Scottish Union for Education – Newsletter No102
Themes: children’s rights and the UNCRC.
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We’ve written before about the problem with children’s rights, essentially raising the concern that what this means in practice is, in fact, expert rights and powers over parents. Additionally, the problem with children’s rights is that it is something of an oxymoron in terms of the classical idea of rights as freedoms. Not to beat about the bush, but children don’t have rights – and that’s a good thing.
It was really the development of society, of wealth, of leisure time – and the ultimate separation of the world of adults and the world of children – that created what we call childhood. This took hundreds of years and took both a forward and backward step in the nineteenth century, when middle-class campaigners pushed for this separation all while children were working in factories from a very young age.
Thankfully, and to some extent inevitably, society changed and increasingly created a protected space and time for children to grow and develop outwith the world and responsibilities of adulthood.
So, as with many contradictory aspects of early capitalist development, we found that the ‘bourgeois’ family acted as a barrier to ‘bourgeois’ exploitation of children. At this time, the idea of children having rights would make no sense, because rights were understood correctly to relate to freedoms. Today, the idea of rights has been confused and tends to mean the ‘right’ to services and to protections.
The reason this change and confusion of concepts is important is that it turns the idea of rights on its head, and rather than being about adult freedoms, talk of rights has increasingly become an expert-professional, legalistic and state-owned concept that can at times be used directly against the rights of individuals, and in particular, parents.
In this regard, it is worth checking out the new guidance on home education that was published by the Scottish government last month. We’ll be looking at this in more detail in a later newsletter, but for now it is worth noting that, predictably, the guidance is all about children’s rights.
This of course does not mean that society should not protect children; it and we should protect children, but part of this protection is protecting them from adult responsibilities, something that is being confused by the very people who promote children’s rights.
You can see with the transgender ideology, for example, that once we confuse the idea of rights and incorporate children into this framework we end up with unhinged ideas and practices developing, the most glaring example being the promoted idea that children are sexual and should have the right to determine their own sexuality and ‘gender’.
In 2021, for example, Children in Scotland argued that children as young as 12 should be allowed to legally change their gender without their parents’ consent. Children in Scotland are, of course, a classic example of a ‘caring’ Scottish charity – a professional, ‘expert’-led body that is supported by the Scottish state and who are all about ‘always working to uphold children’s rights’.
This is just one example of the way in which the idea of children’s rights both undermines the protection that children need and leaves it to professionals to make decisions and develop policies on their behalf, away from the supposedly non-expert gaze of their parents. Indeed, you can imagine why the idea of home education horrifies these so-called experts.
I raise this here because, as you will see below, the question of who decides, when it comes to the lives and the values of children, is increasingly being interpreted through the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), and unsurprisingly, this giving of ‘rights’ to kids doesn’t always work out well.
The UNCRC was legally incorporated in Scotland last year, meaning that, by law, schools have to ensure that their policies and practices fit the prescriptions of this convention. We discussed this in an earlier newsletter, noting that one effect of this is that distinctly political matters are sidestepped by the ‘misdirection of legislation’.
What this means in practice is that schools can increasingly make decisions about what and how a child is taught, regardless of concerns that parents may have, or at least, it becomes an issue for courts to decide based on the law of the UNCRC.
Through the adoption of the UNCRC, children are encouraged to act independently of their parents – they have rights after all – and so can decide, from a young age, all sorts of things about their education. Children have thus become a ‘stakeholder’ in education, all helped by the experts on hand.
It will be interesting to see how our children’s rights advocates react if a group of children decide to get rid of transgender ideology, or reject education about the problem of their evil ‘whiteness’. But I think we all know how that would pan out.
We will be looking in more detail at some of these issues over the next few months, for example when we examine the idea of global education. For now, I think it is simply worth noting that there is often something otherworldly about these policies and laws. This makes sense when they are being developed away from people, from families, communities and even nations. After all, who wrote the UNCRC? Did you? Did it come out of the concerns of your community?
