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Abstract
The right to spiritual development has had little attention in public educational policy. This is more challenging, considering the fact of increasing religious diversity and the focus on spirituality and religion in that context, as well as the way the spiritual is mentioned in documents on children’s rights. This article traces the development from the first documents on the rights of the child and responses to these documents. It is argued that educational policy and practice should pay more attention to the way children’s spirituality is included in the documents. This is an issue of general education as well as of moral philosophy. The article concludes with a claim: spiritual development is a matter of survival and flourishing as human beings, and considering this in the framework of children’s rights could mean exploring spiritual sources in one’s own faith as well as in other faiths.
Notes
1. A version of Koczak’s description is accessible on the Internet: http://www.korczak.org.uk/declarationofrights.html.
2. This is evident from the status report concerning the treaties of the UN and ratification by the member states as well as withdrawn reservations. An updated status concerning the CRC is found on the following webpage: https://treaties.un.org/pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATY&mtdsg_no=IV-11&chapter=4&clang=_en.
3. I refer to the latest report. Earlier reports from 1993 to 1998 do not correct this impression.
4. This was the main idea already in the educational philosophy of Pestalozzi (Myhre Citation1981).