How A Theologian and A Child Practitioner Perceive Child Rights

Abstract

Christianity has its own unique way in perceiving child rights. This perception has been shaping the form of child education either at Sunday schools or Christian schools. This study tries to depict a comprehensible perspective on child rights in the lenses of Biblical perspectives and Christian theories on education. This study is in the form of descriptive study involving two respondents, a theologian and a child practitioner as participants. The data was mainly obtained from in depth interview with the participants, then analyzed using framework based on the Bible, United Nation convention on child rights and educational theory from Hill (1990). The findings showed that children have rights to be helped, to be loved, to be cared, to be nurtured, to be educated and to be happy. These findings are in line with the UN convention on child rights that categorized into four categories: the right to survival; the right to protection; the right to development; and the right to participation. Thus, the role of parents and teachers are to provide teachable moments through teaching for information, teaching for confirmation and teaching for transformation that will guide the children to fully develop as human being created by God.