations of the right to education may occur through direct action of States parties (act of commission) or through their failure to take steps required by law (act of omission). Concrete examples are given in paragraph 59 of General Comment 13 .

Whilst the vast majority of countries have ratified international treaties that recognise the full right to education, it is still denied to millions around the world due to lack of resources, capacity, and political will. There are still countries that have not integrated the right to education into their national constitution or provided the legislative and administrative frameworks to ensure that the right to education is realised in practice. Most of the children and adults who do not fully enjoy the right to education belong to the most deprived and marginalised groups of society which are often left behind in national policies.

• raise awareness on the right to education. If individuals knows their rights they are empowered to claim them
• monitor the implementation of the right to education and report regularly on deprivations and violations
• advocate and campaign for the full implementation of the right to education, holding the state accountable
• seek remedies when there are violations of the right to education

See our page on Using rights in practice  for more details on what you can do.

The right to education

Education is a basic human right that works to raise men and women out of poverty, level inequalities and ensure sustainable development. But worldwide 244 million children and youth are still out of school for social, economic and cultural reasons. Education is one of the most powerful tools in lifting excluded children and adults out of poverty and is a stepping stone to other fundamental human rights. It is the most sustainable investment. The right to quality education is already firmly rooted in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and international legal instruments, the majority of which are the result of the work of UNESCO and the United Nations.    

• What you need to know about the right to education
• Q&A with the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to education

Understanding the right to education

Enforcing the right to education.

Developing norms and standards

in reviewing and developing education legal and policy frameworks

Responding to challenges

The start of a global conversation

Say no to discrimination in education! - #RightToEducation campaign

Monitoring tools.

For any information, please contact:  [email protected]   

Monitoring SDG 4: access to education

Resources from UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring Report.

The right to education

Introducing articles 28 and 29.

Home > The Rights Respecting Schools Award > The Right to Education

The Right to an Education is one of the most important principles in becoming a Rights Respecting School.

Education is a key social and cultural right and plays an important role in reducing poverty and child labour. Furthermore, education promotes democracy, peace, tolerance, development and economic growth. There are a number of articles in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child  that focus on a child’s right to education.

Articles 28 and 29 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child

Articles 28 and 29 focus on a child’s right to an education and on the quality and content of education.  Article 28 says that “State Parties recognise the right of children to education” and “should take all appropriate measures to ensure that school discipline is administered in a manner consistent with the child’s human dignity.” Article 29 focuses on the aims of education and says that governments agree that “the education of the child shall be directed to:

• The development of the child’s personality, talents and mental and physical abilities to their fullest potential.
• The development of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms and the principles enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations.
• The development of respect for the child’s parents, his or her own cultural identity, language and values, for the national values of the country in which the child is living, the country from which he or she may originate and for civilisations different from his or her own.
• The preparation of the child for responsible life in a free society in the spirit of understanding, peace, tolerance, equality of sexes and friendship among all peoples, ethnic, national and religious groups and persons of indigenous origin.
• The development of respect for the natural environment.

The 1990 World Declaration on Education for All  described education as consisting of essential learning tools such as literacy, numeracy and problem solving combined with knowledge, skills, values and attitudes required by human beings to survive, develop potential, to improve the quality of their lives, to make informed decisions and to continue learning.

General Comment on the aims of education

In 2001, the  Committee on the Rights of the Child , the body of experts that monitors the implementation of the Convention, published a paper (called a General Comment) that explained and elaborated on the right to education.

The General Comment 1 on the aims of education provides a very clear overview of what the right to education means in practice. It said that:

• Education must be child-centred and empowering. This applies to the curriculum as well as the educational processes, the pedagogical methods and the environment where education takes place.
• Education must be provided in a way that respects the inherent dignity of the child and enables the child to express his or her views in accordance with article 12 (1) and to participate in school life.
• Education must respect the strict limits on discipline reflected in article 28 and promote non-violence in school.
• Education must include not only literacy and numeracy but also life skills such as the ability to make well-balanced decisions; to resolve conflicts in a non‑violent manner; and to develop a healthy lifestyle, good social relationships and responsibility, critical thinking, creative talents, and other abilities which give children the tools needed to pursue their options in life.

It’s important to remember that the  Convention must be seen as a whole  and so articles 28 and 29 should not be looked at or considered in isolation. Particular regard should be paid to the General Principles and other closely related articles for example: article 16 : protection of privacy, article 24 health (including health education), article 31 rest, leisure, play, recreation and culture.

Steps to the award

Getting Started

About the award

Introducing the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child

Your Right to Equality in Education

Getting an education isn’t just about books and grades – we’re also learning how to participate fully in the life of this nation. (We’re tomorrow’s leaders after all!)

But in order to really participate, we need to know our rights – otherwise we may lose them. The highest law in our land is the U.S. Constitution, which has some amendments, known as the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights guarantees that the government can never deprive people in the U.S. of certain fundamental rights including the right to freedom of religion and to free speech and the due process of law. Many federal and state laws give us additional rights, too.

The Bill of Rights applies to young people as well as adults. And what I’m going to do right here is tell you about EQUAL TREATMENT .

DO ALL KIDS HAVE THE RIGHT TO AN EQUAL EDUCATION?

Yes! All kids living in the United States have the right to a free public education. And the Constitution requires that all kids be given equal educational opportunity no matter what their race, ethnic background, religion, or sex, or whether they are rich or poor, citizen or non-citizen. Even if you are in this country illegally, you have the right to go to public school. The ACLU is fighting hard to make sure this right isn’t taken away.

In addition to this constitutional guarantee of an equal education, many federal, state and local laws also protect students against discrimination in education based on sexual orientation or disability, including pregnancy and HIV status.

In fact, even though some kids may complain about having to go to school, the right to an equal educational opportunity is one of the most valuable rights you have. The Supreme Court said this in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case when it struck down race segregation in the public schools.

If you believe you or someone you know is being discriminated against in school, speak up! Talk to a teacher, the principal, the head of a community organization or a lawyer so they can investigate the situation and help you take legal action if necessary.

ARE TRACKING SYSTEMS LEGAL?

Yes, as long as they really do separate students on the basis of learning ability and as long as they give students the same basic education.

Many studies show, however, that the standards and tests school officials use in deciding on track placements are often based on racial and class prejudices and stereotypes instead of on real ability and learning potential. That means it’s often the white, middle-class kids who end up in the college prep classes, while poor and non-white students, and kids whose first language isn’t English, end up on “slow” tracks and in vocational-training classes. And often, the lower the track you’re on, the less you’re expected to learn – and the less you’re taught.

Even if you have low grades or nobody in your family ever went to college, if you want to go to college, you should demand the type of education you need to realize your dreams. And your guidance counselor should help you get it! Your local ACLU can tell you the details of how to go about challenging your track placement.

CAN STUDENTS BE TREATED DIFFERENTLY IN PUBLIC SCHOOL BASED ON THEIR SEX?

Almost never. Public schools may not have academic courses that are just for boys – like shop – or just for girls – like home economics. Both the Constitution and federal law require that boys and girls also be provided with equal athletic opportunities. Many courts have held, however, that separate teams for boys and girls are allowed as long as the school provides students of both sexes the chance to participate in the particular sport. Some courts have also held that boys and girls may always be separated in contact sports. The law is different in different states; you can call your local ACLU affiliate for information.

