How working less could solve all our problems - really

by Rutger Bregman, Ideas.Ted.com: https://ideas.ted.com/how-working-less-could-solve-all-our-problems-really/

Image: Stocksy

Shorter workweeks could help reduce accidents, combat climate change, make the genders more equal, and more, contends historian and author Rutger Bregman.

Had you asked the greatest economist of the 20th century what the biggest challenge of the 21st would be, he wouldn’t have had to think twice.

Leisure.

In the summer of 1930, just as the Great Depression was gathering momentum, British economist John Maynard Keynes gave a curious lecture in Madrid titled “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren” — in other words, for us. At the time, Madrid was a mess. Unemployment was spiraling out of control, fascism was gaining ground, and the Soviet Union was actively recruiting supporters. 

Speaking in a city on the precipice of disaster, the British economist hazarded a counterintuitive prediction. A hundred years from then, he said, humankind would be confronted with the greatest challenge it had ever faced: what to do with a sea of spare time. And he anticipated that within a century the Western standard of living would have multiplied to at least four times that of 1930.

His conclusion: In 2030, we’ll be working just fifteen hours a week. We are long past due for the fulfillment of this prophecy. Around the year 2000, countries such as France, the Netherlands and the US were already five times as wealthy as in 1930. Yet nowadays our biggest challenges are not leisure and boredom, but stress and uncertainty. Why are we working so much? 

In notable experiments by Henry Ford and W.K. Kellogg, it’s been found that productivity and long work hours do not go hand in hand. In the 1980s, Apple employees sported T-shirts that read, “Working 90 hours a week and loving it!” Later, productivity experts calculated that if they had worked half the hours, the world might have enjoyed the groundbreaking Macintosh computer a year earlier.

Consuming less starts with working less — or, better yet, with consuming our prosperity in the form of leisure.

There are strong indications that in a modern knowledge economy, even working 40 hours a week is too much. Research suggests that someone who is constantly drawing on their creative abilities can, on average, be productive for no more than six hours a day. It’s no coincidence that the world’s wealthy countries, those with a large creative class and highly educated populations, have also shaved the most time off their workweeks. And working less could actually solve many of the world’s greatest problems.

Working less could reduce stress — countless studies  have shown that people who work less are more satisfied with their lives. In a recent poll conducted among working women, German researchers even quantified the “perfect day.” The largest share of minutes (106) would go toward “intimate relationships.” “Socializing” (82), “relaxing” (78) and “eating” (75) also scored high. At the bottom of the list were “parenting” (46), “work” (36), and “commuting” (33). The researchers dryly noted that “in order to maximize well­-being, it is likely that working and consuming (which increases GDP) might play a smaller role in people’s daily activities compared to now.”

Could working less even slow climate change? Turns out, yes. A worldwide shift to a shorter workweek could cut the CO2 emitted this century by half. Countries with a shorter workweek have a smaller ecological footprint. Consuming less starts with working less — or, better yet, with consuming our prosperity in the form of leisure.

Since long workdays lead to more errors, shorter workdays could reduce accidents. Overtime is deadly. Tired surgeons have been found to be more prone to slip­ups, and soldiers who get too little shuteye are more prone to miss targets. From Chernobyl to the Space Shuttle Challenger, overworked managers often prove to have played a fatal role in disasters. It’s no coincidence that the financial sector, which triggered the biggest disaster of the last decade, is absolutely drowning in overtime.

The countries with the biggest disparities in wealth are precisely those with the longest workweeks.

Working less could reduce unemployment. In times of recession, with spiking unemployment and production exceeding demand, sharing jobs can help to soften the blow. Researchers at the International Labour Organization have concluded that work sharing — in which two part-­time employees share a workload traditionally assigned to one full-time worker — went a long way toward mitigating the effects of the 2008-2009 recession on workers.

Gender equality could come closer to being a reality.  Countries with short workweeks consistently top gender­ equality rankings. The central issue is achieving a more equitable distribution of work. Not until men do their fair share of cooking, cleaning and other domestic labor will women be free to fully participate in the broader economy. 

Nowhere is the time gap between men and women smaller than in Sweden, a country with a truly decent system in place for childcare and paternity leave. And paternity leave, in particular, is crucial: Men who spend a few weeks at home after the birth of a child devote more time to their wives, to their children, and to the stove than they would have otherwise. Plus, this effect lasts — are you ready for it? — for the rest of their lives. 