Of course, none of us knows who wrote it; most of us don’t even know what’s in it. Much of it is common sense, but not all of it, and by its very nature it cannot reflect the common sense of adults in Scotland because it was not developed by them, it does not reflect their lives and concerns or values, and in many respects, it appears to be being used to bypass Scottish adults, all through the sleight of hand of ‘children’s rights’.
On a final note, and with regard to Kate’s article below, it is worth thinking about what it means when the state, via the UNCRC, argues that children must have the choice to decide on their religion in schools.
The idea of freedom and tolerance developed through the idea of freedom of conscience. It was the religious wars of the seventeenth century that led to the pragmatic step and development of the ideal about tolerance. Unless we are going to continue killing each other over our different beliefs, John Locke argued, we better learn to be tolerant and to understand that it is impossible and immoral to force your beliefs onto another person.
The UNCRC would no doubt argue that they are being tolerant by allowing children to decide their religion. But as we have noted, this is a sleight of hand because children, by their nature, cannot make fully informed decisions. As a result, what this really amounts to is a direct threat to adults’ right to educate their children with their values and beliefs. It is an attack on this most basic of freedoms: the freedom of conscience.
Glossary of terms: when you hear the word rights, read experts, and when you hear the acronym UNCRC, run for the hills
Kate Deeming is the Parent and Supporters Group Coordinator for SUE, a long-time advocate for children and childhood, and a solo mum to a 12-year-old boy. Her writing can be found on her Substack. She also hosts the Pink Elephant podcast, found on all podcast platforms.
I have come to the conclusion that there is a dark triad within our current education system that is undermining not just education but society itself. The elements of this triad are the idea of hate crime, global citizenship education, and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) Rights Respecting Schools Award scheme.
Each draws our children away from actual education, pushing them to become citizen soldiers and propagandists. It is worth noting that several parents associated with SUE, who grew up in Soviet bloc countries, have remarked how resonant Scottish government aims are with what they experienced as children.
We do not live in a one-dimensionally authoritarian society, but it is hard for me not to see at least some semblance of the Maoist Great Leap Forward that aimed to organise children away from their parents.
During that time, the young were organised into youth corps and socialised by education systems to not trust their parents or older generations. It was in these ‘learning’ camps that social engineering (enhanced by peer pressure) would result in snitching of parental ‘irregularities’ and children would be almost entirely under state control. This was manufactured carefully over decades.
How is Scotland going to organise its own Great Leap Forward? Well, we are already on our way, with hate crime legislation incorporated into many school handbooks and policies and educators primed to report children to the police; with moral education being embedded into every lesson through ‘inclusive learning’ (which drowns out actual education); and with the UNCRC, whose values are being adopted in 75% of Scottish schools.
I would like to focus on the UNCRC because I think it is the most insidious and sinister of the lot.
Rachael Hobbs has written about this issue for SUE previously. Through the UNCRC Rights Respecting Schools Award scheme, every element of our children’s lives is to be interrogated through a ‘rights respecting lens’ – and parents are superfluous. As Rachael notes, ‘What becomes more apparent as we look at some of its vaguer themes around children’s rights is that the UNCRC actually articulates, within many of its various Articles, adult-level concepts around self-determination and freedoms that cannot truly apply to the young.’
The fact of the matter remains that children being children are not hardwired to lead but to follow. And the question is, who do they follow? As the UNCRC mediates every element of our children’s lives, the values of our children are increasingly developed by the state and by the ‘global’ perspective of the United Nations.
We have already seen the UNCRC weaponising schools to keep secrets from parents (under the guise of Article 16 – ‘I have a right to keep some things private’) in relation to gender identity (hello Article 8 – ‘I have the right to an identity’, wrongly applied). However, its more sinister aspects are not so much in the big stuff but in the slow creep of children being given a false sense of empowerment with the notion of ‘choice’.