CAN GIRLS BE KICKED OUT OF SCHOOL IF THEY GET PREGNANT?

No. Federal law prohibits schools from discriminating against pregnant students or students who are married or have children. So, if you are pregnant, school officials can’t keep you from attending classes, graduation ceremonies, extracurricular activities or any other school activity except maybe a strenuous sport. Some schools have special classes for pregnant girls, but they cannot make you attend these if you would prefer to be in your regular classes.

CAN SCHOOLS DISCRIMINATE AGAINST GAY STUDENTS?

School officials shouldn’t be able to violate your rights just because they don’t like your sexual orientation. However, even though a few states and cities have passed laws against sexual orientation discrimination, public high schools have been slow to establish their own anti-bias codes – and they’re slow to respond to incidents of harassment and discrimination. So while in theory, you can take a same-sex date to the prom, join or help form a gay group at school or write an article about lesbian/gay issues for the school paper, in practice gay students often have to fight hard to have their rights respected.

WHAT ABOUT STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES?

Although students with disabilities may not be capable of having exactly the same educational experiences as other students, federal law requires that they be provided with an education that is appropriate for them. What is an appropriate education must be worked out individually for each student. For example, a deaf student might be entitled to be provided with a sign language interpreter.

In addition to requiring that schools identify students with disabilities so that they can receive the special education they need in order to learn, federal law also provides procedures to make sure that students are not placed in special education classes when they are not disabled. If you believe you’re not receiving an appropriate education, either because you are not in special classes when you need to be, or because you are in special classes when you don’t need to be, call the ACLU!

And thanks to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), students who are HIV positive have the same rights as every other student. People with HIV are protected against discrimination , not only in school but in many other public places such as stores, museums and hotels.

People with HIV aren’t a threat to anyone else’s health, because the AIDS virus can’t be spread through casual contact. That’s just a medical fact. Your local ACLU can provide information on how to fight discrimination against people with HIV.

CAN I GO TO PUBLIC SCHOOL IF I DON’T SPEAK ENGLISH?

Yes. It is the job of the public schools to teach you to speak English and to provide you with a good education in other subjects while you are learning. Students who do not speak English have the right to require the school district to provide them with bilingual education or English language instruction or both.

“No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” –Title IX, Education Amendments of 1972

We spend a big part of our life in school, and our voices count. Join the student government! Attend school meetings! Petition your school administration! Talk about your rights with your friends! Let’s make a difference!

Produced by the ACLU Department of Public Education. 125 Broad Street, NY NY 10004. For more copies of this or any other Sybil Liberty paper, or to order the ACLU handbook The Rights of Students or other student-related publications, call 800-775-ACLU or visit us on the internet at https://www.aclu.org .

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Essay on Child Rights

We live in a society. When people have built a society, they made rules and laws for that society. Some laws and rules are made by the government, while others are made by the people who live in the country. This includes laws that are necessary for the healthy survival of humans. We have some rights that help us to live peacefully. Similarly, there are also some rights for children which are referred to as child rights. Today, we will discuss Child Rights in detail.

Short and Long Child Rights Essay in English

Here, we are presenting short and long short essays on Child Rights in English for students under word limits of 100 – 150 Words, 200 – 250 words, and 500 – 600 words. This topic is useful for students of classes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12 in English. These provided essays on Child Rights will help you to write effective essays, paragraphs, and speeches on this topic.

 Child Rights Essay 10 Lines (100 – 150 Words)

1) Children have some basic human rights as adults which are referred to as child rights.

2) Every child has rights, irrespective of their age, race, gender, or where they were born.

3) Child rights are important for the physical and mental growth of children.

4) Rights to education, rights to survival, right health, etc are some child rights.

5) Child rights are essential to set up a good environment for children.

6) It is also important for the development of the nation.

7) In 1989, the United Nations Convention on Child Rights was passed.

8) Children are human beings who should have their rights.

9) Child rights are important to save children from exploitation.

10) We should protect child’s rights and fight issues like child labor and harassment.

Short Essay on Child Rights (250 – 300 Words)

Introduction

Even though there has been a lot of progress in the last few decades, millions of children still don’t have their basic rights. Terms like child labor, and harassment is getting common these days. Children also have the right to extra protection because they are more likely to be used or abused.

What is meant by Child Rights?

Child rights are the fundamental rights that are provided to every child for their proper growth and development. Children have the right to be with their parents and to have a human identity. They also have the right to physical protection, food, education, health care, and criminal laws that are right for their living. Children also have the right to equal protection of their civil rights and to not be treated differently because of their race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, or color.

Need for Child Rights

When children’s rights are protected, they have a much better chance of growing up in society. During a war, a lot of children are hurt in big ways. Most of the time, children have to work in places that are very dangerous and unhealthy. They end up not being able to read or write, and they don’t have any skills. Because of this, they become criminals. These rights will protect them from the different kinds of abuse they might face in their lives.

Child rights are the human rights of children, with a focus on their rights to safety and opportunity. Like adults, they too have a life. People should follow the rules and care for child rights.

Long Essay on Child Rights (500 Words)

Every child deserves to have a full childhood, where they are cared for by their families and communities. They need an environment safe from violence, that gives them the chance to grow and do well like other kids. Surrounding majorly affects a child’s health and development. India has more than a billion people, and more than millions of them are children. It has more children than any other country. They are an important part of society. Like other humans, they also need some basic rights to live peacefully.

History of Child Rights

After World War I, the League of Nations, which would later become the UN, wrote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It included the rights to life, food, shelter, education, freedom of speech and religion, justice, and peace. In 1959, the “United Nations Declaration on the Rights of the Child” tried for the first time to make sure that children were safe from abuse. It came up with 10 principles. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child was made in 1989, and many countries have signed it. This convention gives children a lot of different rights. This UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is very important for making sure children’s rights are respected.

Importance of Child Rights

Children are the world’s future. They are the ones who will be able to help the country grow and improve. So, it is important to protect the rights of every child. In many places, children have to deal with dirty places to live, bad health care, lack of safe water and housing, and damage to the environment. Because of all these things, children are left on the streets and don’t have a good place to live. They are the most vulnerable resource in the world. They can reach their fullest potential in a safe environment where children’s rights are respected. Therefore, they should have the right to a good education, good health, and good food.

What are Child Rights

The Convention on the Rights of the Child says that child rights are part of international law. It says that all children should be treated in a fair, equal, and dignified way. The UN General Assembly has made these rights universal claims, which means that anyone who discriminates against or hurts a child can be punished.

Some fundamental child rights are listed below:

• Right to Education
• Right to Survival
• Right to Participation
• Right to Development
• Right to Health
• Right to Protected from Violence
• Right to a Family Life
• Right to an Opinion
• Right to be protected from Exploitation

Every child has a right to live on this Earth. Government has to make sure that children can use the rights they have. Moreover, we should also make sure that we do everything we can to protect the most vulnerable people in our communities. We can keep them safe from harm, child labor, and war. We can help them build a better future for themselves and for the upcoming generations.

