Child Liberation

When Lorna Finlayson was thirteen, she left school and never went back. She no longer wanted to be told what to study, what to say, what to wear and what to do; that adults knew better and that obeying them was for her ‘own good.’ She didn’t know the name for it then, but she was a child liberationist. Now, as a philosopher, Finlayson feels more strongly than ever that we must rethink how children are treated by adults. Children, she argues, are an oppressed group: subject to legal and social discrimination, denied basic freedoms of movement and speech, disproportionately likely to be in poverty and subjected to violence. Thanks to the rise of social media and the ever-increasing testing and authoritarianism of some schools, children are more likely than ever to suffer from mental illness, disempowerment and distress. Child Liberation calls for us to break the consensus that children’s lives are not their own. Why do we have compulsory schooling? Why can’t children vote? Why can children work some jobs and not others; and why do adults wield so much power over them? Are children really more emotional and irrational than adults? With these questions gathering apace, as young people increasingly take part in ‘school strikes’ over issues from climate change to school dress codes, the time is ripe to explore child liberationist ideas and rediscover radical philosophies of childhood. With their help, we can glimpse other possible childhoods, and better worlds for all of us.