2025/07/30 by J. Marshall Beier · 1 voice
Medicine · Social Sciences · #Children's Rights and Participation #Ethics and Legal Issues in Pediatric Healthcare #Peace and Human Rights Education
paper · doi:10.1080/14754835.2025.2530101
openalex publication_date 2025/07/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/14
This article approaches children’s university programs as engaged forms of rights education allied with efforts toward democratic inclusion of children. To the extent they produce opportunities for children to discover themselves as participants in knowledge production and transmission, children’s universities promote children’s recognition of their own extant potential to make a difference in their societies. Meaningful participation, in turn, underwrites possibilities both for children to be seen as and to come to see themselves as practicing a fuller citizenship as children – premised on their present assets, capabilities, insights, and experiences, not just preparation for eventual ‘ascension’ to adulthood. The participation rights laid out in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) herald just this promise but, in practice, little progress has been made on their implementation in the more than three decades since the Convention came into force. Also largely unfulfilled is the UNCRC commitment for states to educate citizens (including but not limited to children) on the Convention and its provisions. Drawing from original research on children’s university models in Canada and Hawai‘i, I highlight the contributions of an ethos that positions children as acting subjects in knowledge practices, not merely a recipient audience.