(Children’s Rights Week is observed annually in Finland during the third week of November.)
“Become who you are” is a phrase often repeated. It is meant to encourage us to find ourselves and to become the person we feel we are. We are expected to question everything we believed ourselves to be: men, women, mothers, fathers, spouses, partners, sons and daughters. Everything we believed in and the purpose for which God created us is said to be a lie. All of it is, according to society, an externally imposed definition that should be erased. But do we lose ourselves when our outlines are wiped away? What remains of us?
Children and young people in their formative years are in an especially vulnerable position. Their development into themselves must be supported by keeping questions related to adults’ identity crises outside early childhood education and the school environment. Children and young people seek their place in the family, among friends and in society. They need love and acceptance, but also boundaries and outlines that provide security and make a healthy self-image possible. A child has the right to be heard and to grow into the person God created him or her to be. A child does not need to “become” his or her true self, because the child already is that. The child has not yet lost his or her outlines. Within each of us there still lives that small child who needs boundaries – outlines. These outlines are drawn by God, and we should cherish them with all our strength.
Religious education has long traditions in Finland. The roots of Christianity run deep in our rocky soil, and these roots are not pulled up by silencing or erasing the outlines of some of our children and youth. A Christian child or young person has the same right to be seen and heard as one who is not Christian. Freedom of religion does not mean hiding religion, but accepting others’ religiosity and the presence of religions. What message do we give a child who hears that traditional Finnish Christmas carols may no longer be sung? Does the child feel pride in his or her faith, or does such a prohibition communicate shame and negativity toward the child’s religion? Do we encourage children to be visible and audible as Christians, or do we silence their voices and slowly erase all traces of religion in the belief that non-religiosity guarantees a free and peaceful society? Is this really how we teach children to embrace the diversity we so loudly demand? Is this truly how we encounter difference?
The most important thing we can give our children is the right to outlines. We must preserve our outlines so that we do not lose ourselves. We do not need to change and become who we are, for we already are that. We must find God in order to encounter the one we were created to be – created in His image.
And God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good.
(Genesis 1:31)
Minttu Quintana
Member of the Board, KatSote
Early Childhood Education Teacher