Digital citizenship... About the Rights of the Child & Freedom of Expression...

A little bit confusing...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-magid/digital-citizenship-inclu_b_780127.html

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The Rights of the Child and Freedom of Expression

I thought about this when I was at the United Nation's Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Vilnius, Lithuania in mid-September. Several panelists at the event talked about the need to protect children from all sorts of dangers, both real and imagined. But, in Europe and much of the world, there is also a subtext when it comes to child protection which is inextricably linked to rights or, as the U.N. puts it "the rights of the child."

Article 13 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (ratified by every country in the world except Somalia and the United States) states "The child shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of the child's choice." Clearly "any other media" includes the Internet which means that, by international law, children have codified rights when it comes to what they can read and what they can say." And even though the U.S. hasn't ratified this convention, Americans do have First Amendment rights which, as far as I can tell, apply to everyone, including minors.

Now, admittedly, parents have rights and responsibilities too, including the responsibility to protect children from danger as well as their own indiscretions. I'm not suggesting that the U.N. convention or the U.S. Constitution be interpreted to imply that parents and educators have no rights when it comes to helping determine what sites their kids should be allowed to visit or what content kids are allowed to post online. But I do think that, in engaging in these responsibilities, parents, teachers and other authorities need to be mindful of children's rights, including their right to express themselves.

Besides, giving students a bit more freedom might make them safer. A report issued by the British government's Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills (Ofsted) found that "Pupils in the schools that had 'managed' systems had better knowledge and understanding of how to stay safe than those in schools with 'locked down' systems. Pupils were more vulnerable overall when schools used locked down systems because they were not given enough opportunities to learn how to assess and manage risk for themselves." The report called upon schools to " help pupils understand how to manage risk; to provide them with richer learning experiences; and to bridge the gap between systems at school and the more open systems outside school."

Although not always consistent in the way they implement it, Europeans have a different legal framework than Americans when it comes to children's rights. At a panel on location-based services at the IGF, John Carr of the UK Children's Charities' Coalition for Internet Safety pointed out that it is illegal in Britain to use a cell phone or other tracking device to track the location of a child without that child's permission. And that law applies to everyone, including the child's own parents.

In a follow up conversation, Carr said that that same principle could also be used to prevent a parent from using software to monitor a child's Internet use though he quickly pointed out that, in practice, it would depend on such factors as the child's age, maturity level and risk profile. "Under British law," he said, "the moment the child is born they are considered an individual when it comes to rights under our privacy laws. In principle, the older and more mature the child is, the less right the parent has to block or monitor access."

In fact, many British parents and most British schools do use blocking or and monitoring software and not all British parents are respectful of their children's' rights. But the principle remains on the books not only in the U.K. but much of the world.

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P.s: It's all about Freedom of expression...