Research in Norway has shown that men who take paternity leave are then 50 percent more likely to share laundry duty with their wives. Canadian research shows that they’ll spend more time on domestic chores and childcare. Paternity leave is a Trojan horse with the potential to truly turn the tide in the struggle for gender equality.

Working less could also reduce inequality. The countries with the biggest disparities in wealth are precisely those with the longest workweeks. While the poor are working longer and longer hours just to get by, the rich are finding it ever more “expensive” to take time off as their hourly rates rise. 

Nearly a hundred years ago, our old friend John Maynard Keynes made an outrageous prediction — he understood that the stock -market crash of 1929 hadn’t called curtains on the entire world economy. Producers could still supply just as much as they had the year before; only the demand for many products had dried up. “We are suffering, not from the rheumatics of old age,” Keynes wrote, “but from the growing­ pains of over-­rapid changes.”

Today, the dream of a shorter workweek has been trampled — there is hardly a politician willing to endorse it, even with stress and unemployment surging. Yet Keynes wasn’t crazy. In his own day, workweeks were shrinking fast and he simply extrapolated into the future the trend that had begun around 1850. So imagine that the leisure revolution were to gain steam again in this century. Even in conditions of slow economic growth, we could work fewer than 15 hours a week by 2050, and earn the same amount as in 2000. If we can indeed make that happen, it’s high time we start to prepare.

 True leisure is as vital to our brains as vitamin C is to our bodies.

First we must ask ourselves: Is a shorter workweek what we want? Pollsters have already asked people all over the world this question, and the answer is “Yes, very much, please.” When US scientists surveyed employees to find out whether they would rather have two weeks’ additional salary or two weeks off, twice as many people opted for the extra time. 

And when British researchers asked employees if they would rather win the lottery or work less, again, twice as many choose the latter. Plenty of evidence points to the fact that we can’t do without a sizable daily dose of unemployment. Working less provides the bandwidth for other things that are also important to us, like family, community involvement and recreation.

And the second question is: How can we manage to work less? We can’t all just go ahead and switch to a 20-hour or 30-hour workweek on our own. Reduction of work first has to be reinstated as a political ideal; from there, we can curb the workweek step by step, trading in money for time, investing more money in education, and developing a more flexible retirement system and good provisions for parental leave and childcare. It all starts with reversing incentives. 

Currently, it’s cheaper for employers to schedule one person to work overtime than to hire two people. That’s because many labor costs, such as health care benefits, are paid per employee instead of per hour. And that’s also why we as individuals can’t just unilaterally decide to start working less. At the end of the workday in almost every office you can find exhausted staff sitting at their desks aimlessly browsing the Facebook profiles of people they don’t know, waiting until the first of their coworkers has left for the day. Breaking this vicious circle will require collective action — by companies or, better yet, by countries.

True leisure is neither a luxury nor a vice. It is as vital to our brains as vitamin C is to our bodies. There’s not a person on earth who on their deathbed thinks, “Had I only put in a few more hours at the office or sat in front of the tube some more.” Sure, swimming in a sea of spare time will not be easy. A 21st-century education should prepare people not only for joining the workforce, but also, and more important, for life. And we can handle the good life, if only we take the time.

Excerpted from the new book Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World by Rutger Bregman. Reprinted with permission from Little, Brown and Company, a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. © 2017 Rutger Bregman.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rutger Bregman is a Dutch historian and staff writer of The Correspondent, a journalism platform for unbreaking news. Bregman's new book Humankind will be published in June 2020.

The Main Existential Threat of the 21st Century

by Dr Robert Muller, Medium: https://medium.com/@DrRobertMuller/the-main-existential-threat-of-the-21st-century-a703e11349bb

(image: pinterest.com)

There are many existential threats to human life in the 21st Century, many of which are carried over from the 20th Century.

The threats of terrorism, nuclear war, militaristic regimes, and so on, are issues that paralysed nations and individuals throughout the 20th Century. On the other hand, it is often argued that climate change is the most significant problem facing human life in the 21st Century. Indeed, the obliteration of all sentient and plant life on the planet is an immeasurable issue, well beyond the imagination of most humans who continue to live in the same way as they have for many decades. It is difficult to argue against climate change being the number one issue facing life on this planet. However, this is just what I would like to do in this article.

