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.
