Each 20 November is celebrated as United Nations (UN) World Children’s Day.
The Thammasat University Library owns many books about different aspects of children and childhood.
As the UN website notes,
2022 Theme: Inclusion, For Every Child
What will you do?
World Children’s Day is UNICEF’s annual day of action for children, by children.
From climate change, education and mental health, to ending racism and discrimination, children and young people are raising their voices on the issues that matter to their generation and calling for adults to create a better future.This World Children’s Day, it’s more important than ever that the world listens to their ideas and demands.
On 20 November, kids will stand up for a more equal, inclusive world.
Among global issues for children are the following:
State of the World’s Children
Every child has the right to health, education and protection, and every society has a stake in expanding children’s opportunities in life. Yet, around the world, millions of children are denied a fair chance for no reason other than the country, gender or circumstances into which they are born.
Poverty affects children disproportionately. Around the world, one out of six children lives in extreme poverty, living on less than US$1.90 a day. Their families struggle to afford the basic health care and nutrition needed to provide them a strong start. These deprivations leave a lasting imprint; in 2019, 149 million children under the age of five were stunted.
Despite great progress in school enrolment in many parts of the world, more than 175 million children are not enrolled in pre-primary education, missing a critical investment opportunity and suffering deep inequalities from the start. 6 out of 10 leave primary school without achieving minimum proficiency levels in reading and mathematics, according to a 2017 UNESCO report. This challenge is compounded by the increasingly protracted nature of armed conflict.
Children and armed conflict
More than twenty years ago, the world united to condemn and mobilize against the use of children in armed conflict. Since then, thousands of children have been released as a result of Action Plans mandated by the UN Security Council and other actions aimed at ending and preventing recruitment and use of children by armed forces and groups. However, serious challenges for the protection of children affected by armed conflict remain.
In 2019, 1.6 billion children (69%) were living in a conflict-affected country, and approximately 426 million children (over one in six) were living in a conflict zone. Millions of children, many of whom are unaccompanied or separated from their families are being displaced by armed conflict. These children are at a high risk of grave violations in and around camps, and other areas of refuge. Action is urgently required to alleviate the plight of children displaced by armed conflict and the Secretary-General encourages Member States to respect the rights of displaced and refugee children and to provide them with necessary support services…
Here are some thoughts about children and childhood by authors, many of whom are represented in the TU Library collection:
Some of my youthful readers are developing wonderful imaginations. This pleases me. Imagination has brought mankind through the Dark Ages to its present state of civilization. Imagination led Columbus to discover America. Imagination led Franklin to discover electricity. Imagination has given us the steam engine, the telephone, the talking-machine, and the automobile, for these things had to be dreamed of before they became realities. So I believe that dreams — day dreams, you know, with your eyes wide open and your brain machinery whizzing — are likely to lead to the betterment of the world. The imaginative child will become the imaginative man or woman most apt to create, to invent, and therefore to foster civilization. A prominent educator tells me that fairy tales are of untold value in developing imagination in the young. I believe it.
- Frank Baum, Introduction to The Lost Princess of Oz (1917)
If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.
- Carl Jung, The Integration of the Personality (1939)
Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.
- Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance (1893)
Childhood is measured out by sounds and smells
And sights, before the dark of reason grows.
- John Betjeman, Summoned By Bells (1960).
Every stage of education begins with childhood. That is why the most educated person on earth so much resembles a child.
- Novalis, “Miscellaneous Observations” in Philosophical Writings
Children have neither past nor future; and that which seldom happens to us, they rejoice in the present.
- Jean de La Bruyère, Characters, XI.
Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.
- George Bernard Shaw
Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.
- Margaret Mead
Don’t handicap your children by making their lives easy.
- Robert A. Heinlein
Schizoid behavior is a pretty common thing in children. It’s accepted, because all we adults have this unspoken agreement that children are lunatics.
- Stephen King
Do not indoctrinate your children. Teach them how to think for themselves, how to evaluate evidence, and how to disagree with you.
- Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
When you want to teach children to think, you begin by treating them seriously when they are little, giving them responsibilities, talking to them candidly, providing privacy and solitude for them, and making them readers and thinkers of significant thoughts from the beginning. That’s if you want to teach them to think.
- Bertrand Russell
Grown-up people do not know that a child can give exceedingly good advice even in the most difficult case.
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot
Look at children. Of course they may quarrel, but generally speaking they do not harbor ill feelings as much or as long as adults do. Most adults have the advantage of education over children, but what is the use of an education if they show a big smile while hiding negative feelings deep inside? Children dont usually act in such a manner. If they feel angry with someone, they express it, and then it is finished. They can still play with that person the following day.
- Dalai Lama XIV
Indeed, the only truly serious questions are ones that even a child can formulate. Only the most naive of questions are truly serious. They are the questions with no answers. A question with no answer is a barrier that cannot be breached. In other words, it is questions with no answers that set the limit of human possibilities, describe the boundaries of human existence.
- Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)