Through RSHP, our relationships, sexual health and parenthood education curriculum, children are made to become accustomed – from an early age – to oversharing with non–family members. The UNCRC gets children used to making decisions without their parents’ knowledge or consent, with moral guidance increasingly provided by the Scottish government. How this works out in practice is, unsurprisingly, not very mature, and goes against common sense.
Last week, I received a text from my son’s school notifying us that they were going to move the after-school rugby club to the adjoining school because no child had put themselves forward to participate. It was the first time I had heard such a thing was being offered. I was confused about why he didn’t get the letter through, because it is precisely the kind of thing my son would enjoy.
But here’s what happens in Scottish schools these days:
Teacher stands in front of classroom of 25 primary-school children holding a letter up in demonstration.
Teacher: ‘Who would like to sign up for the (rugby) club?’
Children look furtively about, no one dares to say anything. Maybe wee Jimmy says something like…
‘I hate rugby!’
(Jimmy’s older brother is a tank and plays rugby at his secondary school; Jimmy associates rugby with getting tackled by said brother.)
Or the teacher presents the idea with no enthusiasm, or even a bit of dislike, or s/he is having a bad day so it is almost incidental in presentation.
As a result, no child raises his or her hand. A mix of ‘peer pressure’ plus lack of adult guidance (as that would be going against the child’s voice) means that no child steps forward. No child gets the opportunity for said sport, or science, or art, and parents are often none the wiser.
But that’s kids, isn’t it? When my son comes home, I ask him why he didn’t sign up, and he shrugs. You see, sometimes my son – being a child – needs some parental encouragement to try new things. Lots (most) kids are like that.
So, we talked and now he’s doing the rugby club. And he likes it. And even if he didn’t, he can try it for four weeks and say he gave it a go. THIS is the problem with all these ‘child voice’ agendas. Some kids would eat jelly babies all day long if we gave them a ‘choice’ with their food. Good parenting means keeping an eye out on the longer game, the bigger picture. That’s our job as parents.
I do not think most people have any true sense of the scale and scope of the UNCRC project. I did a Google search recently and found no fewer than 99 organisational apostates wholly responsible for spreading the good news. And if that sounds religious, it’s because it is. The UNCRC is a moral code that blesses its followers with rights. It is a new secular religion being embedded in ALL schools. Even Catholic ones. And that’s a problem.
The UNCRC Rights Respecting Schools Award scheme piggybacks onto the consent-based model we see in our RSHP education (sexual rights, innit?). It is a system based on liberty rights as conferred by the state. The UNCRC mechanism seeks to mediate every element of our children’s lives into commodifiable and measurable bits. And not just any bits, but bits that THE STATE determines. Will teachers deliver consultation exercises to children subjectively, then harvest the data to report back to the international unelected undemocratic court of the United Nations?
This is worrying in and of itself. But what occurred to me is how much the UNCRC – ironically – ignores children. I am not speaking of the more egregious issues the UNCRC addresses, such as child trafficking and exploitation (although I would be curious how effective this treaty is in reality, even in that context) but about the mind-numbing bureaucracy that is coming for our children that actually seems counter to good care of children.
The latest target is Catholic schools themselves. Ironically (and I say this as a Catholic who is wholly confused by this adoption), Catholic schools have largely signed up for the Rights Respecting Schools Award scheme. I see how headteachers work extra hard to match the two moral codes up. It’s obvious to me that only one of those groups is truly benefitting from the association, and it’s not the Catholic schools nor the children. (We could see this as an example of the Dentons Playbook strategy of astroturfing.)
In an ironic twist, the Scottish government decided to launch a consultation ensuring that Catholic schools are UNCRC-compliant (‘Et tu, Brute?’). After working so hard to ensure they were down with the kids, this does seem a bit of a sleekit (but wholly predictable) move as the UNCRC is quickly moving into dominance even in Catholic schools. (And strategically plays on anti-Catholic sentiments, meaning a precedent will be set for other elements of education without a blip.)
The outcome of this is that the state will move in to ensure that ‘children really want to be Catholic’, in other words to ensure that they have the right to decide their religion and, one imagines, their religious education. One does not have to stretch the imagination far to see how this might go. We only have to look at the more anodyne example of rugby provision being offered.
