Pedagogical thinking
Ellen Key was among the first to lay the groundwork for ideas that would profoundly shape the modern concept of children’s rights. For her, culture – and especially education – was the driving force of change, capable of transforming the nineteenth-century mindset, focused mainly on duty and protection, into a more positive and proactive vision of childhood.
In Key’s view, children’s rights could not be limited to parental affection: they also needed to be guaranteed by society as a whole. A child, she argued, should not be “desired” only by his or her family, but by the wider community, which demonstrates this desire by taking responsibility for every birth through measures such as social assistance, protection of motherhood, and sustained support for women before, during, and after childbirth. From this perspective, Key even redefined motherhood as a form of public service – a socially valuable contribution that deserved recognition and support.
To make this vision concrete, she called for practical initiatives: targeted subsidies for families in need, the reduction of external work burdens for mothers, and the creation of facilities for childcare and early education. She also argued that women’s emancipation should go hand in hand with – if not take precedence over – purely political rights, since true freedom of choice for women could only exist if society provided real guarantees during the first years of a child’s life.
Key openly criticized the laws of her time, which often forced women to choose between freedom and motherhood. She believed that humanity could advance only if childhood became the center of both public and private concern. Among her priorities was the struggle against discrimination between legitimate and illegitimate children.
For Key, the family – reimagined on the basis of love and mutual respect – was the privileged environment where a child’s personality could best take shape. She considered existing preschool institutions a risk to individuality, as they tended to produce conformity and “herd-like” behavior rather than encouraging autonomy and independence. In her view, education should not aim to mold the “mass-man,” but instead foster the child’s unique freedom and capacity for self-determination from the earliest years.