I hope the above provided essays on Child Rights will be helpful in understanding the importance of child rights and the need to protect them.

FAQs: Frequently Asked Questions on Child Rights

Ans.  Every year on 20 November, Child Rights Day is celebrated in India.

Ans.  The United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of the Child defines a child as any person under the age of 18.

Ans.  World Children’s Day is celebrated on 20 November every year.

Ans. There are many challenges to child rights like poverty, culture, environment, neglectful family, etc.

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Is Education a Fundamental Right?

By Jill Lepore

Before sunrise on a morning just after Labor Day, 1977, Humberto and Jackeline Alvarez, Felix Hernandez, Rosario and Jose Robles, and Lidia and Jose Lopez huddled together in the basement of the United States Courthouse in Tyler, Texas , the Rose City, to decide just how much they were willing to risk for the sake of their children, for the sake of other people’s children, and for the sake, really, of everyone. Among them, the Alvarezes, Hernandez, the Robleses, and the Lopezes had sixteen children who, the week before, had been barred from entering Tyler’s public schools by order of James Plyler, Tyler’s school superintendent. On the first day of school, Rosario Robles had walked her five children to Bonner Elementary, where she was met by the principal, who asked her for the children’s birth certificates, and, when she couldn’t provide them, put her and the kids in his car and drove them home.

This hadn’t been the principal’s idea, or even Plyler’s. In 1975, when Texas passed a law allowing public schools to bar undocumented immigrants, Plyler ignored it. “I guess I was soft-hearted and concerned about the kids,” he said. Also, there weren’t many of them. About sixteen thousand children went to the schools in the East Texas city of Tyler, which considered itself the rose-growing capital of America and was named for John Tyler, the President of the United States who had pushed for the annexation of Texas in 1844, which led to a war with Mexico in 1846. Of those sixteen thousand students, fewer than sixty were the children of parents who had, without anyone’s permission, entered the United States from Mexico by crossing a border established in 1848, when the war ended with a treaty that turned the top half of Mexico into the bottom third of the United States. Jose Robles worked in a pipe factory. Humberto Alvarez worked in a meatpacking plant. They paid rent. They owned cars. They paid taxes. They grew roses.

Nevertheless, in July of 1977 Tyler’s school board, worried that Tyler would become a haven for immigrants driven away from other towns, insisted that undocumented children be kicked out of the city’s schools unless their parents paid a thousand dollars a year, per child, which few of them could afford, not even the Robleses, who owned their own home. Turned away from Bonner Elementary, the Robleses sent some of their kids to a local Catholic school—Jose did yard work in exchange for tuition—but they were put in touch with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which sent an attorney, Peter Roos, who filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Eastern District Court of Texas. It was presided over by a judge whose name was Justice. “There were two judges in Tyler,” Roos liked to say. “You got Justice, or no justice.”

Participating in a lawsuit as an undocumented immigrant is a very risky proposition. In a closed-door meeting, Roos asked that the parents be allowed to testify in chambers and so avoid revealing their identities, which could lead to deportation. They had come to the courthouse knowing that, at any moment, they could be arrested, and driven to Mexico, without so much as a goodbye. Judge William Wayne Justice refused to grant the protective order. “I am a United States magistrate and if I learn of a violation of the law, it’s my sworn duty to disclose it to the authorities,” he said. Roos went down to the basement, near the holding cells, to inform the families and give them a chance to think it over. They decided to go ahead with the suit, come what may. Justice did make efforts to protect them from publicity, and from harassment, decreeing that the proceeding would start before dawn, to keep the press and the public at bay, and that the plaintiffs’ names would be withheld.

Roos filed a motion requesting that the children be allowed to attend school, without paying tuition, while the case unfolded, which was expected to take years. “An educated populace is the basis of our democratic institutions,” his brief argued, citing Brown v. Board of Education. “A denial of educational opportunities is repugnant to our notions that an informed and educated citizenry is necessary to our society.” The case was docketed as Doe v. Plyler. “This is one that’s headed for the United States Supreme Court,” Justice told his clerk. Five years later, the appeal, Plyler v. Doe , went to Washington.

Some Supreme Court decisions are famous. Some are infamous. Brown v. Board, Roe v. Wade. But Plyler v. Doe? It’s not any kind of famous. Outside the legal academy, where it is generally deemed to be of limited significance, the case is little known. (Earlier this year, during testimony before Congress, Betsy DeVos , the Secretary of Education, appeared not to have heard of it.) The obscurity of the case might end soon, though, not least because the Court’s opinion in Plyler v. Doe addressed questions that are central to ongoing debates about both education and immigration and that get to the heart of what schoolchildren and undocumented migrants have in common: vulnerability.

Plyler is arguably a controlling case in Gary B. v. Snyder, a lawsuit filed against the governor of Michigan, Rick Snyder, by seven Detroit schoolchildren, for violating their constitutional right to an education. According to the complaint, “illiteracy is the norm” in the Detroit public schools; they are the most economically and racially segregated schools in the country and, in formal assessments of student proficiency, have been rated close to zero. In Brown, the Court had described an education as “a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.” But the Detroit plaintiffs also cite Plyler, in which the majority deemed illiteracy to be “an enduring disability,” identified the absolute denial of education as a violation of the equal-protection clause, and ruled that no state can “deny a discrete group of innocent children the free public education that it offers to other children residing within its borders.” Dismissed by a district court in June, the case is now headed to the Sixth Circuit on appeal.

Plyler’s reach extends, too, to lawsuits filed this summer on behalf of immigrant children who were separated from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border. In June, the Texas State Teachers Association called on the governor of the state to make provisions for the education of the detained children, before the beginning of the school year, but has so far received no reply. Thousands of children are being held in more than a hundred detention centers around the country, many run by for-profit contractors. Conditions vary, but, on the whole, instruction is limited and supplies are few. “The kids barely learn anything,” a former social worker reported from Arizona.

Court-watchers have tended to consider Plyler insignificant because the Court’s holding was narrow. But in “ The Schoolhouse Gate: Public Education, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for the American Mind ” (Pantheon) Justin Driver, a law professor at the University of Chicago, argues that this view of Plyler is wrong. “Properly understood,” Driver writes, “it rests among the most egalitarian, momentous, and efficacious constitutional opinions that the Supreme Court has issued throughout its entire history.”

Driver is not alone in this view. In “ No Undocumented Child Left Behind ” (2012), the University of Houston law professor Michael A. Olivas called Plyler “the apex of the Court’s treatment of the undocumented.” In “ Immigration Outside the Law ” (2014), the U.C.L.A. law professor Hiroshi Motomura compared Plyler to Brown and described its influence as “fundamental, profound, and enduring.” Even people who think the case hasn’t been influential wish it had been. “Plyler v. Doe may be irrelevant in a strictly legal sense,” the legal journalist Linda Greenhouse wrote last year, “but there are strong reasons to resurrect its memory and ponder it today.” Because, for once, our tired, our poor, our huddled masses—the very littlest of them—breathed free.

