Art Education as a Child's Right

Jorge Raedó 7/23/2025
Reladei – Latin American Journal of Early Childhood Education dedicates Vol. 13 (1), September 2024 (full pdf) to Early Childhood Education as a necessity to achieve the objectives of the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Dr. Mariela Losso of the University of Comahue in Argentina states in the editorial that children's rights are only partially or only marginally fulfilled in many countries. That is why this monograph is titled "Rights from the Nest" and contains studies on education as a condition for ensuring children's rights through play, coeducation, language for social construction, participation, artistic expression, etc. One of the articles is my own: "Children's Newspaper of the Kindergarten of the National University. An offprint from the Art School for Children and Young People in Bogotá."
I published an initial version of the text on this Fronterad blog in 2015 when I explained in several articles the design of the Art School for Children and Young People at the National University of Colombia that I developed that year. The project for this school was cut short due to changes in the deanship of the Faculty of Arts and Architecture. I am pleased that the new version is now published on Reladei (pdf), whose summary reads:

"This project, with the Kindergarten, is part of the design of the Art School for Children and Young People (EANJ) at the Faculty of Arts of the National University of Colombia, carried out in 2015. The purpose of the Art School for Children and Young People is to provide goal-oriented education to achieve a comprehensive education for children in multiliteracy in the languages of art. It develops students' expressive skills, reaching a level that would allow them to apply for admission to vocational and university arts education." This experience report explores contributions from the theoretical report on the EANJ (what it is, what it teaches, and its organization) and the development of a transdisciplinary project carried out with the Kindergarten ("El Periódico, Art" handout at the Kindergarten).

The project, called the "Art" Handout from PIJUN (Children's Newspaper of the Kindergarten of the National University), was developed with eighteen four-year-old children from Kindergarten A group. The objective was to represent everyday experiences at the Kindergarten in two dimensions, suggested by the invited artists. The methodology combines co-teaching between the group's teacher and the invited artists so that the students have a holistic experience of the body in space and the subsequent exploration of the representational materials.

Ten workshop sessions and a presentation of the PIJUN "Art" handout were held, providing a space to share the experience with other groups, families, and the community.
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