When Will We Take Children’s Rights Seriously? Our Children Deserve Better

Over the past two years of running ICS, I have encountered a pattern that is deeply disturbing.

Again and again, families arrive carrying the same stories. Children who have been shouted at, humiliated, restrained, or frightened in environments that were supposed to nurture and develop them. And love them.

We have come across many children who had been locked in cupboards or restrained in high chairs for long periods of time because they were considered “difficult”, “energetic”, or “hard to control.” Beaten, verbally abused, pinched, humiliated for not being silent and still. When a child is not supposed to be either silent nor still.

These are not isolated stories. They are patterns.

And they raise a question that Sri Lanka must begin to confront honestly. When will we start taking children’s rights seriously?

Childhood is not something to be endured. It is the foundation upon which an entire human life is built. Our success as a society is built on what happens to us as children.

Yet for generations, harsh discipline has been normalised in many educational settings. Physical punishment, emotional intimidation, and control-based classroom management are still defended by some as necessary tools to shape behaviour.

They are not. They are failures of adult systems to understand childhood. Every research, every child development expert, every psychologist will tell us the same. Physical and emotional harm does not equal discipline nor does it lead to good behaviour or improved education.

If a school or a parent cannot engage with a child without resorting to fear, humiliation, or force, the problem is not the child. The problem lies with the parent or the school.

The study of child psychology, child development and education theory all are unequivocal on this. Research across neuroscience, developmental psychology, and education consistently shows that fear-based discipline damages trust, inhibits curiosity, and creates long-term emotional damage that will follow a child well into adulthood.

The burden of these experiences does not disappear. It travels with the child. And eventually, it travels into society.

Many of the social challenges we see today, anxiety, aggression, disengagement, low self-worth, are often rooted in experiences that begin much earlier in life than we like to admit. Trauma that is dismissed as “growing pains” rarely disappears. It simply goes underground.

This is precisely why ICS was founded. ICS did not emerge simply as another international school option. It was created as a direct response to a system that too often prioritised obedience over development and control over understanding.

As Sri Lanka’s first formal democratic school, ICS was built on a different foundation. In a democratic school environment, students and staff exist within a framework of mutual respect and shared responsibility. Children’s rights are not abstract ideals. They are lived principles that shape how decisions are made, how conflicts are resolved, and how learning environments are structured.

There is no physical or emotional abuse at ICS. None.

Not because we simply forbid it, but because the entire philosophy of the school rejects the idea that children must be controlled in order to learn.

Instead, we recognise children as developing human beings whose curiosity, energy, and individuality are essential parts of growth.

When those qualities are supported rather than suppressed, something remarkable happens. Children begin to trust their environment. They engage more deeply. They develop responsibility not through fear, but through understanding.

A democratic school model does not mean a lack of structure. In fact, it requires more intentional structure. Clear boundaries exist. Expectations are discussed openly. Students learn to navigate responsibility within a community where their voices are heard but where they are also accountable to others.

This balance, between freedom and responsibility, is where genuine learning takes place.

The conversations we need to have as a society are not comfortable ones. They require us to question practices that have been accepted for generations. They require us to move beyond the idea that “this is how it has always been done.”

History alone is not justification.

For more than 150 years, many educational systems around the world were built around control, conformity, and rigid discipline. But we now have the benefit of scientific understanding that previous generations did not.

We know more about the developing brain. We know more about trauma. We know more about how children learn. And with knowledge comes responsibility. Our children deserve environments that are safe not only physically, but psychologically.

They deserve educators who understand development rather than simply managing behaviour. They deserve classrooms where curiosity is encouraged rather than punished. And they deserve schools that recognise childhood as a critical stage of human development that must be protected with care and seriousness.

As Sri Lanka’s first formal democratic school, ICS places children’s rights at the centre of everything we do, not as a slogan, but as a daily practice that shapes the culture of the school.

But this conversation cannot belong to one school alone.

It must become a national conversation. If we truly want to build a healthier, more thoughtful, more resilient society, we must start by examining how we treat the youngest members of that society.

Because the truth is simple.

Children are not problems to be controlled. They are human beings who are learning how to exist in the world.

And if we want that world to be better tomorrow, we must ensure that the childhoods we create today are worthy of them.

Our children deserve better.