My premise is that climate change is the ultimate issue that will cause the destruction of life on Earth if drastic action is not taken very soon, but it is not the most serious threat. It is fully acknowledged by an overwhelming majority of the world’s independent scientists, who are not in the service of the corporate elites, that if action is not taken, then it may be too late. On the other hand, it has been argued that if enough action is taken by governments to tackle emissions, then the planet can be saved in a liveable enough state that human and other life will be able to continue.

So, what is the main threat? Again, many people argue that the corporate elites are the main threat. These owners of massive mining corporations and industrial agriculture are hugely responsible for spewing out massive amounts of emissions which are destroying many aspects of our life-support system. In addition, they are responsible for practices which not only create inequality, but actually have dramatically increased inequality through their practices over the last forty years, and in particular, over the last ten. In other words, the power of the corporate elites, and the consequences of their practices, has increased exponentially over the last ten years. 

As argued earlier, capitalism has reached a point where it is now confronting environmental and economic limits to the accumulation of capital. What this means is that capital can no longer be accumulated through the manipulation of labour and technology to create profit. This kind of profit is simply no longer available. In response, governments have been acquiescent in deregulating many industrial practices and trade regimes to the benefit of the corporate elites. The result of this process is that a new form of accumulation has developed which can be characterized as ‘accumulation by dispossession’. This is basically the accumulation of capital through privatization, deregulation, and the takeover of public space, all facilitated by national governments, mostly in democratic nations such as the USA, the European Union, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and South Africa. It is argued, again, that the corporate elites are not the main threat, but only because we have a mechanism that can put the brakes on the corporate elites — that of democratic government.

My argument is that national governments in democratic nations are the current main threat and barrier to finding solutions to climate change. Why? Because they are the ONLY institution that has the potential and the legal power (although this is rapidly diminishing) to curb the power of the corporate elites. This can be achieved through legislation that will place limits on what the corporate sector are allowed to do, and to re-regulate industry, and to reclaim those assets that have been privatized — this is also a point of justice as these very assets have been paid for by tax-payers and have effectively been stolen by the corporate sector with the assistance of government.

Of course, there is nothing in the legal statutes to stop politicians from acting in their own interests or from colluding with the corporate elites to ‘get a piece of the pie’ on the condition that they ‘give’ away a piece of the public pie. And this essentially is the weakness of the democratic system. So, let’s unpack this state of affairs by boiling it back to its basics.

Firstly, democracy is about the people rather than about the politicians. Politicians are supposed to be the representatives of the people. In Australia, the people go to the ballot box and place their votes for their local members in the upper and lower houses of parliament. The local member then gets a seat in the parliament, usually as a backbencher. This is a good opportunity for these elected members to voice their opinions and the opinions of their electorate on crucial issues. So far, the system appears to be very sound. However, Australia has a ‘party political system’, meaning that the parties are very powerful and tend to coerce the members into voting according to the party line. The fact that Australia has such a collective notion of party politics is a huge irony, considering that both major parties see anything at all that is even vaguely collectivist as complete anathema. And yet what could be more collectivist than the process of government?

A number of those who are in the party or coalition that has won the election are appointed into the cabinet as ministers. This may be more due to their ability to ‘make things happen’, or to tow the party line, more so than having any expertise in the portfolio to which they are appointed — the evidence suggests that this is very much the case, with ongoing portfolio reshuffles illustrating this point very clearly.

As representatives of the people, the cabinet ministers and the power of party politics act against true representation. Add to the mix the very powerful influence of Australia’s media monopoly spouting the values of neoliberalism, competition, and divisiveness on social issues, such as on gender, ethnic, immigration, sexuality, and Aboriginal issues, and one can see that the politicians are finding it very difficult to represent the people.

In order to get politicians to represent the people in true democratic fashion, instead of constantly undermining democracy, they need to listen to the mood of the people and to understand the people, instead of brushing off those who do voice their opinions as whingers and leaners. There is no democracy in selling the country off to the corporate elites and the majority certainly does not want to see this happen. Does anyone truly believe that if there was a referendum on the question of: “Should Australia sell everything in the country off to the corporate elites?” that it would not get a massive ‘no’ vote? Only if the politicians listen to the people will they be able to stop the corporate elites as has happened in Iceland.

Is it the End of History, or Was Karl Marx Correct?

by Dr Robert Muller, Medium: https://medium.com/@DrRobertMuller/is-it-the-end-of-history-or-was-karl-marx-correct-850be235fa5d

(Image: freeliberal.com)

In 1992, American political philosopher, Francis Fukuyama, released his infamous work “The End of History and the Last Man”, arguing that the progression of human history as a struggle between ideologies is largely at an end, with the world settling on liberal democracy after the end of the Cold War.

