Introduction

Article 12 of the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) remains a key reference to initiatives, programmes and studies concerned with children's and young people's participation. However, it also contains one of the central constraints to child and youth participation; in order to participate children and young people are expected to acquire specific skills, competencies and knowledge. This corresponds with research into inequalities in youth participation in education as well as to policies aimed at reversing an apparent decline in youth participation by means of information and education; these policies and assumptions share implicit assumptions on the relationship between education, learning and participation (Fahmy 2006; Spannring et al, 2008; Thomas and Percy-Smith, 2010).

This chapter aims to question these assumptions. It suggests that making youth participation conditional upon education, learning and personal development (or ‘maturity’) reproduces and legitimises existing, institutionalised meanings, contents and forms of participation rather than contributing to the empowerment of children and young people. Reconstructing the societal function of youth and education as a life phase characterised by preparation for the rights and responsibilities connected to the status of adulthood (for a definition of ‘citizenship’, see Marshall, 1950) illustrates the relationship between education, learning and participation as one of conditionality and postponement: first learn, then participate (Walther, 2010). This approach neglects the reality of learning as a subjective process which requires participatory educational settings – unless learning is intentionally conceptualised as a one-way process of adaptation and normalisation of the younger generation to the values, norms and institutions established by the older generation.

As a first step, the relationship between education, learning and participation will be assessed by means of comparative analysis of how participation is dealt with in formal and non-formal education in different European countries: Austria, France, Ireland, Italy and Slovakia. Comparative analysis will address the meaning of civic or citizenship education and the role and scope of student councils.