Art 12 "The Right to be Heard"

These are the proposed articles in the Pledge for Rights-Centric Education relating to Article 12 "The Right to be Heard"

1. Recognizing that there may be legitimate reasons to offer, but not impose, specific Educational aims, outcomes, pedagogies, or curricula, commit to ensuring that the Child is free to accept or reject such offered aims, outcomes, pedagogies or curricula, provided always that the Aims of Education in Article 29 1. are upheld.
2. (taken together with Art 13 “Freedom of Expression”) Where specific Educational curricula are offered, commit to ensuring that it does not violate the Child’s Right to “seek and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers”. This requires that the Child have adequate un-programmed time and opportunities to exercise their Freedom of Expression.
3. Recognizing that behaviourist practices (the use of positive or negative external motivators including inter alia awards, rewards, recognition, denial of privileges, and punishments), particularly implemented in spaces of curricular pressure, seek to conform the Child unnecessarily and thereby deny the full expression of a Child’s Right to be Heard in determining the manner of the fulfilment of their right to education, commit to progressively eliminate such practices.
4. Recognizing that there may be legitimate reasons to offer, but not impose, Assessments (inclusive of feedback and evaluations) relating to, inter alia, participation (e.g. attendance, contribution to pedagogical activities) or performance (e.g. examinations), commit to ensuring that the Child is free to accept or reject such offered Assessments.
5. Moreover, where a Child accepts an offer of, or requests, such Assessment, commit to ensuring that the outcomes of the assessment will be used to Compare the Child against other Children, including inter alia rankings, statistical comparisons (e.g. z-scores, percentiles, stanines, etc.) or normalized grades, only for Children who give explicit informed consent to participate in such Comparisons.
6. (taken together with Art 28 1, “Equal Opportunity for Right to Education”) Nevertheless, recognizing that scarcity is an inherent feature in the organization of most formal educational opportunities, and especially public funded educational opportunities, and that selection procedures to determine which Children obtain access to those educational opportunities may compel a Child to participate in Assessments and Comparisons, commit to support the Child who elects to pursue such scarce opportunities.
7. (taken together with Art 28 1, “Equal Opportunity for Right to Education” & Art 2, “Freedom from Discrimination”) Furthermore recognizing that mainstream educational practices of assessment (especially those used as selection criteria for scarce educational opportunities) of Children are often prejudiced (e.g. ableist, racist, sexist, classist) and therefore violates the Right of the Child to Freedom from Discrimination, commit to offer additional support to Child victims of Discrimination and to seek redress for the Child through transformative and restorative justice approaches.
8. (taken together with Art. 15. “Freedom of Association”) THIS TEXT IS STILL ROUGH Recognizing that there may be legitimate reasons to offer, but not impose, the grouping of Children by identity, age, interest, etc., commit to
   • support Children to form and join groups of their choosing, both in-person and online; and
   • support the Child who wishes to abstain from joining a group;
   • where the organization of the provision of education [I’m thinking there’s obvious geographic constraints, language constraints, socio-economic barriers, very like age – e.g. for children of 12-16, some of which derive from law] imposes barriers on the fullest expression of freedom of association, commit to overcoming the barriers
   • support association with people outside of the “expected” age group – eg. adults