Human Dignity
#1 in Children’s Parliament blog series on the foundations of a rights-based childhood
When we think about rights we usually think about equality, respect, participation and protection. Oftentimes any idea of rights for children comes with a caveat. In Scotland, we don’t just want our children to be citizens but rather (in terms of the 4 capacities of Curriculum for Excellence) ‘responsible citizens’. To be a citizen then the child must enter some kind of contract with adults – behave and you will be accorded rights as we see fit. Except rights are not in the gift of parents or teachers or any other adult. They are the child’s rights by virtue of being human, and we can only understand this if we pay attention to something that might be considered somewhat abstract, the intuitive idea of human dignity.
At Children’s Parliament, we work with very young and primary school-age children on what human dignity means to them. When we introduce the idea, before we even talk about rights, we have taken to placing one hand on our chest because this is something we saw children do as they pondered its meaning. It’s an internal thing, something we want all children to have and to understand. In times of stress and adverse circumstance we want them to hold onto it, deep inside, it belongs to them and no-one else can take it away.
We have created a tool by which children learn and talk about human dignity. Children look at thermometers and barometers with us and they understand it’s how we measure a given thing – temperature, pressure. Then using a new measure – a dignometer – children start to think and talk about the kinds of things that can happen in a child’s life that help them to build a sense and experience of human dignity, and what can undermine it. Children talk positively about playing, having a cuddle, making someone proud, being good at something, helping someone else. And they talk about being left out, being shouted at, losing someone you love, being frightened, bullied. For some children reflections on human dignity start with a simple idea of what makes them happy or sad, then as we talk more about children’s human rights they begin to understand that all children have a right to experiences and relationships which build and bolster their human dignity. Children know that no child is ever free from experiences which can knock them sideways, but that in the round, all children need to be loved and to know they are loved. Love is at the heart of human dignity.
Philosopher Martha Nussbaum argues that to understand a life lived with dignity needs us to reflect on what the individual is actually able to do and to be. This then is about justice, sometimes about liberating the child from the circumstances imposed on them, whether that is societal inequalities – the poverty that affects 1 in 4 children – or adult behaviours like violence and neglect. When adults and children work out what human dignity means to them we have the start of something special.
Colin Morrison
Co-Director Children’s Parliament
For more information about the Children’s Parliament Investigates Bullying project visit www.childrensparliament.org.uk/cpinvestigatesbullying