About Canada: Children and Youth

Bernard Schissel

Canada is a signatory on the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child, which guarantees the protection and care of children and youth. About Canada: Children and Youth examines each of the rights within the Canadian context — and finds Canada wanting. Schissel argues that although our expressed desire is to protect and care for our children, the reality is that young people, in Canada and around the world, often lack basic human rights. The lives of young people are steeped in abuse from the education and justice systems, exploitation by corporations, ill health and poverty. And while the hearts of Canadians go out to youth in distant countries suffering under oppressive circumstances, those same hearts often have little sympathy for the suffering of youth, particularly disadvantaged youth, within Canada. This book explores our contradictory views and argues that we must do more to ensure that the rights of the child are upheld.

Contents

• The Rights of Children
• Freedom from Want
• Freedom from Ill Health
• Freedom from Legal Discrimination
• Freedom from Labour Discrimination
• The Right to Learn
• The Right to Protection from Corporate Aggression
• Children, Youth, Rights and Social Inequality
• References

About the Author

Bernard Schissel is a professor of sociology at theUniversity of Saskatchewan. He is co-editor of the first edition of Marginality and Condemnation. His research focuses on the marginal position that children and youth occupy in western democracies and how such institutions as law, education, medicine, the political economy and the military exploit children and youth in very subtle, politically acceptable and publicly endorsed ways. His most recent books are Still Blaming Children and The Legacy of School for Aboriginal People (with Terry Wotherspoon) and Marginality and Condemnation: An Introduction to Critical Criminology (with Carolyn Brooks).

He works and writes extensively in the areas of youth crime and justice, the sociology of children and youth.