Laura Alvarez, ten years old, rode in the family’s battered station wagon to the courthouse in Tyler, for a hearing held on September 9, 1977, at six in the morning. (During a related Texas case—later consolidated with Plyler—a nine-year-old girl spoke to the judge in chambers and told him that, since being barred from school, the only learning she was getting came from poring over the homework done by a younger sibling—an American citizen.) In Tyler, the assistant attorney general for the State of Texas showed up wearing bluejeans. She’d flown in late the night before, and had lost her luggage. After an attorney from the Carter Administration said that the Justice Department would not pursue the litigants while the trial proceeded, during which time the students would be able to attend school, Judge Justice issued the requested injunction.

Witnesses presented testimony about economies: educating these children cost the state money, particularly because they needed special English-language instruction, but not educating these children would be costly, too, in the long term, when they became legal residents but, uneducated, would be able to contribute very little to the tax base. The Judge had a policy preference: “The predictable effects of depriving an undocumented child of an education are clear and undisputed. Already disadvantaged as a result of poverty, lack of English-speaking ability, and undeniable racial prejudices, these children, without an education, will become permanently locked into the lowest socio-economic class.” But the question didn’t turn on anyone’s policy preferences; it turned on the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, guarantees certain rights to “citizens” and makes two promises to “persons”: it prohibits a state from depriving “any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” and prohibits a state from denying “any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” Before Plyler, the Supreme Court had established that the due-process clause applied to undocumented immigrants, who are, plainly, “persons,” but it had not established that the equal-protection clause extended to them, and the State of Texas said that it didn’t, because undocumented immigrants were in the state illegally. Judge Justice disagreed. “People who have entered the United States, by whatever means, are ‘within its jurisdiction’ in that they are within the territory of the United States and subject to its laws,” he wrote.

But how to apply that clause? The courts bring a standard known as “strict scrutiny” to laws that abridge a “fundamental right,” like the right to life, liberty, and property, and to laws that discriminate against a particular class of people, a “suspect class,” like the freed slaves in whose interest the amendment was originally written—that is, any population burdened with disabilities “or subjected to such a history of purposeful unequal treatment, or relegated to such a position of political powerlessness as to command extraordinary protection from the majoritarian political process.”

Is education a fundamental right? The Constitution, drafted in the summer of 1787, does not mention a right to education, but the Northwest Ordinance, passed by Congress that same summer, held that “religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.” By 1868 the constitutions of twenty-eight of the thirty-two states in the Union had provided for free public education, open to all. Texas, in its 1869 constitution, provided for free public schooling for “all the inhabitants of this State,” a provision that was revised to exclude undocumented immigrants only in 1975.

Justice skirted the questions of whether education is a fundamental right and whether undocumented immigrants are a suspect class. Instead of applying the standard of “strict scrutiny” to the Texas law, he applied the lowest level of scrutiny to the law, which is known as the “rational basis test.” He decided that the Texas law failed this test. The State of Texas had argued that the law was rational because undocumented children are expensive to educate—they often require bilingual education, free meals, and even free clothing. But, Justice noted, so are other children, including native-born children, and children who have immigrated legally, and their families are not asked to bear the cost of their special education. As to why Texas had even passed such a law, he had two explanations, both cynical: “Children of illegal aliens had never been explicitly afforded any judicial protection, and little political uproar was likely to be raised in their behalf.”

In September, 1978, Justice ruled in favor of the children. Not long afterward, a small bouquet arrived at his house, sent by three Mexican workers. Then came the hate mail. A man from Lubbock wrote, on the back of a postcard, “Why in the hell don’t you illegally move to mexico?”

“The Schoolhouse Gate” is the first book-length history of Supreme Court cases involving the constitutional rights of schoolchildren, a set of cases that, though often written about, have never before been written about all together, as if they constituted a distinct body of law. In Driver’s view, “the public school has served as the single most significant site of constitutional interpretation within the nation’s history.” Millions of Americans spend most of their days in public schools—miniature states—where liberty, equality, rights, and privileges are matters of daily struggle. Schools are also, not incidentally, where Americans learn about liberty, equality, rights, and privileges. “The schoolroom is the first opportunity most citizens have to experience the power of government,” Justice John Paul Stevens once wrote.

The Supreme Court paid relatively little attention to public schools until after the Second World War, but, since then, it has ruled on a slew of cases. Do students have First Amendment rights? In Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969), the Court said yes. Three students had sued when they were suspended for wearing black armbands to school to protest the Vietnam War. In a 7–2 opinion, the Court sided with the students, affirming that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate,” and that public schools, though not democracies, “may not be enclaves of totalitarianism,” either. Justice Hugo Black issued a heated dissent. “It may be that the Nation has outworn the old-fashioned slogan that ‘children are to be seen not heard,’ ” he wrote, but he hoped it was still true that we “send children to school on the premise that at their age they need to learn, not teach.” A still more strident version of Black’s position was taken by Justice Clarence Thomas, in Morse v. Frederick (2007), a case involving a student who, when a parade passed in front of the school, waved a banner that read “ BONG H i TS 4 JESUS .” Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts marked an exception to the free-speech rights established in Tinker: students are not free to endorse drug use, but Thomas, concurring, used the occasion to wax nostalgic: “In the earliest public schools, teachers taught, and students listened. Teachers commanded, and students obeyed.”

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Just because the courts have recognized students’ First Amendment rights, it doesn’t follow that students have other rights. Do students have Fourth Amendment protections against “unreasonable searches and seizures”? Do they have Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination? Do they have Eighth Amendment protections against “cruel and unusual punishment”? In Goss v. Lopez (1975), the Court ruled that students cannot be suspended or expelled without at least some form of due process, but, two years later, in Ingraham v. Wright , it said that schools could punish children, physically, and without any procedure at all. This shift took place amid a growing conservative reaction that viewed the Court’s schoolhouse opinions as an example of judicial overreach, as a violation of states’ rights, and as part of the rise of permissiveness and the decline of order. Lopez had extended to students a Fourteenth Amendment right to due process, partly on the back of the argument that granting students rights is a way of teaching them about citizenship, fairness, and decency. “To insist upon fair treatment before passing judgment against a student accused of wrongdoing is to demonstrate that society has high principles and the conviction to honor them,” the legal scholar William G. Buss wrote , in an influential law-review article in 1971.

Plenty of teachers and school administrators think that students don’t have any rights. “I am the Constitution,” Joe Clarke, the principal of a high school in Paterson, New Jersey, liked to say, roaming the hallways with a Willie Mays baseball bat in the nineteen-eighties. This was an era that Driver describes as marking a Reagan Justice Department campaign for “education law and order.” The era produced a 1985 decision, T.L.O. v. New Jersey , in which the Court ruled that schools require only reasonable suspicion, not probable cause, to search students and their backpacks and lockers and other belongings.

Together, the education law-and-order regime and the rise of school shootings, beginning with Columbine in 1999, have produced a new environment in the nation’s schools, more than half of which, as of 2007, are patrolled by police officers. It was a police officer’s closed-door questioning of a seventh grader, taken out of his social-studies class in Chapel Hill, that led to the Court’s 2011 decision, in J.D.B. v. North Carolina , establishing that only in certain circumstances do students have Fifth Amendment rights. Do students have Second Amendment rights? Not yet. But last year a Kentucky congressman introduced a Safe Students Act that would have repealed the 1990 Gun-Free School Zones Act, and allowed guns in schools. Meanwhile, more and more schools are surveilled by cameras, and bordered by metal detectors. If the schoolhouse is a mini-state, it has also become, in many places, a military state.

