Child’s rights academics and advocates Dr. Katherine Covell and Dr. R. Brian Howe have published several books on children’s rights education and related subjects. Click the cover image to view and purchase the book at Amazon.com. I do not receive commissions for any purchases made at Amazon from this page (the commissions code in some links is no longer valid).
Education in the Best Interests of the Child: A Children’s Rights Perspective on Closing the Achievement Gap
by R. Brian Howe and Katherine Covell
A large body of research in disciplines from sociology and policy studies to neuroscience and educational psychology has confirmed that socioeconomic status remains the most powerful influence on children’s educational outcomes. Socially disadvantaged children around the world disproportionately suffer from lower levels of educational achievement, which in turn leads to unfavourable long-term outcomes in employment and health. Education in the Best Interests of the Child addresses this persistent problem, which violates not only the principle of equal educational opportunity, but also the broader principle of the best interests of the child as called for in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Building on the children’s rights work accomplished in their previous book, Empowering Children, Brian Howe and Katherine Covell identify three types of reform that can significantly close the educational achievement gap. Their findings make an important argument for stronger and more comprehensive action to equalize educational opportunities for disadvantaged children.
Children, Families and Violence: Challenges for Children’s Rights
by Katherine Covell and R. Brian Howe
This book examines the risk factors surrounding children at risk of experiencing and perpetrating violence, and looks at the positive role that children’s rights can play in their protection.The authors propose that violence in childhood is not spontaneous: that children are raised to become violent in poorly functioning families and child-unfriendly environments. They may be exposed to toxic substances in utero, to maltreatment in infancy, to domestic violence or parental criminality as they grow up. Each of these risk factors is empirically linked with the development of antisocial and aggressive behaviour, and each reflects a violation of children’s rights to protection from maltreatment. The authors show how respecting children’s rights and safeguarding them from exposure to violence can shift the balance between risk and protective factors and, as a result, reduce the incidence and severity of childhood violence.This book will be essential reading for professionals working with young offenders, academics, students, practitioners and policy-makers.
A Question of Commitment: Children’s Rights in Canada
by R. Brian Howe (Editor) and Katherine Covell (Editor)
In 1991, the Government of Canada ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, requiring governments at all levels to ensure that Canadian laws and practices safeguard the rights of children. A Question of Commitment: Children’s Rights in Canada is the first book to assess the extent to which Canada has fulfilled this commitment.
The editors, R. Brian Howe and Katherine Covell, contend that Canada has wavered in its commitment to the rights of children and is ambivalent in the political culture about the principle of children’s rights. A Question of Commitment expands the scope of the editors’ earlier book, The Challenge of Children’s Rights for Canada, by including the voices of specialists in particular fields of children’s rights and by incorporating recent developments.
Empowering Children: Children’s Rights Education as a Pathway to Citizenship
by R. Brian Howe and Katherine Covell
Approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1989, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child affirms that children in all countries have fundamental rights, including rights to education. To date, 192 states are signatories to or have in some form ratified the accord. Children are still imperilled in many countries, however, and are often not made aware of their guaranteed rights.
In Empowering Children, R. Brian Howe and Katherine Covell assert that educating children about their basic rights is a necessary means not only of fulfilling a country’s legal obligations, but also of advancing education about democratic principles and the practice of citizenship. The authors contend that children’s rights education empowers children as persons and as rights-respecting citizens in democratic societies. Such education has a “contagion effect” that brings about a general social knowledge on human rights and social responsibility.
Although there remain obstacles to the implementation of children’s rights in many countries, Howe and Covell argue that reforming schools and enhancing teacher education are absolutely essential to the creation of a new culture of respect toward children as citizens. Their thorough and passionate work marks a significant advance in the field.
The Challenge of Children’s Rights for Canada
Second edition – expanded and revised
by Katherine Covell, R. Brian Howe, and J.C. Blokhuis
Canada signed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child over a decade ago, yet there is still a lack of awareness about and provision for children’s rights.
What are Canada’s obligations to children? How has Canada fallen short? Why is it so important to the future of Canadian society that children’s rights be met?
Prompted by the gap between the promise of children’s rights and the reality of their continuing denial, Katherine Covell and R. Brian Howe call for changes to existing laws, policies and practices. Using the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child as their framework, the authors examine the continuing problems of child poverty, child care, child protection, youth justice and the suppression of children’s voices. They challenge us to move from seeing children as parental property to seeing children as independent bearers of rights.
In The Challenge of Children’s Rights for Canada, Canada’s obligations and the rights of children are examined from the perspectives of research and development in the fields of developmental psychology, developmental neuroscience, law and family policy. This timely and accessible book will be of interest to academics, policy-makers and anyone who cares about children and about taking children’s rights seriously.
Other books by Covell and Howe
Readings in Child Development, A Canadian Perspective
by Katherine Covell (Editor)
Explore child development from a multiplicity of perspectives. Understand the impact of the socio-cultural environment on a child’s development and maturation. In this truly comprehensive analysis, growth is examined from infancy through adolescence using a very unique approach that uncovers both social and environmental influences.
Restraining Equality: Human Rights Commissions in Canada
by R. Brian Howe and David Johnson
“Restraining Equality” addresses the contemporary financial, social, legal, and policy pressures currently experienced by human rights commissions across Canada. Through a combination of public policy analysis, historical research, and legal analysis, R.Brian Howe and David Johnson trace the evolution of human rights policy within this country and explore the stresses placed on human rights commissions resulting from greater fiscal restraints and society’s rising expectations for equality rights over the past two decades.
The authors analyze sources of these tensions in relation to the delivery of equality rights in both federal and provincial jurisdictions since the Second World War. Through a series of interviews with human rights commission officials and a survey of advocacy groups, business organizations, and human rights staff the authors explore the performance and the internal workings of these. Howe and Johnson also analyse human rights commissions in light of the theoretical literature and empirical data, and discuss the political and legal contexts in which the commissions operate, and the reform measures that have been implemented.
Tim Covell 
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