Probably the largest oppressed minority in this country is children. We take the oppression so much for granted that we do not even notice it.

Suppose that you and all the adults living near you were told that for nine months of every year for the next eleven years you would all have to wear a uniform, and spend all your working time doing your best to complete identical tasks which appeared to have no practical significance. You would think you were living under an insane dictatorship, yet that is the fate that awaits almost all our five-year-olds.

Children are frequently excluded, and not only from public houses and betting shops. There are quite ordinary shops that will admit children only two at a time, and there are hotels and restaurants that will not admit children at all. It is not unusual to see children and animals bracketed together, as in the notice "All children and dogs to be kept under control".

Children are blamed for their behaviour far more fiercely than adults. The boys in the Bulger case were branded as evil, and people wrote to the papers about the wickedness of the present-day child. They failed to notice that one reason that they had been so astonished by the incident was that murders by children are so exceedingly rare. The NSPCC estimates that in Britain a young child is killed by its own parents or carers every other day, and others have made much higher estimates. This suggests an enormous amount of violence that does not result in death. If children have seen such violent behaviour in supposedly responsible adults, in their own homes, how can they be blamed if they imitate it? Why are they not continually praised for imitating it so seldom?

The United Nations Convention on Children's Rights curiously enough gives

further proof of our disgraceful attitude to children. Almost all the rights conferred are also conferred by the Charter of Human Rights. Children have to have them conferred separately, because, by implication, children are not even human. One of the few rights that belongs specifically to children is the right to have a name; think what it means for a child to be nameless.

I have spent most of my life teaching in schools which try to treat children properly. This means, for instance, schools where children and adults are on equal terms; the mutual use of first names is only a superficial indication of this relationship. It means schools where children and adults make decisions together, including decisions about the appointment of staff, the curriculum and problems of behaviour; it means schools where lessons are voluntary; it means schools where there is no system of discipline because children naturally understand about right and wrong, and every instance of antisocial behaviour needs to be seen as a mistake which must be considered individually.

Since retiring three years ago I have been visiting such schools around the world, and last autumn I went to Japan. The attitude to young children in Japan is absolutely different to ours; the Buddhist belief is that children can do no wrong, and to English eyes young children are simply spoiled. As soon as they get to school, though, the world is turned upside down, and their lives are far more fiercely controlled than the lives of their British contemporaries.

While I was there this article appeared in an English-language newspaper:

TEACHER FACES HARD LABOUR

CORPORAL PUNISHMENT ON TRIAL

FUKUOKA (Kyodo) Prosecutors demanded Thursday that a 50-year-old high school teacher on trial for killing a 16-year-old female student through corporal punishment be sentenced to three years hard labor.

Defendant Akira Miyamoto inflicted corporal punishment on Tomomi Jinouchi, of Kinki University Women's High School in lizuka, Fukuoko Prefecture, in a fit of anger, a prosecutor told the Fukuoka District Court.

Miyamoto is accused of striking the girl on the head and shoulders, causing her head to hit a concrete pole. She died of an acute skull fracture.

A harsh sentence should be imposed because the public would interpret leniency as the judiciary’s condoning corporal punishment, the prosecution said.

The teacher’s counsel called for a suspended sentence, arguing that it was a sad accident that occurred because Miyamoto was over-zealous in his devotion to his students’ education. The defense also said that Miyamoto should not be singled out as the only teacher to strike pupils as a punishment.

The prosecution closed its case by saying Miyamoto conveniently interpreted the law banning corporal punishment as being just a principle, and frequently practiced such punishment on his students in the belief that it was necessary for their education.

In their final argument, the defense said that half of the nation's high schools use corporal punishment. The defense claimed that the violence Miyamoto perpetrated was not very severe and stressed that the girl's death was accidental.

Near the end of Thursday’s hearing, Miyamoto tearfully apologized for his actions, saying they could never be permissible.

