SESSION 8: EXERCISES FOR DISCUSSION AND FINAL TASK
2. EXERCISES FOR DISCUSSION:
2.1 CHILDREN: How can we protect children in these different situations:
- child sacrifices
- child labour
- bullying
- domestic violence
- child soldiers
- cyber-bullying
- the dark
- the dentist
- other schoolchildren
- parents
- horror movies
- spiders
- old age
- stangers
2.3 DISCUSSION: Here are some questions you can try asking yourself before you come to our discussion on Wednesday:
a) What springs to mind when you hear the word ‘sacrifice’?
b) What do you think of what you read?c) Why does this still happen today?
d) What should Uganda’s government be doing about this?
e) What should the rest of the world do to stop these killings?
f) Have you heard of anything like this in another part of the world?
g) What do you think the people who order a child sacrifice think about the life of these children?
h) Are those who order sacrifices murderers?
i) What kind of damage does this do to Uganda’s reputation?
j) Why do rich people think child sacrifices will bring them good health and wealth?
k) Are the witch doctors murderers?
l) What three adjectives describe this story?
m) Why and how do you think this ritual started?
n) What should Ugandan parents do to protect their children against being kidnapped?
o) Do you think there will always be witch doctors in Uganda?
p) What could you do to help highlight and end these ritualistic killings?
q) In what other ways are children in danger in the world?
PREPARING A DISCUSSION IS FUNDAMENTAL:
THIS MUST BE DONE IN TWO DIRECTIONS:
FIRST, YOU NEED TO LEARN NEW VOCABULARY AND EXPRESSIONS THAT YOU WILL HAVE TO USE FOR THE DISCUSSION.
SECONDLY, YOU HAVE TO PREPARE THE TOPIC BY LOOKING UP INFORMATION IN THE INTERNET, BOOKS, ENCYCLOPAEDIAS.
HIS WAY YOU WILL FEEL MUCH MORE CONFIDENT AND AT THE SAME TIME YOU WILL HAVE MUCH MORE TO TALK ABOUT.
FINAL TASK:
HERE IS ONE FINAL TASK THAT YOU MAY DO IN ORDER TO COVER THE FOUR SKILLS YOU SHOULD FOCUS ON WHEN LEARNING A LANGUAGE: LISTENING, READING, SPEAKING AND WRITING.
Write a composition and leave it in the blog as a comment to Session 8, I will edit it in the blog so that everybody can learn from other people´s opinions:
- Children: what can we do to protect them around the world?
In today’s world, it is completely incomprehensible how children’s rights are not respected. The report in BBC news about children’s sacrifices in Uganda looks unrealistic. Sometimes the world looks crazy without any reason. It is difficult to understand how people believe in strange thoughts, which are able to kill innocent children in order to get money and health. But what can we do to avoid these horrible behaviours?
ReplyDeleteIn many countries, outrageous customs are deeply integrated in a lot of countries, especially in African countries such as Uganda. In these countries, children do not have any right, and even as we can watch in the report of the BBC, lots of children are killed in order to collect their blood, heart, libber, etc. These people believe that they get health and wealth if they pay money to kill children. An important point there is that even governments believe in spiritual rituals, so that these people, who practice this rituals, are very difficult to be punished. Thanks to the report we can see how the reporter interviews witch doctors, and in it, they say the huge number of people they kill each certain period of time. One of the interviewer even killed his own children. So the only way to keep these children save is keeping their families close to them.
There are also other sorts of children who are maltreated, for example child labour, bullying, child soldier and many others. Child labour is very common in poor countries where families’ days are really hard and they need children’s help to survive. That’s why developed countries should help these countries in order to allow children grow up like children in westernized countries. Bullying is another way to cause insecurity in children’s life. It is very normal in developing countries too, in which powerful men use children services threatening them in order to get their desires. I these cases these behaviours can only be avoided with the help of police who should know how catch these sorts of people. In many countries, which have been in war for a long time, it is very normal to kidnap children to fight in their trivial battles. Therefore, all of them die as children because at the moment they are forced to fight they loose their childhood to become men with bodies of children. United Nation should be watchful about this respect. It is known that developed countries have problems with children as well, especially those referred to the Internet where lots of children are cyber-bullied, because parents are not conscientious about how dangerous the Internet can result without any control. There have been lots of cases in which children have been threatened to spread images of them on the web-especially images related to sex- if they do not do what cyber-criminals desire. In short, parents should control the website their children visit and they should control the sort of social networks they are registered.
To sum up, children’s life is really complicated, especially in poor countries in which their culture is based in strange rituals, where children are murdered like if it was a normal thing and besides, children’s life are something without any importance. In my opinion, children are the future and depending on the way they live, they will have good behaviours or on the contrary negative ones in the future.
