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.

Virginia Woolf: A Room of One's Own

I truly believe that it is quite important to have our own place, a personal place, if we want to write or if we want to think about our most deep feelings and thoughts, because we need privacy in order to go deeply and have clear what are our real and true thoughts about any issue.

Some people would say that in order to have our own private place to write or just to think about life we need money, because it is not easy to spend time writing and have a quality life in terms of money. I agree with this idea, because writing takes a lot of time and people also need to work in order to have money to live and to take care of their families. It is not easy to be a writer if you do not have the resources to do it, because you cannot leave a side your quality life and your family, because, as I already said, you need a lot of time to write about issues that you are concern about and especially if you write fiction, because, in my opinion, you need more time to do it.

Oliver Twist...

Watching this movie, I recalled all the children that are forced to work by their parents, tutors or anyone who is giving them food or a roof to sleep in. The boy in the movie, Oliver, never met to his mother, because she die when he was born. He was always under the care of strangers that were very bad persons with all the children that they were “taking care”, due to the fact that they sent all the children, no matter the age that they had, to work in order to give them money.

Oliver’s experience made me think about all the children that work at a very young age, they are sent to sell or buy drugs, or even they are sent to steal in order to get money and give it to their “tutors”. Afterwards, most of these children are involved in the drug’s world, but some others are not, are stronger and they try to move on and get out of this tragic world that will take them to the ruin of their lives.

The Signal - Man

After reading this short story I could not avoid thinking about the movie "Modern Times" by Charles Chaplin, because it also refers to the Industrial Revolution.

I believe that the train has to do with the connections among different cities, because it is a mean of transport that it is used to move things, people, animals or whatever that you would like to transport to another city or to another place.

Going back to the story itself, I have to admit that I still do not understand the Ghost that appears in it, I still can not find the point of this Ghost. It really made me feel lost while I was reading this story.

Another thing that called my attention was how the main character appreciated society. He was seeing how the progress was passing in front of him and he just was a spectator that was not able to do anything about what was going on in front of his eyes.

Franky..

While I was reading Frankenstein I felt very sad, because his life was pretty difficult. I also thought about the many times that we have discriminated people because of any reason like colour of hair, clothes, thoughts and even because of the colour of the skin.

When I read that he was abandoned by his creator I thought about all the children that are abandoned by their mothers or fathers. I can not understand how a mother can abandon to her son or daughter, I truly believe that there are not excuses to do so. There is always a way to raise a baby, maybe you have to sacrifice many things in your life, but there are banal things if you compare them to a son, to the love that a mother or father have for her or his sons, it is a love that you can not describe.

This kind of stories are very touchy for me, because as I am a mother I can not conceive, as I said before, the idea of not ing with your son or daughter, it is something that I can not forgive, because there is always a way if you really want to be with them.

"I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud"

In the poem “I wandered lonely as a cloud”, the author talks about what he likes the most in the world, which are Daffodils. I also think that he refers to nature in order to explain that people do not realize how beautiful and peaceful it can be. People do not see this, because they are focus on their problems, they are always running, thinking in themselves and working, so they do not have the enough time to look a side and see the world. People is only worried in buy things and have more and more money. Doing this, we do not realize how bad is our planet, how we have destroyed it during the centuries only because of our greed and selfishness.

Also, people spend lot of money in therapy in order to beat stress, but they do not realize that if they look at mountains, flowers, animals or anything that belong to our nature they will get better, because our environmet is the best thing that we can have and it is FOR FREE, we just have to take care of it.

"When I have fears that I may Cease to be"

When I knew that I had to talk about Death, the first thing that I thought was: Ups!, because it is a very controversial and gloomy issue to talk about. On the one hand, it is quite difficult for some people to talk about Death, because most of us is afraid of it. Specially older people, because when you get to a certain age it becomes in something inevitable, lonely and eternal. On the other hand, for young people Death is something unknown, unthinkable and also, it is something that will never reach them, due to the fact that when you are young you are invincible, nothing can happen to you, nothing will hurt you. The author of the poem was young, but he was terminally ill, so Death was something that he had to think about, because it crashed him in his face at a very young age.

