Child Rights Workshop
On
Monday through to Thursday (last week), the Ghana Education Service through the Girls
Education Unit put on a Child Rights Workshop. The first two days were for
headmasters/headmistresses and girls clubs coordinators and the following two
days were for four community members (including one PTA member). The workshop
was held for 20 schools, both primary and junior high schools, within the
district. The objective of the workshop was to build the capacity of
individuals on child rights and how to address abuse cases within schools. Three
members of the GEU (myself included) and the Chief of the Commission on Human
Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) ran the workshop.
We
first discussed what human rights are and then moved on to what child rights
are. We later discussed the United Nations Convention on The Rights of a Child,
the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC), and the Children’s Act 1998. I
encourage you to do further research on the various human rights organizations
or conventions that exist. There are links at the bottom of this blog to help
you!
Child Abuse
Later
on in the workshop we discussed three important aspects of child rights: child
abuse, child labour, and child trafficking. Child abuse has been divided into
four main categories: neglect, physical abuse, psychological or emotional
abuse, and sexual abuse. Something that I have noticed in Damongo is that
physical abuse is widely accepted. Many children, both at home and at school,
are physically abused as a way of “disciplining” the child. Many teachers or
headmasters walk around with a cane (or stick) and hit the children when they
are acting out. There have been many contradicting views on this, especially in
the workshop. One of my coworkers presented the idea that it is okay to use the
cane, so long as the punishment is appropriate (ie. if the kid did something
really bad, they get hit really hard- if they did something for the first time
that wasn’t so bad, then just hit them lightly). I had incredibly mixed
feelings about this and didn’t know how to react. Was I to correct him in front
of everybody? Should I just accept that it is part of their culture? Can I
really stand up here and present on something that I don’t support? I had so
many questions going through my mind and I had no idea how to react. It
bothered me that my boss didn’t speak out and correct my coworker as he told a
room of twenty people that it was okay to use a cane- when in fact it is
against everything we believe in. It was frustrating to say the least.
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| Defining Sexual Harassment |
I later discussed this issue with
the Chief (CHRAJ) in private and asked him if he thought it was okay. He said
no for two reasons: 1. It is against his job to believe it is okay and 2. He
personally doesn’t believe it is right. He then explained that most people do
it as a way of disciplining the child because they won’t listen or learn any
other way. Then he made an important point- what about the kids who weren’t
abused and still turned out okay? It is so true. There are several people,
myself included, who were not abused as a child and still turned out okay. We
were disciplined in different ways, ways that didn’t leave scars. I asked
people on Facebook to give me suggestions or ideas on how to discipline kids. I
found one to be particularly interesting- one of my friends, who is also
working in Ghana, suggested to reward those doing well instead of punishing the
ones who are doing poorly. This way, children will have incentives to behave
well. What a great idea! Why not focus on the positives instead of the
negatives? I thought it was a wonderful idea and something that I will suggest
to the coordinators during my visits to the girls clubs.
I want to hear your thoughts,
either by commenting below or messaging/e-mailing me! Do you think child
abuse can be considered part of a “culture?” Think about it, can a human right
really be abused because it is part of a culture? Is that a valid excuse? Does
that make it okay? What are your thoughts…?
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| Leading a stretching exercise! |
Illiteracy
The second workshop for the
community members proved to be incredibly difficult from the beginning. At the
beginning of each workshop, the participants are expected to sign in and
register. Many of the community members came to register and couldn’t. Why?
They couldn’t write their name. Imagine that. Imagine that you didn’t even know
how to write your own name! I found this to be shocking and incredibly sad. Majority
of the participants couldn’t write their name and a lot of them cannot read. If
there is one thing you should be able to write, it should be your name. This
really made me think about how important education is and how incredibly
important this workshop is considering one of the rights of a child is to have
a name.
It really makes everything I am
doing here feel so much more important. I am working with the Girls Clubs and
promoting education. My focus is on reading and ensuring that girls can read
and write. Looking at the workshop and seeing so many illiterate participants,
I can really see the importance of educating a child so that they can be
educated for life.
We
definitely needed to adapt to the participant’s abilities for the workshop.
Most of our presentation was on a PowerPoint so it would be easy to follow
along. We also provided the participants with notepads and pens so they could
take notes. However, for this particular group, they couldn’t read or write (especially
in English) so we really had to work. With that being said, we needed to
translate everything that we presented into the local language, Gonja, so that
they could understand. Learning about the realities that exist in terms of
illiteracy among older generations was something that I haven’t spent a lot of
time with- it was challenging but incredibly educational. I have already learnt
so much during my internship and I am only half way done! This experience has
been incredible and has encouraged me to get out of my comfort zone and learn
about the challenges that people in developing countries face everyday.
Imagine yourself to be illiterate. What challenges would you face on a
daily basis? What does a name mean to you? How important is it for your to be
able to write your name?
More blogs to come soon!
Lots of Love,
Bianca
Links:
Wow, I'm so honoured that you quoted me! One thing to add to my initial comments is that they are backed up by several decades of research. Behavioural psychologists discovered early in the 20th century that people and animals are more readily conditioned by positive reinforcement than by punishment.
ReplyDeleteMy own feeling is that children have a right not to be hit, whatever effect the hitting may be having on them for good or ill. Also, research shows that beating a child makes them behave better, but only in the way that a shot of gin makes an alcoholic feel better -- in the short term. Children who are punished physically are also more likely to be violent, especially if they don't understand why they are being punished.
Illiteracy is somewhat related to physical punishment in schools. The majority of school dropouts in Ghana leave because they can't afford school fees, or their families are so poor the kids need to work. But significant numbers of students also leave because they don't like being hit.
Most Ghanaians believe that beating kids is necessary for their well-being. Whenever I'm inclined to feel superior, I remember my own dear prime minister and his plan to build massive new prisons even though crime is on the decline and incarceration isn't the best way to deal with most crimes anyway...
As for how to address this, I really don't know. I would love to get a group of Ghanaian adults who have had bad experiences of being beaten as children, and ask them to come up with some ideas about how to teach and raise children without using violence.
Lisa
Thank you so much for sharing!!!!! It's always nice to have some back up, both by another person and by research! Thank you!!
ReplyDeleteI'm going to play devils advocate here, because...well just because. I believe you and I and our older sister were all disciplined using physical abuse. Not to say that our parents should be jailed or punished and not to say that they didn't have any other forms of either punishing us for bad behavior or rewarding us for good behavior. But I certainly remember COUNTLESS times of being struck by a spoon, broom, hand, shoe, belt etc. And I think I, as well as my two wonderful sisters turned out just fine. Do I think our right from child abuse was taken? NO. I think there is a fine line between abuse and authority. And as much as you are trying to remove child abuse from their culture based on your views developed from your education and culture, I think it's important you remember that not all these organizations are 100% correct either.I think if you want cooperation from these people you need to respect there way of doing things as they much as they are giving you respect by allowing you into there conversations at all.
ReplyDeleteJust thought I would throw my opinion out there and if you so chose to delete it, no hard feelings, after all I'm not in the development field.