Most of the oppressed groups of the past had some voice, at least among themselves: Blacks and other minorities, people of the wrong religion, immigrants, poor people, and relatively recently the women's movement. The last group without a voice and lacking major rights of their own is children. Even in the US, schoolchildren do not have Freedom of Speech, or of the Press. No economic rights in their own names, no publications of their own, no way to organize.
But in the next generation, children will get computers and Internet connections, even in the poorest developing countries. One Laptop Per Child has provided a million and a half of its XO laptops, and has orders for a million more. Eventually, the plan is to support up to a billion children getting a real education, preparing for real jobs, making friends around the world, and having their own spaces to work and connect in, protected by law from the dangers posed by preying or prying adults.
These children will have a few questions for you. Will you have answers?
(Note: I have been away from Daily Kos for a while, making preparations and then actually moving from California to Indiana. Very different politics here, as I am sure you are aware.)
We talk a lot about what kind of world we will leave to our children and grandchildren, and we have a lot of charities and government programs for children, but we also put a lot of effort into not hearing from children, and not thinking about them. How many children have you heard commenting on Health Care, or war, or Global Warming, or anything at all that directly affects them, lately? OK, Stewie (not actually written or acted by a child) on Family Guy, and Muppets on Sesame Street (same problem), and what actual children?
Even in ancient times, there were a few people who recommended treating the rest of humanity better, sometimes including children, too. "What is hateful to you, do not do to others", for example, is a thought found in Judaism, Confucianism, and elsewhere. Euripides raised the questions of rights of women, children, prisoners of war, and others in his play The Trojan Women, an extremely rare instance of taking the point of view of the ancient enemy. Isaiah looked forward to the time when we should not "learn war any more." The book of Proverbs says to do good to your enemies, although for the selfish purpose of "pouring coals of fire on their heads". The Verses of the Buddhist Monks (Theragatha) says, "How happy we are, not hating anybody." All of this before Christianity signally failed to teach us to love our neighbors as ourselves. So only two thousand years later, some of us have been taking these ideas seriously. As Gandhi is supposed to have said, "I think Christianity is excellent. They should try it."
Freedom of Conscience took strong root in the Netherlands in the 16th century, after they threw off Spanish rule and with it the Inquisition. This was a strong influence on English colonists going to America, including the Pilgrims. They fled persecution in England, and then fled the freedom that Holland offered them, in order to create their own theocracy in Massachusetts. Roger Williams, banished by theocrats, was the first to declare religious freedom in America, in his own colony, Rhode Island. Providence became the home of the first Jewish congregation in America. The second colony to proclaim and implement freedom of religion was Pennsylvania, founded by Quakers. It was the first to treat the native population as real people also entitled to rights.
Enlightenment philosophers inveighed against slavery and other ills, and Thomas Jefferson echoed them in the Declaration of Independence. Still, it took centuries in each case to go from public debate to legal action, as in some parts of the US Constitution, to enforcement. In every case, enforcement remains a practical reality only in part, and only where significant effort and money goes into opposing its opponents. Progress in shifting the boundaries of contention and enforcement is slow and incremental, with rare exceptions.
The US is currently in the third round of the enforcement battle over slavery and racism, after the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement. I have claimed here that The South Will Fall Again, with statistical support for major political shifts in the next fifteen years. Similarly, we have good worldwide statistics on advances in reducing slavery, oppression of women, religious clashes, and so on. Not enough advances, but impressive nevertheless when compared with the pessimism and nastiness of the Cold War period. The current Health Care debate in the US (or I should say public screaming match over Socialism/Nazism/Communism/Armageddon/etc.), is one of many gradually declining relics of that age, as well as the previous ages of slavery and other oppressions.
A great many human rights issues are on the table, in the public discourse, subjects of serious global, national, and local action by nearly 200 governments and more than a million NGOs. Anything you are likely to think of is in your mind because reports of progress or new obstacles on that issue are in the news from time to time. But one realm remains largely out of bounds: children.
Actually, some of children's basic rights to nutrition, clean water, health care, and education are frequently in the news. More advanced freedoms appear more often as something to be denied and not taken seriously, even in the US. School newspapers have articles yanked by faculty advisers or the school administration; elementary schoolboys have been tagged for sexual harassment if they kiss a schoolgirl; disabled students and immigrant students routinely face discrimination despite well-meant laws, and some not meant so well; legally mandated divorce court attention to children's welfare is often a farce.