The feeling that overcome him when he knew that he was going to die, was the one of being remembered. In my opinion, this is a terrible feeling that we all are going to experience when our time comes, due to the fact that we all want to be remembered for having done something, we want to think that we did not live in vain.

Coleridge's Poem

“It is essential to poetry that it should be simple, and appeal to the elements and primary laws of nature; that it should be sensuous, and by its imagery elicit truth at a flash; that it should be impassioned, and be able to move our feelings and awaken affection”.



I chose this quotation, because, as we could read, during all the poem Coleridge talks about nature, but he does not talk about the nature that we know, an usual nature, he goes beyond our senses. He talks about a wanted nature, something that it does not exist in our world, it is like a Paradise that he is inventing and looking for. This Paradise, in my opinion, it is kind of weird, but it is because we all have different perceptions of what a Paradise is. I think that it depends on the moment that we are living in our daily lives. Maybe it is because he was used to take opium as a medicine his thoughts were a little weird and for him that was the calm that he was looking for.

The Little Black Boy & Madonna of Port Lligat

I think that the word that appears in the poem, for me, is “Eternity”, because the mother is telling to her son that in heaven, in other words, when he dies, he will be in another place, where God lives and all the people look the same. What she said to her son is a brief definiton of the Eternal Life according to the Catholic church that is why I chose this word.

I chose Madonna of Port Iligat by Dali, because in the poem the mother knows that there is something bothering to her little black boy, so she tries to protect him telling him those things. In the painting the boy is inside the belly of his mother, so the boy is being protected by the mother, because it does not exist a safer place in earth for a son, because there he / she has the protection of the mother, no one can touch him / her.

Final Essay: Discrimination in Shakespeare’s work and inside the Schools.

Outline

I Introduction

- Purpose of the essay

II Summary of the movie

- How Discrimination is shown inside the movie

III What is Discrimination?

- Definition of Discrimination

- Different types of Discrimination

IV Discrimination inside the school

- How teacher discriminate students

V Conclusion

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The following essay will be about the movie “The Merchant of Venice” directed by Michael Radford, but orinally written by William Shakespeare between the years 1594 and 1597, but published in 1600. The main issue that I will develop it is going to be Discrimination, which it is very explicit in the movie. Then I will explain discrimination in today’s world, specifically inside the schools, and how we can avoid it, in order to accept others and respect them in the same way that we expect respect from others.

In the movie we can see that Shylock, the main character, and all the Jewish people were discriminated by Catholic people, because they had a different religion, customs and traditions. In order to have the movie’s plot clear I am going to give a brief summary of it and also, to see how Discrimination was lived by Jews in that time.

Bassanio was a noble and poor Venetian, who asked to his friend Antonio (to some people he was his lover too), a rich treader, three thousand ducats as a loan, because he wanted to get married to Portia, a rich heiress. Antonio, who had all his money invested in his ships abroad decides to ask for the money to Shylock, a Jew usurer. Shylock said yes, but if Antonio does not pay at the agreed date, he will pay with a pound of his own flesh, the closest piece of fles to his heart. He asked this, because he wanted revenge for all the bad things that Catholic people have done to him and to all the Jewish people. Shylock did not care too much for the money that had lended to Antonio, the only thing that really matter to him was revenge.

They had to asked a Jew for a loan, because in those times Jewish people could not have any property, they were not allow to have nothing, so to live they had to work as usurers, they were the ones that gave money as a loan. Also, they had to ask for the money to shylock, because he was the only Jew that had that amount of money.
After a while, there were news about Antonio’s ships, but there were not good news, his ships had wrecked and the debt have not been paid by Bassanio, thus Shylock asked for his pound of flesh as a payment. This situation causes a trial in which is decided that if Shylock cut the pound of flesh, he coul not shed a single drop of blood, because blood was not in the contract. So he could not cut Antonio and to make worst the life of Shylock, the judge made him give half of his money to Antonio and the other half to the state. So he lost all his money as a punishment.
As we could see, the main conflict in the movie was Discrimination, but, first of all, I am going to give a definition of Discrimination to have clear the concept and understand in a better way the main aim of this essay. According to the web page www.discrimination.com, Discrimination means: “Treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favor of or against, a person or thing based on the group, class, or category to which that person or thing belongs rather than on individual merit: racial and religious intolerance and discrimination”. Taking in consideration this definition we can say that in the movie Catholic people was against Jewish people, because of religious intolerance.

