On January 26th, 1990, Chile signed the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), ratified by the General Assembly of the United Nations Organization in 1989. The CRC is composed of 54 articles that reflect the fundamental rights of children , grouped into 4 categories: right to survival, right to development, right to protection and right to participation. The latter constitutes the framework of governmental actions to promote spaces where children can express their opinions, practice democracy and citizenship, and be heard and respected in their proposals in order to generate a culture of participation and inclusion. The exercise of this right allows the development of autonomy and citizenship in childhood, with school being the ideal context for daily practice of participation. In this article a revision of the CRC is carried out to establish the framework in which the concepts of participation and childhood are developed. Next, the public policies developed to exercise the right to participation in Chilean educational institutions are analyzed. The purpose of this article is to contribute to the questioning and visibility of practices related to participation in childhood in educational contexts, in the perspective of contributing to the construction of a culture where childhood and youth are seen as valid others, opinion sovereign and, therefore, active subjects within our society.
Keywords:
Participation; right to participation; citizenship; citizen education; human rights; school life
Del Río-Naveillan, X. (2019). Childhood and the Right to Participation in the Chilean Educational Context. Revista Saberes Educativos, (3), 78–95. https://doi.org/10.5354/2452-5014.2019.53790