The Scottish government appears to have nothing but derision for parents. It makes assumptions that there are some wide-scale abuses going on, and now Catholic schools and Catholic parents need to prove that they are giving children a ‘choice’ in terms of religious upbringing.
The giving to children of a ‘choice’ of whether they want to be Catholic might seem egalitarian to the non-religious among us, fed a diet of ‘Christian right anti-choice bigots’, but what this bias is doing is undermining parents and their beliefs.
Interrogating children in a ‘consultation’ or ‘survey’ presupposes a certain personality and mental acuity not afforded to most children. What if a child doesn’t want to reveal to the UNCRC agent how they feel about said ‘issue’? What if they want to maintain their own privacy? What if they don’t want their data recorded? How is data being collected and managed? Do children have a right of refusal? What if they (understandably) haven’t developed any deep or concrete thoughts on said issues? What happens if there are dominant voices in the classroom (as with the rugby club) that drown out any alternative possibilities? What if the teacher leading the ‘consultation’ has a pre-existing bias?
Every element of our children’s lives are set to be mined, managed and manipulated. The state should not have such power.
I was speaking to the novelist Ewan Morrison recently about the state of Scotland, and he indicated that perhaps we are already under occupation. He may well be right.
News round-up
A selection of the main stories with relevance to Scottish education in the press in recent weeks, by Simon Knight.
https://freespeechunion.org/whitehalls-biggest-departments-dump-stonewall-diversity-scheme/ Frederick Attenborough, Whitehall’s Biggest Departments Dump Stonewall Diversity Scheme 26/01/25
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clye1dyk4kwo Lucy Adams, Teachers to take industrial action over pupil behaviour 28/01/25
https://corvinak.hu/en/velemeny/2025/01/28/growing-up-woke-education-is-the-new-political-faultline Joanna Williams, Growing up woke? Education is the new political faultline. New political divides have emerged in recent decades. In many countries, it is now education and not social class that most accurately predicts how people will vote in elections. 28/01/25
https://archive.is/FAuQp Daniel Sanderson, Rape crisis charity drops promise to define ‘woman’ after transgender row. Women have been let down by an organisation that is failing to show common sense, say Scottish Tories 28/01/25
Deb Schmill, How to (and How NOT to) Mandate Phone-Free Schools
A guide for legislatures looking to make their states’ schools phone-free, and not just during class time. 30/01/25
https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20250129-france-sex-education-overhaul-to-include-consent-and-gender-identity RFI, France’s sex education overhaul to include consent and gender identity. French schools will introduce mandatory sex education classes covering topics such as consent, gender identity and online pornography from September, despite opposition from conservative groups. 29/01/25
https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/01/30/is-the-horror-of-child-transitioning-finally-coming-to-an-end/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR3XfBK2U8CRps0HYOrJ41ouE1ShfoNSy9tnZZRyvwx-P9sYfkNyH5Z_ZH4_aem_wvL_nfYdWv2yZR17LSHh9A Andrew Doyle, Is the horror of child transitioning finally coming to an end? Trump’s executive order on gender clinics deals a stunning blow to this activist-driven pseudoscience. 30/01/25
Abigail Shrier. How the Gender Fever Finally Broke. Loving, naive parents believed medical science was above politics and beyond question. Now, with the stroke of a pen, a destructive ideology has been eliminated. 30/01/25
Dave Clements, Less neurodiverse, more neuroconverse? My contributions to the neurodiversity and special educational needs debate 30/01/25
https://www.spiked-online.com/2014/06/13/exploding-seven-myths-about-education/ Daisy Christodoulou, Exploding seven myths about education 13/06/14
https://archive.is/e9cVH Alex Massie, Scotland’s schools are failing, but it doesn’t have to be this way. A focus on woolly notions of skills instead of the hard work of acquiring knowledge inevitably leads to mushy outcomes — the complacency of McBlob is to blame 25/01/25
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