In an ongoing PhD-study “emergency education” will be examined, with a focus on aims promoting children's safety and protection. Emergency education refers to formal and non-formal education in situations where children lack access to education due to complex emergencies or natural disasters. Long term goals of emergency education are frequently described in terms of developing “life skills” which refer to children's knowledge of their rights, their capacity of critical thinking and problem-solving, their ability to make choices and take action etc. Other long term educational goals may concern developing a whole community towards democracy, peacefulness and adoption of human rights in order to build a more safe and child-protective environment. The issues above will be studied from an overall socio cultural perspective (Hägglund, 1999). More specifically our perspective can be described as being largely influenced by theorists in the field of social studies of childhood like Qvortrup (ed. 1999), Mayall (2002) and James et al. (2004) with an emphasis on children’s rights issues. The notion of children as agents is fundamental. In this paper however, we will explore the possibilities to approach these research issues from a different angle. Recent writers are discussing how over-protectiveness, exaggerated safety measures and fear can counteract the development of the individual’s preparedness and competence to deal with difficult situations and threats of various kinds. In his book “Liquid fear” the Polish sociology professor Zygmunt Bauman (2006) writes about derivated fear, a state of mind dominated by interiorised helplessness and vulnerability even when there are no actual threats. Globalization and individualism have, according to Bauman, undermined solidarity and human bonds which makes everyday life more unpredictable, uncontrollable and more frail. The Swedish psychiatrist David Eberhard (2006) writes about the national panic syndrome. He claims not only that over protectiveness and fear deprive people of their abilities to deal with threats and dangers as well as the very skills of living, but also that the entire nation of Sweden including the government is caught in a state of panic and anxiety which causes a national inability to handle crises and disasters. How would these ideas apply to children in disaster areas where threats may very likely be for real and where fear is sound and adequate? A fundamental dilemma within the Children’s rights perspective and the framework of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, is whether protecting a child counteracts the child’s possibilities of participation. Protectiveness does not normally encourage children’s agency, self-determination and autonomy. Could there be built in contradictions in the notion that it is possible to protect children by providing education aiming at strengthening their competences and abilities to identify, avoid and deal with risks and threats? If so, does reasoning like Bauman’s and Eberhard’s in any sense apply to and elucidate the field of life skills training in emergency education?

In the study attention will be drawn to how the concept of life skills is understood by actors and stakeholders and, more important, what assumptions and values these understandings are based upon. The study will be carried out in two parts where the first aims at collecting and examining policy documents in order to analyze contents and discourses. The second part is a case-study where qualitative data are collected in interviews with significant actors like teachers, school-staff, decision makers, parents, fund raisers etc. This paper aims at discussing theoretical perspectives, thus study of literature and articles is the method in use.

The study above is expected to result in an analysis of stakeholders and actors understandings of the concept life skills in emergency education, and of the values and assumptions these understandings are based on. However these expected results are not in focus in this paper which aims at discussing the theoretical framework of the study.