David Quinn
Photo: The Irish Sun It is fundamentally wrong to politicise children, writes David Quinn
The Dáil Chamber in Leinster House was handed over to children last week to discuss the issue of climate change. They were aged between 10 and 17 and it was part of RTÉ’s climate week, intended to raise aware of the effect humans are having on the planet.
RTÉ might as easily have organised a homelessness week, to draw more attention to that issue, and then call for schoolchildren to make submissions on how they would tackle the matter. It would be a relatively simple thing then for their teachers to arrange for them to do this, directing their attention to the output of groups dedicated to tackling homelessness. Those same groups would then be asked to pick their favourite submissions and invite their student authors to pretend they are Dáil deputies for the day in Leinster House. RTÉ would then give it lots of coverage.
But how right would it be to do this, and how right is it to set up so-called ‘children’s parliaments’ or ‘assemblies’? Are we not in fact politicising and sometimes radicalising children at younger and younger ages? Shouldn’t they be left alone to enjoy their childhoods instead, which they have enough challenges as it is.
Politicising children has a long and unhappy pedigree. The Soviet Union did it, for instance. It established a communist youth movement called the Komsomol. This was aimed at young people aged 14-28. There was a version called the Pioneers for children aged 9-14, and then another one called Little Octobrists (named after the October revolution) for children even younger than that.
The purpose of these organisations was to ensure that young people had a thoroughly communist outlook on the world. Politics was not to be left until they became adults. They should be political as young as possible.
Examples
These are obviously extreme examples but they are only extreme because the State behind them was so extreme. But they should set us on guard about whether it is appropriate to politicise children at all.
What happens when we politicise children? One big problem is that they are used by adults for their own ends. As the process that led to the youth assembly on climate in Leinster House shows, adults were operating behind the scenes all the way.
It was ultimately the idea of adults, the children drew on the policy ideas of adults, adults assessed the quality of their submissions and adults publicised it all.
But once the children were put out in front, we were told to admire their idealism and not criticise either the process, or their ideas, because to do so would be to pick on children, and only a terrible person would do that. This is, of course, a form of moral blackmail.
On its own, this is an excellent reason why children should not be put at the head of a political movement because it is a way of shutting down debate. You are precisely using their youth and vulnerability to do this end.
The adults who put the children out front should instead have the courage and honestly to own these ideas themselves and be prepared to robustly debate them with all-comers.
Imagine, for the sake of the argument, that in an alternative universe, instead of young climate activists aged 10-17 being put in charge of the Dail chamber for the day it was young, pro-life activists. Do you think for one second that the media or the pro-choice movement would allow themselves to be morally blackmailed into silence on the grounds that it is unfair to criticise children?
Believing in God and following Jesus is as beneficial to children as it is to adults”
No, instead a big spotlight would be put on the pro-life adults behind the children and they would be attacked for using children. It would be no good those pro-life adults saying children above all should be leading the movement because it is, after all, the very youngest children who are killed by abortion. That would be rightly condemned as another form of moral blackmail.
Nor should religion ever use children in this way, let alone turn them into zealots. Children should not be put out front by the Churches in debates about the existence of God, or marriage and family or human sexuality not simply because they are too young to be able to debate these issues properly, but because it is the job of adults.
Controversy
But doesn’t religion use children in this way anyway by the very act of bringing them up in a particular faith? Well, first of all there is a very big difference between raising them in the Faith and putting them out front where adults should be in big, controversial debates.
Secondly, children will be raised in some set of beliefs, no matter what. If they are not raised with religious beliefs, they will still pick up a worldview and a set of morals – good or bad – from somewhere. Furthermore, that worldview and those morals will come from adults, either their parents, or another set of adults, or both.
So, it would be ridiculous and unjust and totalitarian to forbid religion and religious parents from raising children in a given faith.
Third, religion is intended to be a source of comfort and support to a child. Believing in God and following Jesus is as beneficial to children as it is to adults. In fact, it would be very wrong for a Christian parent, believing this, not to raise their children as Christians.
The move to set up children’s parliaments and to encourage children to take to the streets is a very bad one. If we are going to have 10 years old sitting the Dáil pretending to be politicians, then we might as well lower the voting age to 10 while we’re at it. But we won’t do that, because deep down we know that children need to grow up and mature first. We need to let them be children, in other words, and not pretend-adults.