Your own ideas about right and wrong
The idea: children should be free to develop, explain, live by, and rethink their own ethos.
An ethos is your ideal view of how things ought to be. It includes the good qualities you recognize, which ones you put first when they compete, and how others can understand or question your thinking.
This is a proposed right for children. Parents, schools, and governments should not force children to adopt their ethos.
What are virtues?
Virtues are qualities such as fairness and courage. In the framework behind this idea, each virtue needs a clear meaning. We should be able to examine how it relates to other virtues and what too little or too much looks like. Calling something “good” is not enough by itself.
For example, discussing courage means thinking about both fear that stops useful action and taking needless risks.
Your views should count
Your ethos would matter in your relationships, not only in your private thoughts. An adult’s view would not automatically rank above yours because they are older or in charge.
Ethics, in this framework, means how people with their own ethoses interact. A starting point is to recognize other people’s ethoses as equally important unless there is a reasoned demonstration otherwise.
Disagreements should examine meanings, priorities, reasons, evidence, and whether people act as they say they believe. You could question an adult’s thinking, and others could question yours in the same way.
An example
A school says, “Be loyal: do not keep evidence that someone here did something wrong.” A child could ask, “Why should loyalty come before justice? Does hiding harm fit the school’s promise to treat people fairly?”
The child’s reasoning would deserve an answer. Being in charge would not settle the question.
Learning and changing your mind
You should be able to revise your ethos after learning something or hearing a good argument. Disagreement should not lead to punishment or losing necessities such as food and shelter.
Where this idea comes from
The longer On Ethos and On Virtues documents explain the framework. This proposal applies that framework to children; it does not claim those documents already state this right.