Hidden in Plain Sight: The Tragedy of Children's Rights from Ben Franklin to Lionel Tate

✍ Scribed by Barbara Bennett Woodhouse

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2010
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 380
• Series: The Public Square; 8
• Edition: Course Book
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Hidden in Plain Sight tells the tragic untold story of children's rights in America. It asks why the United States today, alone among nations, rejects the most universally embraced human-rights document in history, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. This book is a call to arms for America to again be a leader in human rights, and to join the rest of the civilized world in recognizing that the thirst for justice is not for adults alone.

Barbara Bennett Woodhouse explores the meaning of children's rights throughout American history, interweaving the childhood stories of iconic figures such as Benjamin Franklin with those of children less known but no less courageous, like the heroic youngsters who marched for civil rights. How did America become a place where twelve-year-old Lionel Tate could be sentenced to life in prison without parole for the 1999 death of a young playmate? In answering questions like this, Woodhouse challenges those who misguidedly believe that America's children already have more rights than they need, or that children's rights pose a threat to parental autonomy or family values. She reveals why fundamental human rights and principles of dignity, equality, privacy, protection, and voice are essential to a child's journey into adulthood, and why understanding rights for children leads to a better understanding of human rights for all.

Compassionate, wise, and deeply moving, Hidden in Plain Sight will force an examination of our national resistance--and moral responsibility--to recognize children's rights.

Some images inside the book are unavailable due to digital copyright restrictions.

✦ Table of Contents

Contents
List of Illustrations
Foreword
Preface
Introduction: Ain’t I a Person?
Chapter 1. How to Think about Childhood
Chapter 2. How to Think about Children’s Rights
Part I. The Privacy Principle: Stories of Bondage and Belonging
Chapter 3. Boys in Slavery and Servitude
Chapter 4. Girls at the Intersection of Age, Race, and Gender
Chapter 5. Growing Up in State Custody
Part II. The Agency Principle: Stories of Voice and Participation
Chapter 6. The Printer’s Apprentice
Chapter 7. Youth in the Civil Rights Movement
Part III. The Equality Principle: Stories of Equal Opportunity
Chapter 8. Old Maids and Little Women
Chapter 9. Breaking the Prison of Disability
Part IV. The Dignity Principle: Stories of Resistance and Resilience
Chapter 10. Hide and Survive
Chapter 11. Children at Work
Part V. The Protection Principle: Stories of Guilt and Innocence
Chapter 12. Telling the Scariest Secrets
Chapter 13. Age and the Idea of Innocence
Conclusion: The Future of Rights
Notes
Bibliography
Index