Students' Perceptions of Their Rights in Denmark

Abstract

Research on the perceptions of 12-15 year old Danish students regarding the importance and existence of children's rights in homes and schools was conducted during 1993. The population sampled, from two Danish municipalities, is sufficiently representative of the Danish youth population of this age at that period to give somewhat general value to findings. Overall, the results indicate that Danish childrenjudge the importance of rights in both the home and school and the level of existence or support for those rights in the home to be high, and in all these cases their ratings average above those of the average for the composite of the other countries involved in similar research. However, the existence ofrights in the school on the average was judged not only to be below the level of importance given to them, the usual finding across countries, but also to generally be below the average level of existence found for the all-countries composite, a surprising finding. Specific rights topics of concern to Danish children are identified and preliminary interpretations are provided. An historical context for Denmark and its schools is presented to bring additional meaning to findings.