Children are not typically considered as being ‘political’, but they have the right to freedom of peaceful assembly under international human rights instruments such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). Nonetheless, a lack of commentary and jurisprudence on this right of children and young people has left the right largely unexplored. Similarly, the aims of education set out in Article 29 CRC are almost identical to the education rights enshrined in Article 13(1) ICESCR, but Article 29 seems to be taken for granted (Gillett-Swan, Thelander and Hanna, 2021).  Both CRC and ICESCR explicitly acknowledge the role of education in wider society and democracy, and jurisprudence on Article 29 CRC highlights that education is not only a right in itself, but an essential medium for the realisation of other rights (Lundy et al, 2016; Tomasevski, 2001; see also Gillett-Swan and Thelander, 2021). Article 29 largely mirrors the ICESCR and its reference to education as development of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, but it also features additional references to respect for cultural identity, language and values, and the natural environment.

Article 29 CRC sets out the purpose and value of education in a presentation that has been criticised for being idealistic (Lundy and Martinez-Sainz, 2018), and that has led to emergent tensions between the disciplines of human rights law, and the education to which it pertains (Gillett-Swan and Thelander, 2021). Indeed, it is its position as a right that enables all other rights (Lundy et al, 2016; UN, 2001: para. 6) that may explain the lack of substantive focus in the literature (Gillett-Swan, Thelander and Hanna, 2021). There are a number of typologies that represent education rights such as Tomasevski’s (2001) ‘4-A’ typology, and Verhellen’s (1993) typology of rights to, in, and through education. The Committee on the Rights of the Child, however, emphasises that education is not merely formal schooling, but the experiences that connect young people’s lives with the purpose of education (UN, 2001: para. 2). Crucially, this purpose includes ‘efforts that promote the enjoyment of other rights’ in all environments, whether ‘home, school or elsewhere’ (UN, 2001: para. 8). Despite this emphasis on the purposes of education as being the lynchpin of children’s rights more broadly, there is still little empirical research that illuminates the aims of education as a right in and of itself, and little attention to how exercising civic rights such as the right to freedom of assembly (Article 15) can realise children’s education rights under Article 29.

Whilst the findings from an empirical study have been presented elsewhere (Martinez Sainz & Hanna, forthcoming; Hanna & Martinez Sainz, under review), this paper seeks to address the scarcity of jurisprudence and commentary by presenting a conceptual framework that links article 29 aims of education and article 15 right to freedom of assembly through the lens of social epistemology. This paper employs empirical data gathered in an examination of how young people exercised their right to freedom of peaceful assembly during the pandemic, using the social epistemology of groups (Bird, 2021; Tollefsen, 2021) and of human rights (Buchanan, 2021) to conceptualise how young people learn through protest in realisation of the aims of education under Article 29.

The study upon which this paper is based used a digital ethnography methodology (Pink, 2016) to examine how young people exercise their Article 15 CRC right to peaceful assembly. Using MAXQDA, all Tweets using the hashtags #FridaysForFuture and #ClimateStrikeOnline were collected for the following dates running up to the first UK Covid lockdown in 2020: i) 28 February, the Bristol Climate Strike that preceded COP25; ii) 6 March, the Brussels Climate Strike; and iii) 13 March, the first climate strike online. These dates provided a cross- sectional ‘snapshot’ of young people exercising their right to peaceful assembly. The hashtags formed the sampling criteria applied to the data as only Tweets including these hashtags were coded. The data were cleaned and those in English selected for analysis which produced a dataset of 9,403 Tweets. All coding was done by hand for consistency using a deductive coding framework agreed by both authors. This framework was agreed by an initial coding of Tweets and was applied to surface content of Tweets, any links included in Tweets, and the content of any posted links. This research was conducted with full ethical approval from the University. All Twitter data were anonymised by removing usernames, handles, metadata and geospatial location. Where content may still be identifiable, Tweets were paraphrased. All data was treated in accordance with the Best Interest of the Child principle of children’s human rights (UN, 1989), and followed ethical practices of research (BERA, 2018).

In exploring the links between children and young people exercising their right to freedom of peaceful assembly and their education rights, and the manner in which this takes place in person and online, we will propose a conceptualisation of how children learn through protest that will contribute to the sparse jurisprudence on both Article 15 and Article 29. In doing so, we will apply a lens of collective epistemology: a subfield of social epistemology that examines epistemic practices and processes of aggregate groups such as young climate strikers. This, we argue, will highlight that in contrast to the populist position that children ‘lose out’ on their education by protesting (Guardian, 2021), children in fact live the aims of education: respect for human rights and the natural environment; and are prepared for life in civic society (UN, 1989)

Adams, R. (2021) Do not encourage children to join climate protests, says draft DfE strategy, The Guardian British Education Research Association (BERA) (4th Ed.). (2018) Ethical Guidance for Education Researchers. Available at: https://www.bera.ac.uk/researchers-resources/publications/ethical-guidelines-for-educational-research-2018 accessed 31/01/23 Bird, A. (2021) ‘Group Belief and Knowledge’ in M. Fricker, P. J. Graham, D. Henderson and N. J. L. L. Pedersen (Eds) The Routledge Handbook of Social Epistemology, Abingdon: Routledge, pp274-283 Buchanan, A. (2021) ‘The Reflexive Social Epistemology of Human Rights’ in M. Fricker, P. J. Graham, D. Henderson and N. J. L. L. Pedersen (Eds) The Routledge Handbook of Social Epistemology, Abingdon: Routledge, pp284-292 Gillett-Swan, J. and Thelander, N. eds., 2021. Children’s Rights from International Educational Perspectives: Wicked Problems for Children’s Education Rights (Vol. 2). Springer Nature. Gillett-Swan, J., Thelander, N. and Hanna, A. (2021) Setting the Scene for Children’s Rights and Education: Understanding the Aims of Education. Children’s Rights from International Educational Perspectives: Wicked Problems for Children’s Education Rights, pp.1-11. Hanna, A., and Martinez Sainz, G. (forthcoming) “I will not stand aside and watch. I will not be silent”: Young people’s organisation of their right to freedom of assembly through the #FridaysForFuture movement, International Journal of Children’s Rights Lundy, L. and Sainz, G.M. (2018) The role of law and legal knowledge for a transformative human rights education: Addressing violations of children’s rights in formal education. Human Rights Education Review, 1(2), pp.04-24. Lundy, L., Orr, K., and Shier, H. (2016) ‘Children’s Education Rights: Global Perspectives’ in M. Ruck, M. Petersen-Badali, and M. Freeman (Eds) Handbook of Children’s Rights: Global and Multidisciplinary Perspectives, London: Routledge, pp364-380 Martinez Sainz, G., and Hanna, A. (forthcoming) “You cannot ban us from exercising our human rights”: Pedagogical challenges and possibilities of youth activism for human rights, Human Rights Education Review Pink, S. (2016) Digital ethnography. Innovative methods in media and communication research, pp.161-165. Tollefsen, D. P. (2021) ‘The Epistemology of Groups’ in M. Fricker, P. J. Graham, D. Henderson and N. J. L. L. Pedersen (Eds) The Routledge Handbook of Social Epistemology, Abingdon: Routledge, pp263-273 Tomasevski, K. (2001) Human Rights Obligations: Making Education Available, Accessible, Acceptable and Adaptable, (Right to Education Primers No. 3) Gothenburg: Novum Grafiska AB United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child (2001) General Comment No. 1, Article 29(1): The Aims of Education (CRC/GC/2001/1), Geneva, United Nations Verhellen, E. (1993) Children's rights and education: A three-track legally binding imperative. School Psychology International, 14(3), pp.199-208.