It's Your Right: Navan Educate Together National School

Apr 30, 2014, 09:08 AM

In Educate Together schools all around the country, learning about the rights of the child is part of the curriculum, and students there begin to learn about their rights from age 5. Louise Denvir paid a visit to one such school, Navan Educate Together, to talk to some of the students and teachers about children's rights.

Photo: Wendy and Abiidat talking to Louise Denvir about children's rights. Photo by Barry MacNeill

Below is the text transcript of Louise's visit to Navan Educate Together

(Sounds of children playing and talking in the yard. A school bell rings.)

(Sounds of children playing continue in the background. )

Wonu; Every child has the right to a home and a place to be loved and to be cared for.

(Sounds of children playing continue in the background. )

Sorcha; They need to have their rights met, they need to have a proper lifestyle, they need somebody to care for them.

(Sounds of children playing continue in the background.)

Wendy; We all have the right to belong to a country.

(Sounds of children playing continue in the background.)

Christian; I think that the right to express yourself is important because you need to show who you are.

(Sounds of children playing continue in the background.)

Abiidat; We all have the right to rest from work and relax.

(Sounds of children playing continue in the background.)

Anastasia; The right to friendship is to play with people, share, not be mean, and to not hurt people’s feelings

(Sounds of Children playing.)

(Sounds of children playing continue in the background.)

Louise Denvir; It’s a special day in Navan Educate Together National School as later on senior infants and first class will get ready for a performance they’ve been working on for a few weeks now. But, to prepare for something like this, it takes a lot of hard work and commitment.

(Sounds of Children playing.)

(Sounds of children playing continue in the background.)

Eva Boyle; We’re an Educate Together School and learning about Human Rights and the rights of children is an integral part of our Learn Together Programme here.

(Sounds of Children Playing in background.)

Eva Boyle; I’m Eva Boyle and I’m the principal at Navan Educate Together National School.

(Sounds of children playing continue in the background.)

Wendy; Well we’re playing outside here and I’m Wendy,

Abiidat; I’m Abiidat and we play together and

Wendy; Yeah, it’s kind of fun really.

(Sounds of children playing continue in the background.)

Eva Boyle; (laughs) They would be very particular about the right to play! (laughs) Especially on rainy days, you’ll learn all about the right to play.

(Sounds of children playing outside.)

George; My name is George, I’m in first class. I’m 7 years old. There’s one more right that is important to me and it’s ‘friendship’ and my favourite friend in this school is Wendy.

Wendy; He’s a good person.

George; She’s a good friend.

Louise Denvir; And if somebody took away the right for you to be friends, how would you feel?

George; I would feel very very sad.

Wendy; Yeah, if someone said to me, don’t be friends with George, I wouldn’t listen to them.

(Sounds of children playing continue in the background.)

Louise Denvir; And what do you think children need?

Wonu; Children need a home, children need to have a voice and to express themselves, children need to see their friends. Children need to go to school and children needs to go to doctors when they’re sick.

Timi; Education, because education gets you a good way in life. My name’s Timi and I’m 12. Education is not only something that you need to know, it’s something that you have to know because education gets you to where Obama is nowadays and Bill Gates, all these famous people.

Louise Denvir; And with your education, where do you hope you will be?

Timi; I hope I will be one of the first black presidents of Ireland.

(Sounds of children playing continue in the background.)

Luke; Children need, like, education, proper food, health, respect.

Sorcha; Yeah, because like, on the news or whatever, you see, the amount of children, that they’re just living on the streets, they have to find their own food, they don’t have parents that they know and they don’t have money, they don’t have shelter, they don’t have clothes and it’s very sad to just watch it.

(Sounds of children playing continue in the background.)

Eva Boyle; I think that learning about human rights is actually one of the most important things that we could actually teach the children about because it is about the future that we want to create and we want to sustain.

(Sounds of children playing continue in the background.)

Abiidat; Yeah, and if someone didn’t have any right or didn’t know rights, that means they could not like have a life or live. They will need to have some rights so that when they grow they could know more things. My name is Abiidat and I am five and a half years old and I am in senior infants.

Louise Denvir; One of the rights was, to practice your own religion, culture and language, so to you, it’s important to practice your own religion.

Abiidat; My religion, I’m a Muslim and normally I don’t really eat ham because it’s bad for my religion and if someone came along to me and said, ‘No, you’re not allowed to practice your religion, you have to respect my religion before you could understand your religion.’ I’ll be really sad, I’ll say, like, ‘Let me practice the religion that I want to practice.’

Child; Well, that’s the whistle, we’ve gotta go back to class, so, see ya!

(Sound of children walking into the hall for assembly)

Louise Denvir; Back inside, the assembly is about to start.

(Sound of children chatting.)

Eva Boyle; We’re here today, it’s a very special assembly this morning which is all about human rights, okay, and it’s something that we learn about throughout the year, every year while we’re in your school.

Child; We are now going to sing a song about children’s rights.

Children (singing); I’ve got rights, you’ve got rights, we’ve all got rights.

(Children singing continues in background.)

George; We learn about children’s rights and learn how to be safe.

Helen Sparks; They’re taught in lots of different ways, depending on their age really, they’re taught through stories, drama or they might have case studies in the older classes of different people who have had difficulties with human rights.

I’m Helen Sparks, I’m the teacher of senior infants and first class at Navan Educate Together. They learn about different countries and different issues that might arise around human rights in those countries.

Children (singing); We’ve all got rights.

Wonu; I think it’s very important that we have rights and that we know them because of that we know when our rights are being met and not and then we can do something about it.

Children (singing); We’ve all got rights.

(Applause and cheering from the audience and children.)

Fade out. 05:59 END