This paper brings forward some questions related to school and preschool as contexts for practicing children’s rights. Its general assumption is that rights-in-practice are integrated in social and cultural activities and networks where sustainable relationships between human beings constitute a fundamental element. The main question that guides our discussion concerns what kind of relationships that are likely to occur, develop and survive in schools and preschools. We will particularly consider whether the current neo-liberal educational policy where assessments are a core activity for proving success, may contribute to conditions that support relationships and rights. To a large extent, studies on school and pre-school as contexts for implementing and interpreting children´s rights have focused on article 12 in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), i.e. the child’s right to express views and to be heard in matters that affect them. Also, article 29 in which primary goals for education are stated, has been a common reference in educational research. Further, research on children’s rights in education has largely been anchored in programs and schedules for democracy learning and civic competence, issues that carries essential and obvious interests for schools to provide and teach. Compared to other research fields such as law and social sciences, the issue of children’s rights in educational research thus has been linked to democracy and citizenship. Such a focus may imply a view on the child where agency, independence and a preparedness to act in accordance with a liberal idea of what society demands from its citizens, is emphasized. When shifting focus to other articles in the CRC, another, more dependent child appears. Article 6, stating the child’s right to life, development and survival, and article 2, where the child’s right to be ensured the rights without discrimination due to, e.g. sex, race, religion or ethnicity, rather imply a child in need of protection. Although this is a well known distinction in literature on children’s rights and although recent literature has emphasized that children are both dependent and independent, few have elaborated on qualities of relationships between the child and others as a key factor in this dynamics of “both-and”. Another issue that rarely has been brought up is whether and how educational contexts with explicit goals to be achieved, may set conditions that limit the range of rights and relationships to be practiced. The aim of the paper is to shed some light on these issues.

Theoretically we will frame our discussion by drawing on concepts and thoughts as presented in recent childhood theory, educational sociology, and educational philosophy. We will particularly lean on Lee’s (2005) concepts ‘separate’ vs. ‘separability’, on Lister‘s (2008) discussion on citizenship as a status vs. a practice, on Noddings (2005) views on ‘the whole child’, and on Aitken et al. (2007) and their discussions on the relation between a neo-liberal agenda for education and the global rhetoric on rights, including children’s rights.

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