ABSTRACT
This article concerns educating children in schools about their basic rights under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The question we address is the teaching of responsibilities. We point out that although there is no mention of children’s responsibilities in the Convention, responsibilities are inherent in the concept of rights. Therefore, children’s rights education requires that children learn responsibilities that go together with rights. But we also point out that although there is a conceptual linkage between rights and responsibilities, effective education requires that the central focus is on rights and that children are given the opportunity to discover for themselves the connection between rights and responsibilities. That teachers unduly focus on responsibilities is miseducation about children’s rights. Our latter discussion is based on our observations of a children’s rights education program in Hampshire, England.
