Children

Children, and children's rights

Parenting Classes?

Controversy rages over suggestions of compulsory parenting classes for parents of kids who get into trouble.

Of course there should be parenting classes. Society doesn't let people carry out surgery, sell tickets, sweep the streets or do practically any job at all without a bit of training...

When school students fought the system

By Colin Foster From the Blairites, and from further to the right, we hear more and more about “restoring discipline” and “restoring old-fashioned standards” in schools. The real chaos generated in some schools by social decay and by incessant “restructuring” from above is being used as a springboard for the re-imposition of more punitive, authoritarian regimes in schools. Maybe we will have to fight again some battles fought in the 1960s and 1970s. And they were real battles. Corporal punishment in schools was not finally abolished in England until 1989 (and in private schools not until 1999)...

More Outdoor Play Places - NOW!

CBBC Newsround is running an on-line survey asking whether there are enough places to play outdoors.

Obviously, the answer is 'No'!

The government goes on and on about childhood obesity, but its 'solution' is to lecture ordinary people about our lifestyle habits but stop short of providing the...

Farewell, Child Support Agency

So the Child Support Agency is to be scrapped. Sounds like good news for all those people - men and women, 'caring' and 'absent' parents - who have been let down or persecuted by it. Problem is, it looks set to be replaced by something even worse.

Governments always announce their latest measures...

Child Trust Fund: Who needs it?

It seems that about a third of parents entitled to set up Child Trust Funds have not done so. While the banks and the government tear their hair out wondering why, they might consider the fact that parents of babies are just a bit busy and just a bit tired.

I finally got mine (or Harrison's, rather...

In The Chains Of Slavery

"Shame upon such crimes! Shame upon us if we do not raise our voices against them!" Samuel Gompers, U.S. labor activist, 1881 With credible estimates ranging from 60 to 115 million, India has the largest number of working children in the world. Whether they are sweating in the heat of stone quarries, working in the fields sixteen hours a day, picking rags in city streets, or hidden away as domestic servants, these children endure miserable and difficult lives. They earn little and are abused much. They struggle to make enough to eat and perhaps to help feed their families as well. They do not...

“The only thing I hate in this world is the police”

Ricardo, Montevideo, Uraguay I am 16, but not for much longer. My birthday is soon, although I have never received a birthday present in my life. I’ve been living on the street for the last six years. My parents are living but not together. My mother ran off with my father’s brother, though not before having nine children with my father. Now my father has a new woman who is pregnant with a new brother or sister for me. It was my choice to live on the streets and not with my family. There were too many of us living in the small house in the cantigrill [slum]. I did not get on with my sister...

The children of the streets

By Dave Ball There are estimated to be 11 million street children in India. This includes those who are on the streets in the day but return to a family or other home in the evening, as well as those who sleep on the streets. Worldwide there could be as many as 170 million street children. The April 2005 issue of New Internationalist (NI) (published on the web at www.newint.org) focussed on the issue, giving most of the space to street children themselves to tell their experiences and put forward their hopes in their own words. The magazine featured the words of children from Mongolia...

Writing on the wall

Tescopoly Health inequality Childhood obesity TESCOPOLY The announcement by Tesco boss Terry Leahy that his company made £65 million profit per second last year was greeted with joy by the capitalist community. Declan Curry of the London Stock Exchange was only surprised at how muted the announcement was. “We should not be ashamed of profit,” he said. Tesco says it will “create” 25,000 jobs next year. Each Tesco worker makes the company an average of £95,000 a year, but most of them are paid the minimum wage, and Tesco has lobbied politicians constantly against even that. Tesco workers are...

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