Miguel Ruano
Nowadays, when we hear in the media about sexual abuse and exploitation, child labour, babies’ genital mutilation, girls under-18s marriage etc… it seems that these atrocities only happen in underdeveloped countries using religion to justify the tradition, but in fact, there are others horrible acts (children’s disappearance or girls sold for prostitution) that are often practiced by someone known to the child, including parents, other family members, caretakers, teachers, and other children from school. Only a small proportion of these cases are reported and investigated, and few perpetrators are held responsible.
ReplyDeleteIt is clear that children under 18 years old often need special care and protection (depending on their personality) that adults do not, so it is the vital importance to make sure that the world recognize that children have human rights too and that they have: the right to survival, to protection from harmful influences, and to participate fully in family, cultural and social life. Needless to say, the children’s protection by setting standards in education, health care and social services.
As a matter of fact, a current topic today is technology improvement that without doubt has improved people’s lifestyle but it has negative effects on children too. It appears that youngsters are addicted to all sort of social networks as they normally spend most of their time in front of the computer, many of them do not control the hours on line so their photos, messages, email system and their whole daily life are known and readable by somebody else. Thus, the minors’ surveillance is necessary by parents in the sense of having knowledge with whom his children go, they speak and where they go with, so it is very important the interaction with children, trying to share their leisure time with things they really enjoy, from video games to simply hearing their music, (though you think is a disagreeable noise) so they may be receptive with the given advices and possible dangers in life instead of taking them as an argument.
Considering all previously said, and once again, Governments are ultimately responsible for the protection of children but, cannot do the job alone, all society, all individuals share the responsibility of preventing violence against them, in order to ensure the child’s protection from all kind of violence which can be detrimental later in their future life.
When you know stories so cruel like these, many sensations come to your mind and, of course, all of them very bad, but leaving apart these feelings and analysing it in an objective way we can find two main aspects.
ReplyDeleteFrom a cultural and social point of view, our world is suffering a clash of civilizations between western countries usually richer, more developed and with a steady democratic political systems, and poor or even economically emergent countries where ancient traditions and strong religious believes persist. One example of this we can find it when we listen to one of the minister of Uganda talking about his strongly belief in spirits, something difficult to find in Europe and much less if they are well educated people as politicians are supposed to be.
Other point of view would be the human being behaviour and how our specie, more intelligent in theory than the rest, is able to make suffer other people in order to get wealth or just even trying to demonstrate that someone is the most powerful. It is not a necessity as it happens when wild animals kills others to feed themselves but a dark and awful pleasure many people feel doing this kind of savage things.
Despite the fact that you try not to think much about these things, you cannot help asking yourself what kind of world this is and why we do not fight in a much strongly way against violence and killing as we do against bullfighting or economical crisis. That is a true cause that makes me feel ‘indignado’.
Children: what can we do to protect them around the world?
ReplyDeleteBy Bárbara Poison
First of all, we have the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and some years later the Declaration of the Rights of the Child (1959). This declaration was drafted by the UN and adopted by all the members (178 nations). Uganda is a member of the UN, so Uganda´s government must prevent any violence against children (psychological or physical). Killing children is, under any circumstances, the cruellest of the scenarios. It is impossible to understand in any culture and impossible to justify.
This is the first stadium of protection: live, but even we are not achieving protect children in other basic scenarios, the right of feeding, and the right of living in a house or the right of an education. These are also basic children rights and none of them are being carried out.
The Children rights are not the same everywhere. They are not equal. My children were born with 99% more wealthy possibilities and resources than a child born in Uganda. That means that a child life depends on where he/she is born. Then, we sum up not only the luck you have in your birth place, you have to fight against the lack of food, the lack of sense, the desperation, the evilness and greed. It is not just a question of luck is a question of survival because you are wretched since you are born. Who is concerned? Who has to be concerned?
Everybody should be concerned but as society. As individuals we don´t find the strength, the faith or simply we feel helpless. The solutions are far to be found and the willingness to solve it is marred by the priorities of the welfare state, the huge social gaps, and the dominance of market rules.
However, there are NGO like UNICEF or Save the Children that are working for children's rights, their survival, development and protection. But their influence is so limited in comparison to the millions suffering from atrocities and abuse.
I think that their efforts would increase if they were able to act as a net, not just globally. The social networks have proved a great capacity of rebellion and mass movements. Look at facebook or twitter. A “call” or a “twit” can be follow and answer by millions and the chain can spread to the infinite. These social movements could put the emphasis in the solutions that governments and the ruling classes don´t want to do or are not able to achieve.