Humans’ Rights are Crucial in our Lives, but What about Children’s Rights?

The following paper is going to be about the importance of Children´s Rights using as a link the short story written by Charles Dickens called “Oliver Twist”. First, I am going to give a brief summary of the short story, then I will give some Children’s Rights, the most importants for me. Later I will give some arguments about the importance of these Rights and why is necessary have in mind and know these Rights, specially children; and finally, I I will give a personal conclusion about the topic.

The short story “Oliver Twist” is about a little boy whose mother died when he was born. As his mother was dead, he was taken to a workhouse, in which there were a lot of children in his same conditions. The woman who was in charge of this place did not care about the kids, so she mistreated to all the children.They barely had something to eat; because of the mistreatment and also because he did not have food, Oliver scaped to London looking for a better life.

In London he lved with some men that forced him to work on the streets as a thief. Oliver was caught stealing, but the man who was being stolen adopted him and also he protected him from the bad people who abused of him in the past.

If we, as teachers or parents, want to teach our students or sons and daughters about their Rights as Children, this is a great story to introduce the subject. These are some question that teachers or parents can ask them in order to get, step by sptep, to this important subject: What do you think about Oliver’s life? Was he happy? Why? Or Was it fine what people did to him? and so on.

Once your students or children are immersed into this improtant subject you can start giving them some, (hopefully the most important ones) Children’s Rights related to the short story like the ones that I have chosen:

- Children have the Right to protection from work that threatens their health, education and development.
- Childre have the Right to express themselves.
- Children have the Right to protection from trafficking and abduction.

Now, I am going to explain my own understanding of these three Rights, because if we want to teach them, we have to know what each of these rights means. In other words I am going to explain them. The first one says that children can not be forced to work by anyone, not even their parents, due to the fact that they are just kids so if they work they are going to be mentally and physically injured. This will happen, because as they are children their bodies are not made to work hard as they were adults.

The second Right has to do with the previous one, because if there is something that a kid does not agree with, he or she is in her or his Right to say something about it. In this case if she or he does not want to work, because he should be studying and not working, she or he can say something to the person who is making him or her work. Doing this, they are going to be defending their Rights as children, but they always have to do it in the correct way, I mean without disrespecting to the other person, whoever it is, even though if that person is not treating you well, because if they do this, they will be more respected by others and they are going to teach people that being disrespectful does not help you at all.

The last is also related to the first one, because if we make children to traffic drugs or whatever, we are making them to work and as a concequence they will lose their innocence as children. We have to protect their innocence due to the fact that you are a kid just once in your life and in today’s world is quite difficult being a naive child for along time, so that is why we have to protect that the most time that we can, because if we, as parents and teachers do not do that, who is going to do it? Probably no one in earth will do that.

To conclude I will like to say that we have a very amazing and important task to do as teachers, because we are in charge of a big part of our students’ growth. So, What do we have to do? I truly believe that we have to guide our students in all the aspects of their lives that we are able to do and be part of, because some of them do not have their parents’ support in a hundred per cent, due to the fact that they work all day long and at night they barely see their children, because they are too tired to play or to talk wit them.

We need to have clear that we are not their parents, but we are an important support and important persons in their lives, because we are almost all day and every day with them . One way to help them is letting them know about the Rights that they have as children, because is probably that we are going to be the only ones who are going to teach them that in their entire lives, due to the fact that as a society it is not an important subject to teach or to talk about. This is another task that we have, we need to turn this subject into a known and important topic among people, specially among parents and teachers, so it is something that we also have to talk about in parents meetings, in order to make them participate of their Children’s lives.

Outline: Humans' Rights are Crucial in our Lives, but What about Children’s Rights?

I Introduction
- Aim of the paper
II “Oliver Twist” summary
III Children’s Rights
- The most important ones
IV Importance of these Rights
- Why are they important?
V Conclusion

September 1, 1939

This poem written by W. H. Auden was really touchy for me, because it talks about war and how war affects people lives. Maybe it really touched me, due to the fact that I am a mother and I do not know what I would do if my daughter has to go to war and, in concequence, die. Going to war for most people, including me, means that you are going to die, because that is the main point of a war, kill the enemy.