There are different types of Discimination, for example, we can be discriminated by others because of our clothes, beliefs, colour of skin or anything that can be different, even if we like a certain type of music we can be discriminated by people. For example, if we see a person in the street that is dressed in a different way or in a “funny” way to us, we tend to talk or laugh at that person. Other people tend to discriminate, because of the different religious that a person could have. In our country, Chile, there has always been rivality between Catholics and Evangelical people, which comes from both sides, becoming this into a vicious circle. A circle that never ends, because either of the sides give up their prejudices.

As I said before, there are many types of discrimination that can be good or bad, but I am going to focus in the Discrimination that exists inside the classroom and that I have experienced in my work experience.
Last year, I went to a school, in which there were a lot of Peruvian kids studying there. Most of the teachers were fine with the fact that they were there, but some others did not like those kids, so in class they were almost invisible to those teachers and when they needed some extra help, those teachers did not help them at all; in fact, they were excluded by those teachers. Teachers can not discriminate students, even if they do not agree with their way of dressing, talking, beliefs, sex, colour of skin, or,in this case, nationality.

As teacher, we have to be neutral, because during our entire lives we are going to be in touch with lot of people that is going to be different to us., they can be different in their way of speak, dress, ideas, and many other things. We have to accept the different characteristics that people can have, specially if they are our students, because they deserve the same respect that we expect from them to us. Also, because of the most important thing, they are human beings just like anyone else in the world, just like us, they only have different cultures and ways of thinking, due to the fact that we are different genetically, but spiritually and physically we are the same, we are all God’s children.

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Work Cited


- Movie: “The Merchant of Venice”

- http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_mercader_de_Venecia
- http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/discrimination

Film Review: The Merchant of Venice

In this film review I am going to talk about the movie “The Merchant of Venice”. I’m going to give you a brief summary about it, then I will discuss about the relationship between Shylock and Antonio. After that I will try to answer the question, Are in today’s world problems between different Religions.

The movie is about a Christian asking for a loan to a Jew. This Christian, Antonio, had spat in the Jewish, Shylock, face at the beginning of the movie. Antonio had to ask for his help, because his friend Bassanio, wanted to get married to Portia and he needed financial backing. As they were good friends Antonio could not say no to Bassanio, but he did not have money to help him, so they had to ask for help. The Jew that could help them, because of the amount of money that they wanted, was Shylock, but once he knew that the money was for Antonio he said that in the case that they do not pay in the correct time, he wanted a piece of flesh from Antonio. He agreed because he trusted on Bassanio was going to be able to pay it before the deadline.

Meanwhile, at Portia’s house in Belmont, some Princes went to see if they could get married to her. They had to choose one chest out of three, if the one that they choose was Portia’s picture they could get married. None of them choose the correct chest. Then Bassanio arrived to Belmont to choose the correct chest and he was lucky, he did it.

Antonio had three months to pay the loan, and the three months passed. It came the day of the payment. As neither Antonio nor Bassasio had paid the loan, shylock asked for the piece of flesh from Antonio. He did this, because he wanted revenge for all the mistreats that he suffered only for being a Jewish person.

As we could see at the beginning of the movie the relationship between Antonio and Shylock was not good, they were rivals, because they had different beliefs, Shylock was a Jewish person and Antonio was a Christian. In those times Jewish people could not have properties so they had to work as usurers, so they were not treated too well by Christians.

Shylock hated Antonio, because Jewish people were mistreated a lot in those times, that is why he had hate in his heart and soul. Antonio was his revenge, was the first opportunity to hurt a Christian and he wanted to do either way.
In today’s world there are still problems between the different Religious that exist. For example, we have the conflict between Israel and Palestine. Palestinians believe that Israelis are oppressing them, so that is why they are in a “Holy War”. They say that this war is wanted by God, and leads to the ones who die in it to Salvation. Israel had built a wall to separate the two countries, in order to not have contact with Palestinians.