Without going too far into Fukuyama’s actual argument, in this article, I would first like to problematise Fukuyama’s underlying assumption that ‘history has ended’. Following this, I propose an argument that Karl Marx’s suggestion, that history is based upon the dialectical opposition of economic forces, may possibly be correct given recent history, and that Marx’s ideas should not be simply written off just because of the fall of Communism.

Fukuyama’s End of History

Despite being a very conservative thinker, Fukuyama’s claim is actually based upon a very Marxian argument. (Note: not a Marxist argument, but a Marxian argument — Marx actually stated that “I am not a Marxist” after the damage he had seen committed on his theories in his own lifetime). Basically, Marx argued that the forward linear trajectory of history is the logical result of the struggle between opposing economic forces — the owners of the means of production (capitalists) and the workers (the proletariat).

Fukuyama’s argument is based on his observation of the global political climate at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Communist political system. He argued that the opposing ideological forces of Communism and Capitalism resulted in the political stand-off of the Cold War. When Communism fell in the late-1980s and early- to mid-1990s, this was the indication that there were no longer any opposing ideological forces and therefore that history had come to an end. Or so Fukuyama claimed.

Karl Marx and the Path of History

Karl Marx claimed that the progressive, linear march of history was a result of the struggle between the workers and the owners of the means of production. It is important to understand that Marx’s work was primarily a critique of Capitalism. He recognised the massive social problems that had been caused by the Industrial Revolution and the transition from Feudalism to Capitalism. Only a minor portion of Marx’s work involved his ideas about Communism — not minor in terms of impact, but minor in terms of volume.

The important point here is that Marx aligned this ideological struggle with the march of history due largely to his belief that history was also associated with the progressive domination of ‘man’ (in Marx’s words) over nature. At around the same time that Marx was writing, the ideas propounded by Charles Darwin were becoming the scientific and social orthodoxy of the time.

These ideas had a great impact on Marx, perhaps not directly, but instead due to the impact and popularity of Darwin’s arguments throughout society in general. The domination of ‘man’ over nature through technology and the ‘taming’ of nature became part of Marx’s view of progress which became part of his view of history.

Fukuyama and Marx

One can see that this idea of opposing forces that create the progressive march of history in the work of Marx, is quite similar in some ways to Fukuyama’s idea of the two opposing ideological forces of modern times, Communism and Capitalism. The logical conclusion for Fukuyama is that if one of the two ideological forces vanishes (in this case Communism), then there is no opposing force left to progress history. Thus, he pronounced the end of history.

But What if Marx is Correct?

Marx’s idea that there is a progressive, linear march of history culminated in the idea that Capitalism would evolve into a utopian society that he called Communism. However, one of the most important parts of his argument, one that often gets overlooked, is that in order to reach this utopia, it would be necessary for the Capitalist system to reach it’s maximum economic capacity. Thus it was a ‘natural’ progression of society, a natural evolution rather than a revolution. This part of Marx’s work was part of his critique of Capitalism. Marx’s political work involved theorising (not doing) the transition from Capitalism to the Communist utopia and this would occur (theoretically) through skipping some of the stages of the natural progress of history, through revolution. In other words, it was a case of speeding up the evolution of society through revolution.

Now, what this actually meant was that, regardless of anything, Capitalism still needed to reach it’s maximum economic capacity in order for the utopia to be reached. Therefore, a revolution would mean that the working classes would realise their own class position (as ‘slaves’ to the capitalists) and be ready to take power when the utopia dawned.

The question to be asked is: have we reached the maximum economic potential of Capitalism? If we have not, was Soviet Communism, and for that matter, Chinese Communism, too premature? If the answer is yes, then Marx may be right. Without reaching the maximum economic potential of Capitalism, Communism cannot be realised. In this way, it could be argued that Karl Marx was correct. The collapse of the Soviet system was just that, the collapse of a system of states which was run by a military oligarchy. It bears little resemblance to Marx’s Utopia. So was it actually an experiment based on Marx’s ideas and philosophy? Or was it actually a leadership based on different principles which these days are branded as Stalinist?