The biggest problem is that children generally and students in particular have little or nothing to say about how they are treated, even though we have excellent examples of how good a job they can do, and how much they learn from the experience. Student governments don't get to set policies for students; school administrations or other adult authorities do that. Students have nothing whatsoever to say about curricula, textbooks, and teaching methods. The most horrific cases have been systematic sexual abuse by supposedly religious schoolteachers and administrations much more concerned with maintaining their power and reputation than with the welfare of children. Or even, as in the case of native populations in Canada, intent on destroying native culture, and occasionally on genocide.
Children have always been disproportionately victims of war. In some places, they are also weapons of war, kept in line by drugs and threats, and forced to mutilate and kill others.
Children in many countries are functionally property of their parents, who can sell them into slavery. This is illegal almost everywhere, but again we have to ask how such laws can be enforced.
How can denial of children's rights be justified? Why, in exactly the same way as for any other prejudice and discrimination. They are morally and mentally inferior, incapable of looking after their own interests, and a very likely danger to society if not kept in check.
I am not going to argue that every two-year-old should be allowed to do anything that comes to mind. Children do have to learn how their societies currently operate, and do have to learn to work within those structures. In fact, I would argue that we should impose a few more rules here and there.
One of the most important is stated in the title of the book, You Can't Say You Can't Play, by Vivian Gussin Paley. As a Kindergarten teacher Paley observed the cliques formed by her charges, and proposed a new rule, that no group of children could exclude a classmate from a game or other activity. Many children objected strongly. On inquiry with older children, up to sixth grade, Paley found that each group objected that the rule could not work for them, but would work for earlier grades, on the theory that younger children were nicer than older children.
Paley confronted the objectors ("I want to play with my friends. It would make me feel bad to have to play with everybody.") with the feelings of those excluded. Agreement was gradual and reluctant. But once the rule was in place, it took only two weeks for it to be completely normal and natural, with no objections remaining. Some of the most vociferous original objectors became the strongest supporters of the new way of doing things, and not just of the rule. Paley describes one of her students who started off objecting strenuously, but became particularly thoughtful about recognizing selfish and exclusionary thoughts in herself, working on herself to change them, and supporting others.
Most of the obvious ills of local, national, and global societies could be dealt with in short order if we could have such a "No say no play" rule for adults. Current political and social structures do not permit this. Instead, we have to work at the margins, and we usually have to wait for generational shifts in attitudes in order to make real progress on these issues.
However, we have a distinct possibility to change the rules for children worldwide with one-to-one educational computing and walled garden social media for schoolchildren. Everybody agrees that most adults have to be kept out of such spaces in order to avoid numerous possible abuses, not least spam, pornography, and predation. Large numbers of people will agree in theory that children should have the opportunity to talk with children from other countries and cultures, although there are various objections to children of Communists or Muslim terrorists being able to propagandize good Christian capitalist children, or vice versa. We may suppose that North Korea will refuse to participate for as long as the current dynasty continues.
What will happen if we institute global education and global communication for all children, under a No Exclusion rule? Computers can be as much of a help or hindrance as TV, telephones, and print, so we will no doubt need some more rules, and significant guidance. Well, we know that children will play together. Since play is Nature's method of childhood education, we may expect children to learn a lot from the interaction. What they will learn, we cannot say in detail, although it will obviously include languages, cultures, perhaps some history, and for sure a variety of games that they did not previously know about. We know that children will waste some time on the same things that adults waste time on, such as devotion to celebrities. We know that adults will try to interfere, and that other adults will have to fend them off.
So far, so good, with the usual caveats. Then what?
Letting children make friends around the world, and providing them with space and tools for networking, means that as they grow up, children will join together for every known purpose, and perhaps invent some new ones. There will be romances and marriages. Some will go into business together. Some will create political bases. Some will start new social movements, or gather together in movements started by others. New forms of music and dance arise from various sources today, and there will be more tomorrow. Some will decide to join together to attack the most intractable problems of humanity, starting with any remnants of poverty and oppression left after education takes hold everywhere, and continuing on with rescuing the environment, or even working out how people can become happy. That's the hard one. I'll have to write about that sometime.