Few discussions of Plyler are more keenly sensitive to its ambiguities than Ana Raquel Minian’s “ Undocumented Lives: The Untold Story of Mexican Migration ” (Harvard), a revealing study that, because “undocumented lives” are nearly impossible to trace in the archives, relies on hundreds of oral histories. For Minian, Plyler, by its very casting of undocumented children as innocents, underscored the perception of undocumented adults as culpable—criminals to be arrested, detained, prosecuted, and deported.

As Texas appealed to the Fifth Circuit, Woodrow Seals, a district judge in Houston, ruled for the children in a related case. Seals didn’t agree that the undocumented children were a suspect class, but he didn’t need to, because he believed the Texas statute was not rational, and, in any case, he thought that absolute denial of an education was so severe a harm that, on its own terms, it required strict scrutiny. Public school is “the most important institution in this country,” Seals wrote, and “the Constitution does not permit the states to deny access to education to a discrete group of children within its border.” Seals handed down his opinion in July, 1980, just months before the Presidential election. He wrote in a letter, “I hate to think what will happen to my decision if Governor Reagan wins the election and appoints four new justices to the Supreme Court.”

Carter’s Justice Department had supported the plaintiffs. Reagan’s did not. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Plyler v. Doe on December 1, 1981. The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund considered the case to be as important as Brown v. Board of Education, which, in 1954, Thurgood Marshall, then the head of the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense and Educational Fund, had argued before the Court. Marshall had presented Brown as a Fourteenth Amendment, equal-protection case. The plaintiffs in Plyler were making, essentially, the same argument. Conceivably, their case could realize the promise of Brown by establishing a constitutional right to an education. They could even press the claim that undocumented immigrants were not only persons under the equal-protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment but also, doctrinally, a suspect class. None of these objectives were politically within their reach, however, given the makeup of the bench.

During oral arguments, Marshall peppered John Hardy, representing Plyler, about what the State of Texas did and did not provide for undocumented immigrants:

M arshall : Could Texas deny them fire protection? H ardy : Deny them fire protection? M arshall : Yes, sir. F-i-r-e. H ardy : Okay. If their home is on fire, their home is going to be protected with the local fire services just— M arshall : Could Texas pass a law and say they cannot be protected? H ardy : —I don’t believe so. M arshall : Why not? If they could do this, why couldn’t they do that? H ardy : Because . . . I am going to take the position that it is an entitlement of the . . . Justice Marshall, let me think a second. You . . . that is . . . I don’t know. That’s a tough question. M arshall : Somebody’s house is more important than his child?

Later, Marshall came back at him, asking, “Could Texas pass a law denying admission to the schools of children of convicts?” Hardy said that they could, but that it wouldn’t be constitutional. Marshall’s reply: “We are dealing with children. I mean, here is a child that is the son of a murderer, but he can go to school, but the child that is the son of an unfortunate alien cannot?”

Three days later, the Justices held a conference. According to notes made by Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr., Chief Justice Warren Burger said, “14A applies as they are persons but illegals are not entitled to E/P.” Marshall said, “Children are not illegals. . . . E/P means what it says.” Five Justices wanted to uphold the lower court’s opinion, four to reverse it. Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., volunteered to write the majority opinion. He circulated a draft that called for strict scrutiny, deeming the children “a discrete and historically demeaned group.” Powell said that he couldn’t sign it.

Powell, appointed by Nixon in 1971, had been, for a decade, the chair of the school board of Richmond, Virginia. Sometimes known as “the education justice,” he was deeply committed to public schools. But, because he was also committed to judicial restraint, he was opposed to declaring education to be a constitutional right. “It is not the province of this Court to create substantive constitutional rights in the name of guaranteeing equal protection of the laws,” he had written in 1973, in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez , a case that was widely seen as having shut the door on the idea. For Powell, establishing education as a fundamental right invited claims: are health care, food, and shelter fundamental rights, too?

Powell was unwilling to sign Brennan’s first draft, not only because it went against his opinion in Rodriguez but also because the draft contained language “that will be read as indicating that all illegal aliens, adults as well as children, may be ‘discrete and insular minorities for which the Constitution offers a special solicitude.’ ” Brennan wrote a second draft; Powell once again asked him to narrow his opinion. But other Justices, who wanted to uphold the lower court’s decision, sought to move Brennan further to the left. After reading a draft of Burger’s dissent (“The Constitution does not provide a cure for every social ill,” the Chief Justice wrote, “nor does it vest judges with a mandate to try to remedy every social problem”), Justice Harry Blackmun circulated a proposal for issuing a different opinion, arguing that education has a special status because it’s foundational to all other political rights, being necessary “to preserve rights of expression and participation in the political process, and therefore to preserve individual rights generally.” Marshall, Brennan, and Stevens were prepared to join that opinion. But Blackmun needed Powell to make five. And Powell wouldn’t sign on. “As important as education has been in the life of my family for three generations,” he wrote to Blackmun, “I would hesitate before creating another heretofore unidentified right.”

In the end, Brennan crafted a compromise. Education is not a constitutional right, he wrote, “but neither is it merely some governmental ‘benefit.’ ” Undocumented migrants are not a suspect class, but their children are vulnerable, and laws that discriminate against them, while not subject to strict scrutiny, deserved “heightened scrutiny.” Powell wrote to Brennan after reading the draft, “Your final product is excellent and will be in every text and case book on Constitutional law.”

And yet its interpretation remains limited. “Powell wanted the case to be about the education of children, not the equal protection rights of immigrants, and so the decision was,” Linda Greenhouse remarked in a careful study of the Court’s deliberations, published a decade ago. For many legal scholars, Plyler looks like a dead end. It didn’t cut through any constitutional thickets; it opened no new road to equal rights for undocumented immigrants, and no new road to the right to an education. It simply meant that no state could pass a law barring undocumented children from public schools. But that is exactly why Driver thinks that Plyler was so significant: without it, states would have passed those laws, and millions of children would have been saddled with the disability of illiteracy.

In 1994, when Californians were contemplating Proposition 187, which would have denied services to undocumented immigrants, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times was able to track down thirteen of the original sixteen Plyler children. Ten had graduated from high school in Tyler. Two worked as teacher’s aides. Laura Alvarez and all six of her brothers and sisters stayed in Tyler after Judge Justice issued his opinion in Plyler. She became a legal resident of the United States under the terms of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, graduated in 1987 from John Tyler High School, and spent a decade working for the Tyler school district. “Without an education, I don’t know where I’d be right now,” she said.

“I’m glad we lost,” James Plyler said in an interview in 2007, when he was eighty-two, and long since retired, and enjoying his grandchildren, who are themselves of Mexican descent.

