An investigation about students' rights

Abstract

The purpose of this dissertation is to see how the Maltese educational system is coping and adapting itself in the new world of students' rights awareness. To get to this end, a systematic approach to the study has been applied, focusing from the general to the particular. In other words, the first part of the dissertation stresses on the international emancipation through time, of children as right holders, highlighting the major philosophical theories, in favour of, and against such emancipation. What follows is a series of arguments and possibilities of how the international rights of the child tend to be obscured, twisted or directly breached in an educational framework, be it in a direct way, or in an indirect way. The spectrum keeps on narrowing with the critical analysis of the curriculum. In this section, a brief critical description of the curriculum's all-pervading power through the educational system and beyond, is developed. This automatically leads to a verbal dissection of the Maltese curricula (education act 1988 and N.M.C 1999 respectively), which provide us with clear evidence of the change in attitudes towards the child. One will notice the incredible differences from one document to the other. The last part of the dissertation is a practical research conducted in a number of Maltese secondary schools. Evidently, the purpose of this research is to verify, to what extent is the Maltese reality connected with the international provisions on a large scale, and with the national provisions on a smaller scale