Children's Inalienable Literacy Education Rights and the Science of Reading

ABSTRACT The widely ratified 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) enumerated essential human rights for children, with emphasis on supporting children's humanity and dignity. Schools play a vital role in upholding these rights, and the literacy classroom is a key domain where children should experience and exercise them. However, little scholarship has systematically explored what the CRC means for literacy education. This paper considers how 20th and 21st century literacy education has often fallen short of honoring children's CRC rights and how the currently prevalent science of reading paradigm, although it strongly emphasizes one right (the right to read), offers insufficient guidance to ensure that literacy education is fully rights‐affirming. We then discuss 15 literacy education rights drawn directly from CRC rights that, taken together, form a rights‐affirming literacy education (RALE) framework. These include provision of support for literacy development; development of the whole child; rest, leisure, and play; social interaction; family involvement; language and linguistic identity; cultural understanding and connection; imagination and creativity; humanity and citizenship; access to knowledge; freedom of thought and expression; protection from censorship and harmful content; voice and influence; a safe and respectful learning environment; and freedom from discrimination. We discuss potential challenges to realizing RALE and provide an example of how a rights‐affirming approach, Philosophy for Children, opens space for fulfilling literacy education rights. We argue that practice, policy, and research in literacy education must become deliberately rights‐affirming if it is to honor the CRC's promises to children.