The non-protesting children in the 2018 Parkland school shooting protests and their freedom not to express views in child participation spaces

Abstract

Using mixed methods, we looked into USA children's reasons behind their non-participation in the 2018 Parkland school shooting protests from newsletters of randomly sampled 57 middle (MS) and high schools (HS) across USA. We found five themes of reasons that point to non-protesting children's concern about protest method and issues. The MS and HS non-protesters' concerns overlapped and differed. The reasons reveal the protests to pose adherence issues to most CRC articles on and almost all of the basic requirements of child participation. We attribute the adherence issues to problems on assigning duties in non-adult-provided child participation spaces like protests. To identify protest as child participation necessitate propping children's freedom of expression as the animating force behind child participation's first key element and children's right to information a prerequisite for both. In this reframing, organizing/leading children become duty-bearers while adults primarily remain so.