Lewis Powell retired from the Court in 1987. He was replaced by Anthony Kennedy. In another opinion, Powell had written that children should not be punished for the crimes of their parents. “Visiting this condemnation on the head of an infant is illogical and unjust,” because “legal burdens should bear some relationship to individual responsibility or wrongdoing.” It’s hard to know what Kennedy’s likely replacement, Brett Kavanaugh, would say about whether the Constitution guarantees undocumented migrant children the equal protection of the law. He’s never cited Plyler in his scholarship and, in opinions issued from the bench, has cited it only once. He hasn’t written much about equal protection, either, though he has said, in passing, that he finds the equal-protection clause ambiguous. As for undocumented migrant children, he has issued one important opinion, a dissent in Garza v. Hargan, last year, that, while not citing Plyler, described the plaintiff in the case, an undocumented immigrant minor in Texas, as particularly vulnerable.

“The minor is alone and without family or friends,” Kavanaugh wrote. “She is in a U.S. Government detention facility in a country that, for her, is foreign. She is 17 years old.” The reason for her vulnerability? “She is pregnant and has to make a major life decision.” She wanted to have an abortion; Kavanaugh had earlier joined a decision ruling that she must first leave detention and find a sponsoring foster family. When, in a further appeal, the D.C. court vacated that ruling, Kavanaugh dissented, arguing that the court had acted on “a constitutional principle as novel as it is wrong: a new right for unlawful immigrant minors in U.S. Government detention to obtain immediate abortion on demand.” Her name was kept out of the proceedings. She was another Doe. It is not clear whether she ever finished her education. ♦

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By Jonathan Blitzer

By Louis Menand

Essay on Education for School Students and Children

500+ words essay on education.

Education is an important tool which is very useful in everybody’s life. Education is what differentiates us from other living beings on earth. It makes man the smartest creature on earth. It empowers humans and gets them ready to face challenges of life efficiently. With that being said, education still remains a luxury and not a necessity in our country. Educational awareness needs to be spread through the country to make education accessible. But, this remains incomplete without first analyzing the importance of education. Only when the people realize what significance it holds, can they consider it a necessity for a good life. In this essay on Education, we will see the importance of education and how it is a doorway to success.

Importance of Education

Education is the most significant tool in eliminating poverty and unemployment . Moreover, it enhances the commercial scenario and benefits the country overall. So, the higher the level of education in a country, the better the chances of development are.

In addition, this education also benefits an individual in various ways. It helps a person take a better and informed decision with the use of their knowledge. This increases the success rate of a person in life.

Subsequently, education is also responsible for providing with an enhanced lifestyle. It gives you career opportunities that can increase your quality of life.

Similarly, education also helps in making a person independent. When one is educated enough, they won’t have to depend on anyone else for their livelihood. They will be self-sufficient to earn for themselves and lead a good life.

Above all, education also enhances the self-confidence of a person and makes them certain of things in life. When we talk from the countries viewpoint, even then education plays a significant role. Educated people vote for the better candidate of the country. This ensures the development and growth of a nation.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Doorway to Success

To say that education is your doorway to success would be an understatement. It serves as the key which will unlock numerous doors that will lead to success. This will, in turn, help you build a better life for yourself.

An educated person has a lot of job opportunities waiting for them on the other side of the door. They can choose from a variety of options and not be obligated to do something they dislike. Most importantly, education impacts our perception positively. It helps us choose the right path and look at things from various viewpoints rather than just one.

With education, you can enhance your productivity and complete a task better in comparison to an uneducated person. However, one must always ensure that education solely does not ensure success.

It is a doorway to success which requires hard work, dedication and more after which can you open it successfully. All of these things together will make you successful in life.

In conclusion, education makes you a better person and teaches you various skills. It enhances your intellect and the ability to make rational decisions. It enhances the individual growth of a person.

Education also improves the economic growth of a country . Above all, it aids in building a better society for the citizens of a country. It helps to destroy the darkness of ignorance and bring light to the world.

FAQs on Education

Q.1 Why is Education Important?

A.1 Education is important because it is responsible for the overall development of a person. It helps you acquire skills which are necessary for becoming successful in life.

Q.2 How does Education serve as a Doorway to Success?

A.2 Education is a doorway to success because it offers you job opportunities. Furthermore, it changes our perception of life and makes it better.

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Children’s Views on Children’s Rights: A Systematic Literature Review

Children’s rights are set out in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. This systematic literature review aimed to investigate children’s views of children’s rights, at a broad level. Nine papers were included, from a range of countries and contexts. They all accessed the views of children and young people (aged up to 18 years). A content analysis was carried out using a recursive process of hybrid aggregative-configurative synthesis, and themes within children’s views and factors that may affect these were identified. These were ‘awareness of rights’, ‘value placed on (importance of) rights’, ‘impact of having/not having rights fulfilled’, ‘realisation and respect of rights’, ‘equality of rights’, ‘identifying and categorising of rights’, and ‘factors that may affect children’s views’. These were developed into a progression of rights realisation and implications for practice and further research were considered.

• 1 Introduction

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child ( uncrc ) sets out rights of every child, consisting of 54 Articles which include civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights for all children (Save the Children, n.d.-b ; unicef , 2005 ; United Nations, 1989 ). Further to the specific Articles of the uncrc , there are four overarching core principles: of non-discrimination, devotion to the best interests of the child, the rights to life, survival and development, and respect for the views of the child (often referenced as participation or “children’s voice”) ( United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, 2003 ; Woods and Bond, 2014 ). Notably, however, the conceptualisation and integration of these “general principles” at their foundation within the uncrc has been shown to be weak ( Hanson and Lundy, 2017 ). Whilst this review does not take a specific focus on the participation principle, often specifically related to Articles 12–17, it does relate to the rationale of this review which has a focus upon children’s views of their rights. Since the uncrc has been established, significant amounts of scholarly, research and practitioner attention has focused upon this ( Anderson and Graham, 2016 ; Quennerstedt and Moody, 2020 ; Sargeant and Gillett-Swan, 2015 ; Wyse, 2001 ).

Since the adoption of the uncrc , the principles have frequently been divided into three groups (often known as the 3 Ps), of provision, protection and participation ( Hammarberg, 1990 ; Thomas, 2011 ). Quennerstedt (2010: 633) argues that these in fact have a hampering effect and suggests ‘constructing what children’s rights are about from a general human rights language of civil, political and social rights will form a better base for research’.

The “3Ps”, the four guiding principles, and the 54 Articles have created much research and critical debate both from children’s rights scholars and from those working within the framework of the uncrc ( Hanson and Lundy, 2017 ). Byrne and Lundy (2019) , focusing on creation of rights-based policy, described the comprehensiveness of the uncrc as one of its many advantages, but also noted that even from the four principles, there tends to be a focus on two of these (best interests and participation), arguably distorting overall understanding. Prior to the adoption of the uncrc , Melton (1980) carried out research to find out children’s perspectives on children’s rights, noting that ‘until the present study, no one had even asked children what they think about their rights’ ( Melton, 1980 : 186), and without the framework of the uncrc focus, this was researched more generally, and found that age, stage of cognitive development and ses status affected children’s concepts of their rights and also their attitudes towards them.