Conclusion

When Francis Fukuyama proclaimed that the end of history had been reached, he may very well have been wrong. To claim that history, based on opposing forces and ideologies, is over and that we will inevitably settle on liberal democracy, may be mistaken. If Communism, based on Marx’s ideas, has not yet even been tried, and if Capitalism has not yet reached its full economic capacity, then the end, or ‘death’ of history may very well be premature!

Being in the World: Social Movements and Social Change

by Dr Robert Muller, Medium: https://medium.com/@DrRobertMuller/being-in-the-world-social-movements-and-social-change-9d46240cc2ee

(Image: lifeasahuman.com)

Resilience as a form of resistance, especially to neoliberalism in the current epoch, is essential to those people who struggle to change the system and yet find it difficult to continue to do their work.

The history of social change tells us that it is collective social movements that create generally progressive social change from the grassroots upwards. This is the story of every revolution, of every progressive change, of every initiative taken that enhances freedom, and it is social movements that are critical to such progress.

Recently, there has been much said, particularly by politicians, about the virtues of the Magna Carta on its 800th anniversary. The perverse hypocrisy of their utterances serve to prove one thing — that we can have as many Magna Carta’s, as many laws, as many protections, as we want, but if the people we vote into power (in democratic nations) wish to usurp those protections, then it appears that there is little that can be done in response.

This presents a very difficult situation for people who are struggling for justice and fairness and who need to find some measure of resilience in order to keep up their struggle. Without resilience, a person can simply collapse emotionally, physically, and mentally in the face of onslaught of a political system that seeks to do nothing to support disadvantaged groups.

It is the collective nature of social change, through social movements, where people find their strength to stand up against injustice and inequality. In doing so, people find meaning, friendship, and strength. In fact, what many of them find is that very sense of community that makes up one the tools of resilience in the toolbox. This is one major reason why people are attracted to groups with similar values to their own. In the process, as has been the case with social movements across time, they are also major agents of social change. From the grassroots, they put moral and, on occasions, economic pressure (perhaps through strikes) on government to make progressive changes.

As resilience is learnt through experience, such involvement can be a positive enhancement to a person’s resilience. In addition, people learn much through the process of social change, especially enhancing their problem-solving skills. 

Social change always involves a struggle between progressive and conservative thought and action. As such, this struggle is fought out firstly at the grassroots level where the forces of conservatism often put quite draconian practices in place to control the people at the grassroots. As the progressive side starts to gain an advantage through sheer weight of numbers (and make no mistake about it, this takes years or decades), the struggle starts to move upwards until it reaches the houses of parliament and the courts when finally progressive laws are enacted. The lengthy nature of the struggle is precisely why resilience is necessary, and why resilience needs to be taught to individuals and groups to be able to continue the work they do.

Hedonism: what it really means

by Dr Robert Muller, Medium: https://medium.com/@DrRobertMuller/hedonism-what-it-really-means-1f0768742594

(Image: classicalwisdom.com)

The philosophy of bourgeois society, after the rise of the middle-classes, was based on utilitarianism, which, according to Daniel Bell, is ‘a hedonistic calculation of pleasure and pain’. Such beliefs and ways of conduct partly paved the way for modern-day hedonism. Such hedonism is characterised by Bell as “the idea of pleasure as a way of life”. Furthermore, Bell argues that hedonism now provides the basis for the cultural justification of capitalism. Bell calls such hedonism ‘fun morality’.

In the contemporary era, if a person is not having fun, there is a period of soul-searching in which the individual attempts to establish what the problem is. Such ‘fun morality’ stands in stark contrast to the ‘goodness morality’ promoted within the Protestant ethic in which impulses must be controlled and resisted. Within such fun morality, instinct has become the basic justification for life in the contemporary era. Pleasure and the release of impulse become the priorities of living.

For Bell, hedonism is a ‘world of make-believe’ in which one lives for the future, dreaming of what will happen rather than what is happening. In this way, Bell’s conception of hedonism represents the idea of ‘self-autonomous illusory hedonism’ in which illusions are created in the mind of the individual, dwelt upon and often dreamed of.

Social Changes Leading to Hedonism

Bell points out the social changes which occurred throughout the 20th century which have helped to usher in the hedonistic ethic. He argues that the demographic changes that occurred in the first decades of the 20th century resulted in the rapid growth of American cities and a resultant decline in influence of ‘small-town’ lifestyles and mentality. 

