Against Faith Schools: A Philosophical Argument for Children's Rights

In spite of the fact that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights grants parents the right to an education in conformity with their own religious convictions, this paper argues that parents should have no such rights. It also tries to demonstrate that religious and cultural minorities have no rights to establish faith schools and that it is a child's right in trust, to autonomous well-being, which trumps any such claims. Faith schools, it is argued, represent a real and serious threat to children's autonomy, especially their emotional autonomy. As such, they are incompatible with the aims of education required by a liberal democracy. (Contains 16 notes.)