Further to this, and perhaps as further evidence to the poor integration of the principles of the uncrc to its provisions ( Hanson and Lundy, 2017 ), it is documented that children were not directly involved to any significant extent in the drafting of the uncrc , which seems somewhat paradoxical to the principle of participation ( Lundy et al. , 2015 ) and Lundy et al. (2015) speculate upon the question of what might have been the consequences had children been involved in the drafting process. It has been been established that, when listened to, children are good reporters ( unicef , 2012 ) and that, following Melton and Limber (1992) , adults will only comprehensively identify what is important to children by being aware of their views ( Taylor et al. , 2001 ).

How do children conceive of the notion of rights? What do they think their rights should be? Are they aware of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child? Do they feel that they have a say in making decisions (Article 12)? Do they want participatory rights? Does it ultimately matter what they think?

At this time, she recognised this as a growing area, as did Taylor et al. (2001) , who nevertheless identified a scarcity of studies exploring views of children and young people ( cyp ) on their rights, and how these may differ from adults. This research took place in New Zealand with a focus on awareness and understanding of rights. The authors summarised what had been found about children’s views, and factors that may affect these, including age, socioeconomic status, cultural background, ethnicity; they also indicated that previous studies suggested significant percentages of children were not familiar with the uncrc . Similarly, Alderson (2000) found more than three quarters of pupils surveyed had not heard about the uncrc , and most of the others had heard only a small amount. This is despite Article 42 which states that children, young people and adults should know about the Convention and steps should be taken to achieve this ( United Nations, 1989 ). Taylor et al. (2001) recognised the potential role of schools as places for both pupils and staff to develop understanding of rights.

The complexity of the uncrc is identified as a barrier (for adults) to implementing a child-rights approach ( Williams, 2017 ) and is clearly not a simple document for children to access, even with an understanding that children can cope and engage with complex information (see Sargeant and Gillett-Swan, 2015 ). There do now exist child-friendly copies of the uncrc (Save the Children, n.d.-a ; The Scottish Government, 2008 ; unicef , n.d.-a ) and these appear to offer ways to make the uncrc more accessible for children, from a young age. Further development of this is a current focus for Child Rights Connect linked to the 30th Anniversary ( The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, n.d. ). There are also focused ways to implement, support and develop children’s education about their rights, such as through Unicef UK’s rights-respecting schools award, and in a variety of other publications used in and beyond the UK (for example, see Brantefors and Quennerstedt’s research synthesis, 2016 ).

The present review aims to identify and synthesise findings from a range of primary research studies to present a view upon children’s views of children’s rights, and as such includes research from different countries, ages, groups (such as those in residential care) and level of exposure to children’s rights. The importance of understanding constructions of children’s rights through children’s views and experiences at a broad, and indeed global, level and considering their different contexts, is identified by Stalford and Lundy (2020) . It is fundamental within the uncrc itself, within the guiding principles, the 3Ps and the specific articles.

• 2 Methodology

From a background in professional practice, the researchers adopted a critical realist approach in conceptualising and structuring this review ( Fletcher, 2017 ). This has the advantage of communicating a particular understanding of “rigour” which is readily understandable to professional practice communities (e.g. children’s services workers) and policy makers/influencers ( Gough and Thomas, 2017 ). (The limitations of this approach are considered at a later point in this paper.)

From the research question of “What are children’s views on children’s rights?”, included research needed to access the views of children (up to 18 years) about children’s rights and this needed to be at a general or “meta” level, for all or some of the focus of the paper. The authors read carefully around this aim, with recognition of the nuanced nature of identifying relevant literature. There is much research which implicitly recognises the need to access children’s views and acknowledges the importance of children’s rights, without these being the focus of the research itself. Databases searched included: assia (via ProQuest), eric (via ProQuest) and PsycInfo (via Ovid Online). These three databases were selected in order to gather research from a range of discipline areas including education, social sciences and psychology, with a focus on accessing research on children’s views. Whilst the importance of interdisciplinarity is recognised (see Stalford and Lundy, 2020 ), it was beyond the scope of the authors to extend searches further for this review. The three databases were searched using noft ( assia , eric ) and within Abstract and within Title (PsycInfo) on 2–4 January 2019 and generated a total of 1,536 returns, including duplications, using the following search terms:

• – ‘child* rights’ or uncrc or ‘United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child’
• – child* or young people or student* or pupil* or adolescent*
• – concept* or perspective* or view* or attitude* or perceive or awareness or perception* or opinion* or thought* or value*

Each paper was scanned by title, and where necessary by abstract, and papers that did not meet the mandatory criteria of accessing children’s views about children’s rights were excluded. This left a shortlist of 116 studies, from assia (6), eric (72), PsycInfo Abstract (30) and PsycInfo Title (8). Using the same search terms, a hand search of The International Journal of Children’s Rights from the last ten years was carried out as were Google searches, and experts 1 within relevant fields were consulted, together providing another five papers at this stage.

The authors recognise there is a “grey area” around research relevance, and searched for papers with a focus upon children’s view of their rights in general, rather than any specific area of rights (e.g. participation, protection, uncrc ). Search terms did not include “voice” and “participation”, as earlier scoping showed that this understandably added a large body of research with a focus on participation as a specific aspect within the uncrc . This review aimed to access a broader view.

In order to create a final list that most reliably accessed these, several papers were discussed in detail between the authors, using the abstracts and in six cases, the full papers. A conservative approach was taken which required agreement of both authors in order for papers to be included. To meet inclusion criteria, papers were required to have a focus on rights generally and not only on specific rights, or uncrc Articles, or with a specific focus such as on “nurturance” or “self-determination”. Research was not excluded if it did not use the uncrc specifically as a framework. Papers were manually filtered to include all those published within the last ten years (2009–2019) and grey literature was not included. Whilst this exclusion decision and cut off period was not linked to any specific event or legislation, it has the benefit of accessing views from children in a contemporary context, whilst also providing a dataset of manageable proportions.

The review did not extend to search for research reported in languages other than English. Nonetheless, if the search terms had produced abstracts (and not full papers) written in English, the authors would have sought assistance to translate these.

This process led to 15 papers being identified as suitable for inclusion. These were each read in full and a further six papers were excluded as they did not meet the inclusion criteria; for example, including pupil participants who were over the age of 18 years, or utilising a structured and directive approach focused on outcomes of children’s rights training. This was due to some research focusing on knowledge of structured content pre and post teaching on children’s rights, without gathering children’s more broadly formed views about their rights, either pre- or post- rights teaching, which was the primary focus on this review.

The final inclusion criteria required papers to:

• – access the views of children (up to 18 years) about children’s rights;
• – have a general or “meta” rights focus, and not a narrow focus on specific rights or rights frameworks;
• – be peer-reviewed research published in the last ten years;
• – not use a structured and directive approach focused on outcomes of rights training/education.

Full review then progressed with the evaluation of the remaining nine papers. It is relevant to note that two of these, Kosher and Ben-Arieh (2017) and af Ursin and Haanpää (2018) , utilise the same dataset but with differing scope and analyses.

Gough’s (2007) Weight of Evidence (WofE) framework was used. Quantitative and/or qualitative review frameworks as appropriate to the specific piece of research were used critically to review the nine papers for methodological quality (WofE A). The qualitative investigation and evaluation papers utilised the frameworks used by Bond et al. (2013) in their review of the effectiveness of solution focused brief therapy (cf. also Law and Woods, 2018 ). Each paper was coded with final scores assigned up to 14 points, with criteria including execution of data collection, analysis close to data, evidence of explicit reflexivity and evidence of attention to ethical issues.