Furthermore, this period saw the emergence of an economy based increasingly on consumption. Such a change, according to Bell, was in direct contrast with the Protestant ethic and as a result, began to undermine the older tradition. The emphasis on consumption saw priorities move towards ‘spending and material possessions’ and away from ‘thrift, frugality, self-control and impulse renunciation’. On top of these changes, the automobile, and the spread of media, particularly the increasing popularity of movie theatres and radio, helped to lessen the isolation of rural communities and to create a national culture with more homogeneous goals.

Further social change occurred throughout the 20th century, acting to undermine the last vestiges of the Protestant ethic. Bell cites changes in banking as a significant step towards the cultural inculcation of hedonism. With credit and overdraft facilities becoming commonplace by the end of the 1960s, the consumer no longer saw the need to delay gratification through the curbing of impulse. Instead, those impulses could now be given free rein when they arose. With credit, the longing of the consumer could be satisfied immediately. 

Throughout the 20th century, the shift in emphasis from an economy based on production to one based on consumption, saw consumer durables and the invention of credit and installment plans, together with the growth of marketing and advertising, which promoted spending and instant gratification, leading to the undermining of the Protestant ethic. Ultimately, these transformations brought about the end of Puritanism as the moral underpinning of American life. American capitalism, ‘the new capitalism’, claimed to produce abundance, and the fruits of the system were promoted as ‘the glorification of plenty’. A higher standard of living, not work as an end in itself, then becomes the engine of change.

Replacement of the Protestant Ethic by Hedonism

Bell’s thesis is that the Protestant ethic has been undermined and displaced by an ethic of hedonism or a ‘pleasure ethic’, as a culture based on consumerism took hold. The Protestant ethic had provided a transcendental justification in people’s lives and had served to place limits on the accumulation and experience of luxury. On the other hand, capital accumulation was not subject to these same limitations, as long as such accumulation was sober, rational, and responsible. Bell argues that once the Protestant ethic began to fade as an influence upon modern society, all that was left was hedonism.

Such private wants and unlimited ends with which to attain them (due to the burgeoning of the ‘new’ capitalism of America), had a belief in individualism as their underlying justification. According to Bell, bourgeois middle-class society had incorporated strands of both Protestantism and individualism. On the one hand, the Puritan style of capitalism which emphasised a certain type of character based on ‘sobriety, probity, work as a calling’ in a particular form of capitalist economic activity, contrasted and acted in tandem with a secular Hobbesianism, a radical individualism which saw humans as unlimited in their appetite, which was restrained in politics by a sovereign but ran fully free in economics and culture. Gradually, the relationship between these two sets of ethics weakened. Secular individualism gained in strength at the cost of the Protestant ethic, a situation continuing into the present.

Ultimately, the changes that were wrought by the transformations of the early decades of the 20th century, heavily promoted hedonism but could not provide any justification for it. Hedonism lacked a value system with which to replace the old one.

Why children need to be taught more about their human rights

by Carol Robinson, The Conversation:  https://theconversation.com/why-children-need-to-be-taught-more-about-their-human-rights-139431

Many children have an innate sense of equality, fairness and justice and know how these concepts relate to their day-to-day lives. A lot of children also have the confidence to voice their opinions when they feel a lack of justice. But unfortunately, this is not always that case – especially for children whose personal rights are violated and who face mistreatment, often behind closed doors.

A recent report from the Office of the Children’s Commissioner estimates that 2.3 million children in England are living with risk because of a vulnerable family background. This includes children in the care system and children known to have experienced personal harm as well as those living in families where there is a high likelihood of harm.

Worryingly, an estimated 829,000 of these children are not known to social services or to children’s mental health services so are not receiving any support. Added to this, since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, rates of domestic abuse have increased, meaning even more children may be living in homes where they are at risk of witnessing, or being on the receiving end of, violent behaviour.

Children need to know how to get help when they feel at risk. They also need to understand how rights apply to them and their lives – and while a limited amount of this is done in schools, it currently doesn’t go far enough.

Children’s rights

Children’s rights are a subset of human rights. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child sets out the rights that all children worldwide should have access to and is one of the most widely adopted international treaties of all time.

In England, specific teaching about human rights is included in Relationships Education for primary age pupils and in Relationships and Sex Education for secondary age pupils. Both primary and secondary pupils also learn about human rights in Health Education and in Citizenship education.

Schools already teach some elements of human rights, but more needs to be done. Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock

As part of these subjects, in primary schools, aspects relating to rights education includes pupils learning to recognise if relationships make them feel unhappy, unsafe or uncomfortable. Pupils also learn how to report any concerns or abuse and where they can get help.