According to the indictment, Miyamoto struck Junouchi on July 17 after she refused to leave his classroom during a book-keeping she was not supposed to take.

The defense submitted to the court Thursday an appeal for a lenient sentence containing about 75,000 signatures. The court is scheduled to hand down a ruling Dec. 25.

Eventually Miyamoto was found guilty of "inflicting grievous bodily harm leading to death", and in spite of the prosecution's demand for a three-year sentence the judge decided to be lenient and send him to prison for only two years. In his summing up the judge said that Miyamoto’s intentions were "of a good educational nature, in trying to stop silly behaviour" but that he had gone too far.

I don't know what would have happened if the girl had left school, and her employer had killed her in his office. I doubt if the judge would have thought of suggesting the excuse that he was only trying to stop silly behaviour.

How could there possibly have been 75,000 people who supported the teacher? I can only think that they felt threatened by children and believed that the way to keep them under control was by violence, even if that violence led to death.

In Japan I visited four alternative schools, and in each of them I felt entirely at home. Each school has its individual character, but any of them might perfectly well have existed in Europe or the United States. To differing degrees they all offered examples of informal relationships, shared responsibility, voluntary lessons and absence of systematic discipline. I found this extremely reassuring. If the Japanese, starting from such a very different culture, are working towards the same picture of an ideal education as we are, that suggests strongly that we are all moving in the right direction.

From what I have written so far it might be thought that the reason for treating children with respect and consideration is that it is simply humane and just to do so. There is another reason, which our ordinary, fundamental lack of respect for the young makes it difficult for us to see. It is that children understand many things in a way that adults have been taught to forget.

The Voice of the Children was an organization based in Norway which arranged "Children's Hearings", where children were given the opportunity to express their concerns to the leaders of their country. At the first hearing in Norway the adults responding to the children's questions included Gro Harlem Brundtland (who was at that time leader of the opposition), and the equivalents of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the chairman of the CBI and the deputy- chairman of the TUC. The politicians had to speak clearly and simply, and if they attempted to waffle the children simply asked them to explain. The questions raised were not unusual, but the way they were discussed was exemplary.

In 1992 there was a global children's hearing at the United Nations conference on the environment in Rio. Children came from twenty different countries, and among the adult panel was Al Gore, soon to become Vice-President of the United States. This was the contribution of a twelve-year-old Rwandan, Marthe-Olive, who spoke calmly and clearly in front of the huge audience:

My name is Marthe-Olive. I come from Rwanda. I want to talk about the problems that I have in Rwanda. For years the children of Rwanda have been unhappy because of the war. They have seen children like themselves die, little ones and big ones, men and women. Lots of families are scattered. They have left their possessions to get away from the guns and the bombs. Now they have no shelter, no food, no clothes. They have nothing. Some children have become orphans, and no one takes care of them. Others, their schools have been destroyed and they do not know where to go. We do not want to live in this war, in this misery. Wars kill innocent people, they spread disorder and hatred. They slow down development. Children do not like war. Those in Rwanda want the war to end very soon so that people can live in peace. Thank you.

This speech was translated from French into Portuguese by a professional translator. He began in the expressionless way interpreters speak, occasionally hesitating over a choice of word, sounding like a student doing a translation exercise, and then suddenly he was overcome by the meaning of what he was saying, and he was unable to go on. When the audience appreciated his emotion they applauded, and he went on a little before having to stop again, and then finished the last couple of sentences with an incoherent rush ending in tears.

What I think had happened was when he had suddenly understood what he was saying, all his adult rationalisation and detachment had been swept away. Everybody knows that what Marthe-Olive said is true, but we usually manage not to think about it. We reduce war to a political concept, or a historical concept, and we do not allow ourselves to consider the concrete reality, probably because we cannot bear to. The interpreter found that speaking Marthe-Olive's words forced him to consider the truth, and he wept.

We must listen to children not merely because it is their right to be heard, but also because they remind us of truths that we have taught ourselves to ignore.