You don't really have a choice

on children's rights in education

“If I have a right to play then school should give us more free time. It’s not even half an hour for lunch,” my 13 year old says.

We’ve been talking about the book I’m reading, Eloise Rickman’s It’s Not Fair - why it’s time for a grown up conversation about how adults treat children. 

When my eldest was a toddler, I committed to parenting in a way that consciously respects my children’s autonomy and agency. I’ve written and organised in support of youth rights. Yet this book is pushing me to spot the adultism children are subjected in places where I hadn’t seen it. 

While reading it, I realise I don’t even know what the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child says and that I have a responsibility to discuss the articles with my chilren. We’re in a playground while having this conversation, so I try, “Do you know you have a right to play?”

(Image of strawberries and raspberries from my 13 year old’s pick your own birthday party)

They’re all actually keenly aware of this. Perhaps more than most. Up until a couple of months ago, they were all home educated and because we took a self-directed, consent-based approach, they were mostly in control of how they spent their time.

I feel a sharp twist in my stomach when my eldest tells me about not having enough free time. This young person particularly enjoys school, chose to go and continues to choose to go, independent of the family’s decision. 

My 13 year old is holding the tension of seeing what’s wrong with the system and appreciating the benefits of participating in it: more time away from family, more independence, more time alongside peers, academic input it would be hard for us to match, opportunities we didn’t have access to before school.

But the level of control young people in schools are subjected to and the entrenched inequity between adults and young people is a high price to pay. Naming that is the least we can do.

I try to offer support by chatting about why the breaks at secondary school are so short. “Perhaps they’re worried that young people will get into trouble if they have more free time and they don’t know how else to manage it,” I suggest, “It could also be that they feel classes are more important than play.”

“But they should know that a lot of learning happens through play,” my 13 year old points out, “and even if people get into trouble there must be other ways of managing it.” 

I am relieved that this sense of justice and self-advocacy is intact, that the system’s might hasn’t confused a sense of what’s right. I am frustrated that while we’ve made a choice for our children to go to school, it doesn’t really feel like a choice at all.

For a bunch of reasons, home education doesn’t feel sustainable for us. It’s unsustainable for most. There isn’t the social, cultural or economic set up for education and childcare outside of school to be a truly shared endeavour. So a lot is heaped on the parents.

As a family, we would have to work incredibly hard to replicate what school is offering and we’re more resourced than many if we were to attempt that. An individual solution doesn’t answer a collective problem.

School doesn’t feel like a choice either. We have to take what’s on offer or leave the only publicly funded option, even if it isn’t a rights-respecting one.

My 13 year old tells me about a school they’ve heard of which has a dedicated room with all the resources you need for each subject and with people in each room available to support your learning if you decide that’s what you want to do. 

I tell them it sounds like Sands School in Devon, which I visited for the Freedom to Learn conference last year where I gave a workshop on supporting self-directed group projects. I wish options like that were available and accessible to our family, to everyone.

That desire sits in tandem with my gratitude that school is working for our family. Nothing my children have experienced or witnessed so far touches what I did, growing up in the 90s and 00s in Trinidad. 

It’s a relief to know that they are spending their days in places where they are relatively safe and happy. It’s been reassuring that so many of the teachers we’ve met care deeply about their work. And I know it’s a privilege that all three have found it as easy to be there as they have.

But I have a responsibility to bear witness to the lack of choice children and families are being given when it comes to education. I’m more aware of it now that all my energy isn’t going into creating alternatives. 

The frustration on its own isn’t enough but its presence is healthy and alive.

*My young person gave me permission to share our conversation so I can normalise other ways of thinking about education