In secondary schools, pupils are taught about issues such as how to recognise when a relationship is unsafe, what constitutes sexual harassment and sexual violence and why these are unacceptable. They are also taught about legal rights and responsibilities regarding equality, online rights, as well as how to report and get advice if needed for themselves or others. Civil liberties enjoyed by the citizens of the UK are also looked at, as are the nature of rules and laws and the justice system.

These subjects include some important teaching about rights, but the focus is on factual information about rights and the help available. What’s lacking is teaching children specifically about children’s rights and how these rights apply to their own situations. More also needs to be done to empower children with the confidence to voice concerns in cases where their rights are not respected.

Rights Respecting Schools

Unicef UK has developed a Rights Respecting Schools Award. In working towards this award, schools use the Convention on the Rights of the Child to teach pupils about their rights and how these apply in terms of their own lives.

Around 5,000 schools are working through the Unicef award, which equates to about 1.6 million children becoming more aware of their rights. Research shows that children in schools working toward this award develop the confidence to disclose instances where their rights have been disrespected. And this has led to safeguarding issues being identified.

A senior manager in one of the primary schools explained the impact it has made:

We always get some disclosures when we talk about rights at the beginning of the year … the [children] feel empowered to tell someone and that is something that probably wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for this [the award].

But not all children attend schools where the award is on offer. And even when they do, insufficient emphasis is placed on ensuring all pupils are not only made aware of rights and how these apply to them, but have the skills and confidence to act and get help in cases where rights are not respected.

‘Know your rights’

Given that under lockdown many children may be spending longer periods of time with adults who may make them feel unsafe and have fewer opportunities to voice these concerns, the need for children’s rights education to be incorporated into all levels of schooling is urgent.

The focus needs to be not only on the transmission of knowledge and facts about children’s rights but, as asserted by the United Nations World Programme for Human Rights Education, it must also ensure children acquire the skills to apply their rights in a practical way in daily life. And this means teaching children how to take action to defend and promote their rights as and when needed.

These Streets May Stay Open Forever: Hundreds of Cities Have Handed Over Their Streets to Pedestrians and Cyclists During the Pandemic. Some of Them Plan to Keep it That Way

by Tristan Cleveland, Reasons to be Cheerful:  https://reasonstobecheerful.world/these-streets-may-stay-open-forever/

This story is part of “Now Anything Is Possible,” a series about changes that have long seemed out of reach, but now, amid the coronavirus outbreak, are happening fast - and how we can make them stick. To make sure you don’t miss a story, sign up for our weekly newsletter and follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Read the whole collection here.

A cyclist in Bogota. Credit: Juan Felipe Rubio / Flickr

When Covid-19 cases started popping up in Colombia in mid-March, Bogota Mayor Claudia López realized her city had a head start on at least one response: car-free streets. 

For years, the city had been closing its main roads to cars on Sundays as part of a weekly program called la Ciclovía, a breath of fresh air in the crowded and chaotic capital. But as the virus bore down on the city, la Ciclovía took on a more urgent value. The World Health Organization had advised that walking and cycling were the safest means of travel during the coronavirus outbreak, so López and her fellow city officials decided to effectively scale up la Cicovía as an emergency pandemic mitigation measure.

Within days, Bogotá opened nearly 47 miles of new temporary bike routes, adding to 340 miles of paved protected paths, and converted almost 17 miles of automobile lanes to bike routes overnight.

It was an example of the coronavirus crisis leading to rapid changes that are transforming the way we think about using urban space. Suddenly cities are being forced to optimize how they use their finite square footage, with results that are offering a glimpse of exactly how much potential those spaces have.

Among the most visible of these changes - and the ones that may be most likely to become permanent - are the handovers of city streets from private vehicles to pedestrians and cyclists. In thousands of cities in towns, from Portland to Berlin, streets are being closed to vehicular traffic and reclaimed, in the name of public health, by two-wheeled and two-footed humans. The question is, once the health crisis subsides, will these changes remain in place? As London’s walking and cycling commissioner Will Norman put it last week: “We need to come out of this crisis in a radically different way.”

A new urban paradigm

In recent years, Paris has been on the cutting edge of the car-free streets movement, with a visionary mayor that has made pedestrianization of the city one of her calling cards.

