Ensuring that school students know their rights
Is there something remarkable about informing young people about the laws that govern their lives? You might think so from the outcry that has followed the appearance of Know Your Rights at School, a guide published by the Children’s and Youth Law Centre and funded by the NSW Law Foundation.
But why? What does age have to do with knowing how the law affects you? If there are laws which affect us, we are entitled to know about them. In fact, as a matter of public policy, we are all assumed to know the laws that affect us. It would be difficult to mount a case for excluding anyone from this position. No-one would accept that we should be kept ignorant of a law that imposes obligations on us or gives us entitlements. So how can it be argued that young people should be treated differently?
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognises human dignity, reason and conscience without regard to age – these qualities characterise all human beings. And the Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by Australia, reminds us that young people should not be treated differently just because of their age.
Because many of the laws affecting young people are for their care and protection, we tend to see young people only as the legal system does: more vulnerable physically and emotionally than most adults and needing support and protection. This risks engendering among adults a simplistic and patronising view of young people. But those dealing daily with young people recognise their intelligence, their equality as human beings and their right to know.
And it is not as if there were no laws young people need to know. Turning 18 is merely the arbitrary stage at which the legal system imposes a different set of obligations and provides a different set of entitlements. But the previous 18 years are not a void filled by the whims of adults.
Young people are governed by most of the laws that affect adults – and some of their own. Those laws give rise to rights, responsibilities or both, and who could justify keeping this knowledge from the young?
Finding a balance between legal rights and responsibilities is not possible without knowledge of the relevant law. Young people, like adults, must find that balance in their lives. And to do so they must be informed.
Some think the young don’t need to understand; they just need to be told. But few of us would accept a rule, law or requirement without understanding the basis for it. Information about the law is vital in a democracy that respects the dignity, reason and conscience of its citizens, young and old. Informed people are better able to comply with and use the laws; perhaps it is the idea of the young as informed and active which troubles some adults.
Informed citizens are also better able to question the adequacy or appropriateness of laws. If wearing a school uniform is a matter to be determined by each school, then everyone, young and old, is entitled to know that. And that is why the NSW Law Foundation funds community resources such as Know Your Rights at School.
A more difficult issue might be the law relating to bag searches. Again, the information kit describes the legal position. Rights and responsibilities flow from the legal position: the right not to hand over personal property to a teacher, and the responsibility to comply with the school’s discipline policy and to care for the safety of fellow students.
Some people, on being informed of the law, will to want change it. Without knowledge, there would be no debate and little chance of change.
It is impossible to convey information that is free of all value. Simply deciding to give information reflects certain values, like a belief in the right to know. Information is the key to a civil society in which all people of all ages are entitled to participate in full knowledge of the law.
First published in the Sydney Morning Herald on 3 March 1999 as ‘The rights stuff that every student needs to know’. Disclosure: I was Director of the NSW Law Foundation at the time.