Another example that wee have in today’s world, is the conflict that exists between the West and Muslims. The west promotes human rights, which is the Human Dignity and it is what God wants for Human Race, but on the other hand, Muslims promote their Religion through violence. That is the main issue that they have today.

As a personal opinion, I really enjoy the movie because we could realize how Jewish people were treated in those times. We could see some problems that they used to have, not only in Venice, but in everywhere they were. Christian saw themselves as superiors, but doing this they were contradicting themselves, their beliefs and what Christianity beliefs in.

I also liked the setting and customs, because they were very appropriate to the period that the movie was settled.

The Fairy Queene

This letter was extremely difficult to read, because of the vocabulary that it is used in it. After reading the letter a couple of times and some summaries on the internet (which helped me to understand it) I could get a general idea of the main point of this letter.

In this letter Spenser is trying to show the virtues of human beings and he decided to write about the King Arthur, because he represents the twelve Virtues. He used different characters to represent those virtues.

This letter also has a hidden message, which is, in my opinion, a critique to the kingdom. He disliked social life, religious and political problems. You have to read between the lines to realize of this hidden message, because is not explicit in the letter. This characteristic makes the poem an Allegory.

He also wrote this letter, I think, because he wanted protection and the best person for this was Sir Walter Raleigh, who was a respected and powerful man.

Outline: The Merchant of Venice

Outline:

1. Introduction

2. Brief summary of the movie


3. What happened between Shylock and Antonio


4. In today’s world, are there the same problems among different Religions?


5. Personal Opinion.

What women want most?

I think that what women want in today’s world, is to be respected by men and be treated as human beings with the same rights that men have, because women are not made just to clean, take care of the children or serve to their husbands, we also work and do things that we enjoy or want to do.

We want to be treated with respect and also be understood as a person with thoughts and feelings and not as sexual objects without opinions, because we are just like men and even better. We are better than men, because we work, do the chores of the house and raise and take care of our children.

Having read Chaucer’s poem “The Wife of Bath”, we can see that what women used to want in those times is not much different from what we want in today’s world. In both ages we want to be respected and considered as human beings with the same rights that men have, because we are not different, we have opinions and feelings just like a man.

Vicious Circle.

When I read this poem for the first time, I thought that it was written many years ago, but still fits in our cultural background; because greed is everywhere we go and everywhere we look. I think that this happens, because we, as human beings, have not change our behavior, in terms of personal success. The only thing that we want in our lives is having more and more material things, in order to be more “powerful and successful” than the person who is next to us.

The greed that corrodes us is guilty of all the poverty and injustice that exist in our world, because if we care a little in our “brothers and sister” (in God’s eyes) we would not be so selfish and we would not be thinking only in having things to ourselves. We will be worried in help others to succeed in the same way that I have succeed.

I really think that this will never change, because there are people that can not tolerate that their neighbor has the same things that they have, because the human being is always competing in having more and more. This is a vicious circle that will never ends.

Epic Poetry

My definition of an Epic Poem:

I did not know what people mean when they said that they have read an Epic Poem, ‘til I read a piece of Beowulf, and could come out with the next definition. An Epic Poem, I think, is a long narration about a single hero, in which you tell the adventures that he or she has had. It also tries to give you a moral.

"Literature and Human Beings"

Quote:
“Since the object of literature is the human condition itself, the person who studies id and understands it will become, not a specialist in literary analysis but an expert in being human” (page 31).

I totally agree with this quotation, because Literature expresses human feelings, beliefs, thoughts, ideas, etc. Saying this, I am trying to explain that whatever we read, we are reading a part of that person, the perceptions that she or he has about the world that surround us. These perceptions are influenced by the experiences that every person has in the course of their lives, and as we know, every person has a different experience in life, because we are unique.
We can say that the more we read, the more we learn about people, about the different points of view that people has about everything, even about a tiny ant. These experiences and perceptions that we learn about every time we read something can help us to understand in a different way the world, because we have the possibility to know the experiences of a different person, who has had a different background.