The quantitative investigations utilised a framework previously used by Flitcroft and Woods (2018) , and Woodley-Hume and Woods (2019) , and based on research appraisal guidelines ( Genaidy et al. , 2007 ; Wallace and Wray, 2011 ). These were coded with final scores assigned up to 16 points, with criteria including clear research question or hypothesis, multi-level or intergroup analyses, limitations of the research and implications of findings. Following Bond et al. (2013) , mixed methods research was coded using both frameworks. As frameworks had different totals, final scores were converted to percentages to allow for comparison, and the higher percentage was used. Following Law and Woods (2018) , these percentages were then used to categorise each paper as high quality (67–100 per cent), medium quality (34–66 per cent), or low quality (33 per cent or less).

Each paper was also rated for methodological appropriateness (WofE B). In this case, papers were assessed as high if they used qualitative methods, medium for mixed methods and low for quantitative methods. Whilst the use of qualitative methods enables gathering of data close to participant views, quantitative research also adds relevant information about these (cf. Law and Woods, 2018 ).

Each paper was also evaluated for relevance of focus (WofE C) and categorised as:

• – high (central and open focus on children’s views on children’s rights in general);
• – medium (partial and open focus on children’s views on children’s rights in general or central focus on children’s views on children’s rights with (de)limiting context/framework);
• – low (tangential focus on children’s views on children’s rights in general).

Approximately one third (n = 3) of these papers were reviewed by both authors for the purpose of moderating evaluation, and inter-rater agreement percentages following joint moderation were calculated at an average of 97 per cent final inter-rater agreement; the remaining six papers were read in their entirety and reviewed by the first author.

Each paper was read several times by the first author and key data from each paper was mapped and summarised (see Table 1 ). A content analysis of the findings of each paper was then carried out (cf. Brantefors and Quennerstedt, 2016 ), which supported a recursive process of hybrid aggregative-configurative synthesis ( Gough et al. , 2013 ), which referenced both broad conceptualisations of children’s rights, as well as to the principles of the uncrc and its Articles. This process is summarised in Figure 1 above:

• 3.1 Awareness and Understanding of Rights
• 3.2 Value and Importance Placed on Rights
• 3.3 Impact of Having/Not having Rights Fulfilled
• 3.4 Realisation and Respect of Rights
• 3.5 Equality of Rights
• 3.6 Identifying and Categorising Rights
• 3.7 Factors that May Affect Children’s Views
• 4.1 Summary of Findings
• 4.2 Implications for Theory and Understanding
• 4.3 Implications for Practice
• 4.4 Implications for Future Research
• 4.5 Limitations

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A progressions to children’s rights realisation

Citation: The International Journal of Children's Rights 29, 4 (2021) ; 10.1163/15718182-29040003

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Essay on Child Rights

Students are often asked to write an essay on Child Rights in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

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100 Words Essay on Child Rights

Understanding child rights.

Child rights are fundamental freedoms that every child should enjoy. They include the right to life, education, health, and protection from harm. These rights are recognized by the United Nations and are meant to ensure that every child grows up in a safe, healthy, and nurturing environment.

Importance of Child Rights

Child rights are important because they ensure that children are treated with respect and dignity. They help safeguard children from exploitation and abuse. They also guarantee that children have access to basic services like education and healthcare.

Role of Society

Everyone in society has a role to play in upholding child rights. Parents, teachers, and government officials should all work together to ensure that children’s rights are respected and protected. This includes providing children with opportunities to learn, grow, and thrive.

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250 Words Essay on Child Rights

Introduction to child rights.

Child rights are the fundamental entitlements that every child should enjoy, regardless of their race, gender, religion, or socioeconomic status. These rights are enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), which serves as a universal standard for safeguarding the well-being of children.

The Four Pillars of Child Rights

The UNCRC outlines four primary aspects of child rights: survival, development, protection, and participation. Survival rights ensure children have access to basic necessities like food, shelter, and healthcare. Development rights encompass education, play, and leisure, facilitating holistic growth. Protection rights guard children against exploitation, abuse, and neglect. Lastly, participation rights empower children to express their views and be active contributors to society.

Current State of Child Rights

Despite global efforts, child rights violations persist. Poverty, conflict, and social inequality often result in inadequate access to education, healthcare, and safe living conditions. Child labour, trafficking, and exploitation are prevalent issues, particularly in developing nations.

Future Implications and Conclusion

Upholding child rights is crucial for sustainable development. A society where children’s rights are respected is likely to foster individuals who are healthy, educated, and capable of contributing positively to societal growth. It is imperative that governments, non-governmental organizations, and individuals collectively work towards creating an environment conducive to the realization of child rights. The fight for child rights is not just about the present, but also about securing a promising future for the next generation.

500 Words Essay on Child Rights

Introduction.

Child rights are fundamental freedoms and the inherent rights of all human beings below the age of 18. These rights apply to every child, irrespective of their race, religion, or abilities. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), adopted in 1989, is a comprehensive human rights treaty that enshrines specific child rights in international law. These rights, broadly categorized into survival rights, developmental rights, protection rights, and participation rights, form the basis of ensuring a healthy and fulfilled childhood.

Child rights are specialized human rights that consider the unique needs and vulnerabilities of children. They are guided by four fundamental principles: non-discrimination, the best interests of the child, the right to life, survival, and development, and respect for the views of the child. These principles aim to provide an environment where children are nurtured, protected, and empowered to become responsible adults.

Child rights are critical for the holistic development of a child. They ensure that children are given the necessary care and protection, and are free from violence, abuse, and neglect. They also guarantee that children have access to basic necessities such as education, health services, and a safe environment. These rights play a pivotal role in safeguarding the future of society as they lay the foundation for responsible citizenship and social development.

Challenges to Child Rights

Despite the universal recognition of child rights, numerous challenges hinder their implementation. Poverty, armed conflict, discrimination, and lack of access to education and healthcare are some of the significant obstacles. Child labor, child trafficking, and child marriage are grave violations of child rights that persist in many parts of the world. These challenges require concerted efforts from governments, civil society, and communities to tackle effectively.

Protecting Child Rights: The Way Forward

Protecting child rights requires a multi-faceted approach. Firstly, governments must enact and enforce laws that protect child rights and ensure that these laws are in line with international standards. Secondly, raising awareness about child rights among children, parents, and communities is crucial. Thirdly, establishing child-friendly systems and structures, such as child-sensitive courts and child-friendly schools, can significantly improve the realization of child rights.

Moreover, investing in quality education and healthcare, providing social protection measures, and combating poverty can significantly enhance the implementation of child rights. Encouraging child participation in decision-making processes that affect them can also empower children and make them aware of their rights.

Child rights are indispensable for the growth, development, and well-being of children. They are not just moral obligations or legal requirements but form the bedrock of a just and inclusive society. While significant strides have been made in recognizing and protecting child rights, much more needs to be done. It is only when every child can fully enjoy their rights that we can truly claim to uphold the principles of human dignity, equity, and justice enshrined in the concept of child rights.

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The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child

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Publication series: Innocenti Essay

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