More than a quarter of a century has passed since Canada promised to recognize and respect the rights of children under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Ratification of the Convention cannot, however, guarantee that everyone will abandon proprietary notions about children, or that all children will be free to enjoy the substance of their rights in every social and institutional context in which they find themselves, including—and perhaps especially—within families. This disconnect remains one of the most important challenges to the recognition of children’s rights in Canada. The authors argue that social toxins are as harmful to children’s independent welfare and developmental interests as environmental toxins, and that both must be eradicated if Canada is to fulfill its commitments under the Convention. They also argue that if Canada wishes to ensure the substance of the rights outlined in the Convention are socially guaranteed, an attitudinal or cultural shift is required concerning the moral and legal status of children. This revised, expanded, and updated edition of the bestselling Challenge of Children’s Rights for Canada will be of interest to academics, policymakers, parents, teachers, social workers, and human service professionals—indeed to anyone who cares about and for children.

In this volume, leading leading scholars and practitioners introduce law as foundational discipline in education. The legal foundations of education include the laws and policies through which particular states establish and maintain public school systems; require parents and guardians to enroll the children in their care in approved educational programs; mandate that particular subjects be taught in particular ways by persons with particular credentials; regulate teacher certification standards and teacher employment; and ensure school safety, effectiveness, and efficiency. Education law is a field of practice and scholarly inquiry within the legal foundations of education which is concerned primarily with the constitutional rights of students, teachers and other personnel in schools. About the Educational Foundations series: Education, as an academic field taught at universities around the world, emerged from a range of older foundational disciplines. The Educational Foundations series comprises six volumes, each covering one of the foundational disciplines of philosophy, history, sociology, policy studies, economics and law. This is the first reference work to provide an authoritative and up-to-date account of all six disciplines, showing how each field's ideas, methods, theories and approaches can contribute to research and practice in education today. The six volumes cover the same set of key topics within education, which also form the chapter titles: - Mapping the Field - Purposes of Education - Curriculum - Schools and Education Systems - Learning and Human Development - Teaching and Teacher Education - Assessment and Evaluation This structure allows readers to study the volumes in isolation, by discipline, or laterally, by topic, and facilitates a comparative, thematic reading of chapters across the volumes. Throughout the series, attention is paid to how the disciplines comprising the educational foundations speak to social justice concerns such as gender and racial equality.

With the adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), commentators began to situate the evolution of the status of children within the context of the “property to persons” trajectory that other human rights stories had followed. In the first edition of A Question of Commitment, editors R. Brian Howe and Katherine Covell provided a template of analysis for understanding this evolution. They identified three overlapping stages of development as children transitioned from being regarded as objects to subjects in their own right: social laissez-faire, paternalistic protection, and children’s rights. In the social laissez-faire stage, children are regarded as objects, and largely as the property of parents. In the paternalistic protection stage, children are seen as vulnerable and in need of protection. The children’s rights stage lays emphasis on children as rights-bearers, as individuals in their own right with entitlements. In this second edition, new essays assess the extent to which children’s rights have been incorporated into their respective areas of policy and law. The authors draw conclusions about what the situation reveals about the status of children in Canada. Overall, many challenges remain on the pathway to full recognition and citizenship.

Canada signed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child over a decade ago, yet there is still a lack of awareness about and provision for children’s rights. What are Canada’s obligations to children? How has Canada fallen short? Why is it so important to the future of Canadian society that children’s rights be met? Prompted by the gap between the promise of children’s rights and the reality of their continuing denial, Katherine Covell and R. Brian Howe call for changes to existing laws, policies and practices. Using the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child as their framework, the authors examine the continuing problems of child poverty, child care, child protection, youth justice and the suppression of children’s voices. They challenge us to move from seeing children as parental property to seeing children as independent bearers of rights. In The Challenge of Children’s Rights for Canada, Canada’s obligations and the rights of children are examined from the perspectives of research and development in the fields of developmental psychology, developmental neuroscience, law and family policy. This timely and accessible book will be of interest to academics, policy-makers and anyone who cares about children and about taking children’s rights seriously.

This second edition of Integrating Human Rights into Development consolidates the findings and research compiled in 2006 with key developments and activities that have occurred in the intervening seven years.

"Published in cooperation with the Human Rights Institute of the Center for Applied Ethics, Indiana University-Purdue University, Fort Wayne."

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child was incorporated into international law in 1989. Since its adoption, it has been ratified by nearly all member nations. An outline of the basic rights of all persons under the age of 18, the Convention has various implications and its importance cannot be contested. This collection focuses on children's rights as defined by the U.N. Convention, and their relevance in both national and international contexts. The contributors discuss the Convention from different disciplinary perspectives, but are united in the belief that it is a tool to be utilized and contextualized by individuals, institutions, and communities. If there is a single conviction to be found throughout Children's Rights it is that the rights of the child are far too important to be left to states alone to provide and protect. To paint a detailed picture of the subject as a whole, the volume looks at situations in which the basic rights of children are often denied such as violent social conflict, parental abandonment, and social inequality. Consisting of thirteen essays by prominent scholars, it is an in-depth and interdisciplinary exploration of the significance of children's rights, and a tremendous resource for those working with children and youth in institutional and educational settings.