As we speak, the city is creating 650 kilometers of pop-up “corona cycleways” for travel once the lockdown ends and converting one of its major central roads, the Rue di Rivoli, into a bicycle route. Mayor Anne Hidalgo has said that changes deemed successful will be made permanent, folded into the city’s ongoing mobility plan.

What’s more, France’s Minister of Ecological Transition announced that, going forward, every French citizen will be entitled to free bicycle repairs of up to 50 euros ($55 USD) from a network of 3,000 mechanics who will be reimbursed by the government. The $22 million plan will also fund permanent bike racks, cycling classes and support for cities to build more cycle lanes. 

“I am willing (and rather confident) to see these temporary measures become permanent because, pandemic or not, cycling is one of the cleanest and healthiest ways to move, especially in urban areas,” said Pierre Serne, president of cycling association Club des Villes et Territoires Cyclables, which is working with the French government to implement the plans.

Milan, too, has announced that over 20 miles of cycling infrastructure installed for the pandemic will remain in place post-lockdown. The city is working with former New York City Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Kahn to facilitate the transition. “The pandemic challenges us, but it also offers a once-in-a-lifetime chance to change course and repair the damage from a century of car-focused streets,” Sadik-Kahn told the BBC. 

Other governments are enacting similar policies. The government of New Zealand has offered to reimburse cities for 90 percent of the cost of turning streets into permanent social spaces. Budapest has installed bicycle lanes on major thoroughfares and has signaled that it may leave them there indefinitely.

“If everybody drives a car, there is no space for people, there is no space to move, there is no space for commercial activities outside the shops,” Marco Granelli, a deputy mayor of Milan, told the Guardian. “That’s why it’s so important to defend even a part of the economy, to support bars, artisans and restaurants.”

Discussions about extending these street conversions indefinitely speak to how much potential there is for more permanent changes to be made. France has rolled out temporary bike lanes in more than a hundred cities. Oakland, California, has closed 10 percent of its local streets to vehicles. This week, New York announced that in May it will make 100 miles of streets car-free. Lithuania’s capital, Vilnius, is handing over much of its public space to bars and restaurants so they can serve customers while social distancing. 

Across the world, in the space of just weeks, street closures - or openings, as advocates call them - have accomplished something urbanists have spent decades trying to do: convince cities of the benefits of car-free streets.

Live and in Technicolor

For years, research has shown that reclaiming streets from cars carries an array of economic benefits. Back in Bogota, a study found that for every dollar spent on closing streets to vehicles on Sundays, three public health dollars are saved. Opening streets to people can be good for business, too: Bike lanes are shown to boost retail sales and jobs wherever they pop up. 

The health advantages are also well-documented: reducing car use leads to less pollution, safer streets, faster commutes, even declines in loneliness.

But perks laid out on paper are only so persuasive. What’s happening now amounts to a live-action dramatization of the positive health, economic and environmental effects of reducing car use. In California, traffic accidents - as well as crash-related injuries and deaths - fell by half amid shelter-in-place orders, saving the state about $40 million per day. Los Angeles, where driving is a way of life, is experiencing its  longest stretch of clean air on record. Traffic congestion, of course, has virtually vanished from sight.

A cyclist in Copenhagen. Credit: Mikael Colville-Andersen / Flickr

This real-life display of carless streets appears to be inspiring politicians and planners, a growing number of whom are signaling their intention to make at least some of the changes permanent. “People are already asking: ‘How much pollution do we want to invite back into our lives? How much congestion do we want? How many crashes a year do we want? How many fatalities do we want?’” says urban planner Mike Lydon, who has been tracking the spread of open streets interventions around the world.

But what happens when life returns to some kind of normal, and thousands of commuters want to drive to work because transit systems are crippled or seen as too risky to use?

Lydon says that while cars will return to many of these streets, history shows that some will likely stay open. “Cities are starting to see the value in these changes first-hand. And more importantly, citizens are seeing it.” There’s evidence for this: When cities have handed over streets to pedestrians, bicycles and transit, the public response has tended to be positive - even if it was initially skeptical. 

This has been true in Delhi, where the popularity of a bus rapid transit system defied its critics; in New York, where once-controversial bike lanes and busways now enjoy overwhelming support; and in Bogota, where la Ciclovía is now heralded as one of the city’s best features. As Parisian Mayor Hidalgo put it on April 29, “I say in all firmness that it is out of the question that we allow ourselves to be invaded by cars.”