Auden talks about how devastating was loosing husbands and sons to women of that time. Maybe for some women loosing their husband was not so terrible as it was loosing their sons in a war that had nothing to do with them, because let’s face it, wars are made by people who never stands up for the country, I mean people who has never been into a war, they just watch how people die because of his or her beliefs, ambitions and greed. With this final thought I am trying to say that ordinary people do not choose wars, wars are impose upon them by others.

Comment on Cinthya's entry: Virginia Woolf

I totally agree with you. I truly believe that in order to write, paint or even think, we need our own room, our own private place, because we need peace and be relaxed if we want to reach our deepest thoughts and ideas.

It is important to have our private place, but I also believe that to do so, we need money, because if we want to write a book or paint something we need time and materials to do it. Also because if we want our work to be perfect the idea is that we only concentrate in that piece of art and not being worry about other things like a job. We cannot work and be relaxed at the same time, because having a job, whichever, it is quite stressing.

Cinthya, I really liked your post,because it is an interesting topic that you can talk about for ages. Maybe you could have written more about what you think or maybe about the importance of having our own place to be by ourselves and be able to think about our deepest thoughts.

See you around, love you!!

Virginia Woolf by Cinthya Romero V.

Writing is art, as it is painting, dancing, singing, etc. Every time I think about art, I analyze how important could be to have his/her own space for the artist. For example, if a writer wants to write a book or a poem, he/she may need to have privacy in order to feel to think and to do whatever he/she wants to do. That is why I strongly believe that to have our own space makes us feel more comfortable.

As it was easy to see in Virginia Woold`s essay, women`s role was not important, so for her it was essential to have her own room to write, to think, and to be free to express her ideas and thoughts. I think that our own room is our best space, and it is unique, our room is the only place in which we can rest, because it gives us tranquility.



Having a room for our own can be difficult, so what happen when someone does not have his/her own room, and he/she needs to have it? In Virginia Woolf, she did not have any money to buy her own room, and she need to have it because she needed to reflect on what she wanted to write. Spaces give us the chance to reflect, think and analyze our lives or whatever we want to, and each person must have that time.




People should have their own place to reflect on themselves!

T. S. Elliot: The Waste Land

What really called my attention about this poem was how long it was, because I have always thought that poems were kind of short. This poem broke all my perceptions about poems characteristics with its lenght.

Another thing that called my attention was the mixture of languages. Although I do not understand what he wanted to say in those parts, I really liked this mixture, because we could see that this poet knew a lot of things. I could say that T. S. Elliot liked to mix things, because he also talks about mythology.

I also liked some lines like “April is the cruellest month” and “In the mountains, there you feel free”, because he uses Nature to provoque emotions in the reader, I mean he uses specific moments and places, which are emotional to most people.

To conclude I would like to say that this poem has been one of the most difficultones to understand, even though we read and heard it in class. I still can not get the real meaning or purpose of this poem.

Odour of Chrysanthemums

I really enjoyed this short story, because, in my opinión, it is very realistic for the time that it was written, I mean, I think that kind of issues were present in those years.

When I read the story I did not know much about D.H. Lawrence´s life, so I could not see how his childhood was represented in this story. After knowing that his father was a miner and his mother was a teacher, I realized that he was inspired by his childhood, I mean by his parents’ way of living to write this story.

I believe that Lawrence did not have a very happy childhood, because of the wife’s personality in the story. In other words, he knew how uncomfortable and unhappy was his mother with her life and husband, so he could not have a nice childhood at his home. I also believe that he had a dysfunctional family, because his father was almost never at home.

I have this conclusions about his personal life, according to what I read in the Odour of Chrysanthemums short story. I really believe that it is a passage of his real life as a child.