The Right to Respect (Korczak)

Respect, in Korczak's framework, is a precisely specified stance that adults rarely offer children. It is not affection — the warm feeling that arises when a child is charming. It is not protectiveness — the instinct to shield the child from visible danger. It is the active acknowledgment that the child is an autonomous being whose grievances are valid, whose questions are real, whose inner life is as complex as any adult's. Respect means taking what the child says seriously — granting it the weight of genuine testimony about genuine experience, rather than filtering it through the adult assumption that children do not yet understand enough to be credible witnesses to their own lives. The distinction carries consequences that reach directly into the design philosophy of every AI system that interacts with children.