Page - 75 - in Reflective Cosmopolitanism - Educating towards inclusive communities through Philosophical Enquiry

HANADI (MANUAL) 75 two exercises that focus not only on universal rights and obligations but more specifically on children’s rights and obligations. You can find further resources on the concept of “rights and obligations” in the manual to Tina and Amir, episode 1, leading idea 1 “Children’s Rights”; and the manual to Ella, episode 6, leading idea 3. Discussion Plan: Do children have the same rights and obligations as adults? 1. Do children have the right to food? Do they have the right to housing? Do adults also have those rights? What about the obligation of eating? Do adults and chil- dren have the obligation to eat? 2. Do children have the right to work? Do adults have the right to work? 3. Do adults have the obligation to work? Do children? 4. Do children have the right to play? 5. Do adults have the right to play? 6. Do children have the obligation to play? Do adults have that obligation? Do pa- rents have the obligation to play? Do parents have the obligation of playing with their children? 7. Do children have rights? Do they have obligations? 8. Do adults and children have the same rights and obligations? Note: When dealing with the topic of child labor, we must bear in mind that article 32 of the 2006 Convention states: ”States, Parties recognize the right of the child to be protected from economic exploitation and from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child’s education, or to be harmful to the child’s health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development”. Exercise: Rights of children and youngsters After reading episode 4, ask students to make a list of their rights and to explain what conditions are necessary in enforcing them (e.g. the right to receive an education implies the need for a family to bring you up and a school near home; the right to food implies having access to food). In order to spark discussion, ask students the following questions: To what extent do you think the rights on your classmates’ lists are respected in your particular case? To what extent do you think those rights are present at school? In the rest of the country? In the rest of the world? After that, emphasize the existence of other rights, some of which appear in the list be- low. These other rights are probably unknown to most students, and are therefore less likely to appear in spontaneous discussion. As you go through this new list, you could ask them the same question you asked about their own lists. There are two basic aims to this exercise. 1) Identifying children’s rights as stated in the 2006 Convention and 2) to emphasize the fact that certain rights depend on families’ financial situations and the level of development of countries (such as the right to food, clothes, housing or health) while rights stated in the following list do not depend (or at least not exclusively) on financial or geographical factors. Children whose basic mate- rial needs are covered may not enjoy their right to freedom of expression, of choosing friends or of protection from violence. This could work the other way around as well.