expendable children – Winnipeg Free Press

Opinion

Written by Neil Postman in 1982 Loss of childhood, he lamented that technology does not distinguish between children and adults at the cost of inviting children into the adult world before they are equipped to deal with it. He spoke of childhood as a social construct, stressing the importance of a protected childhood to produce healthy adults.

Recent US Senate hearings on US “tech giants” that social media platforms pose a threat to children were a grim reminder that he was right. Recent events show that there is a real threat not only to the idea of ​​childhood, but also to the disappearance of children's real lives and their hopes of becoming well-adjusted adults.

One of the greatest violations of our humanity, hidden in all the war rhetoric of today, is the fact that we recognize childhood as a special and unique period of life and human development. I get lost in the constant conflict about who is to blame, what actions can be justified, who is justified—all propositions that we must decide whose side we are on—and whose side I am on. By this I mean children and childhoods everywhere, not just children directly affected by war. A cause for mass, collective, and adult public shame.

My heart cries for the children of the world.

My heart weeps for the children who survived the Hamas attack in Israel on October 7th, who will be haunted for the rest of their lives by images of their siblings and parents being killed, brutalized, and held hostage, some of whom become hostages themselves. a child under one year old. No child should have to witness this kind of abuse, let alone be haunted by a lifetime of warnings. This includes all other children living in Israel.

My heart goes out to the nearly one million children under the age of 18 living in Gaza. Some have lived through four wars; many saw more than 10,000 other children killed or missing under the rubble, another 18,000 injured, and 24,000 children who lost one or both parents. Their future looks bleak.

My heart goes out to the children of Ukraine, where more than 1,700 children were killed and another 1,700 were injured; thousands fled the country without their fathers, at least 20,000 children were illegally deported to Russian-controlled territories, and Russia reported that they had relocated more than 700,000 children. I'm glad to hear that Canada is trying to help with their repatriation, but it's hard to imagine their trauma.

These numbers, of course, do not count another 13 million refugee children, nearly seven million children in camps, and more than 43 million forcibly displaced children in the world today. Children as individuals seem to be of no consequence; we can actually assume that they are nothing more than numbers. Whatever we call it, we can say that wars start from children and childhood.

“War is stupid, I want it to end,” said a young girl from Gaza in a plea that echoed across the Western world. It would be hard to disagree with that, nor does it mean that adults should come together to offer children a chance at a childhood, because the adults are the ones waging the war. Adults who cannot claim to be ignorant of the historical consequences of war for the future security and well-being of mankind.

War is stupidity – it is immoral, careless and careless – and absurd because it cannot be called illegal.

We can also remind you that explanations given as reasons for the situation do not serve to justify acts of war, and that UN resolutions and declarations on the freedom of children from fear and the right to education have little effect in wars.

What is happening to our children, not just those in war zones?

It's hard to imagine Israeli children and their parents feeling any safer knowing the brutality, randomness and unpredictability of past attacks. Now they are conditioned to consider all Palestinian children as potential threats.

An estimated 50 percent of children in Gaza suffer from PTSD – many of whom have lost a sibling, one or both, and many other relatives and friends. And since the beginning of November, no children go to school because most of the schools, including those run by the UN, have been destroyed. A similar situation is happening in Ukraine, where it is too dangerous to go to school or schools no longer exist because entire cities have been destroyed. And millions of children in refugee camps have spent their entire lives without the benefits of schooling.

The grief felt by the direct victims of the attack extends to many other children as well. Canadian teachers know that our children are traumatized by what they see and hear, sometimes from classmates or refugees, as they see pictures of children in war zones and see the devastation caused by constant attacks. camps.

Children mean that war requires them to abandon all the lessons they learned in school about how to resolve disputes and conflicts – lessons like violent punishment is never right, it just leads to a never-ending cycle of escalating violence. As they grow older, they learn that they may be drafted into wars started by leaders who pose no threat to them.

It is known from history that the effects of war last a lifetime and are transmitted to the next generation. Many children end up with disabilities and physical injuries that affect them for the rest of their lives. Psychologically, children inherit fear, helplessness, and hopelessness, which often turn into rejection, then hatred, resentment, and revenge. War helps create, almost ensure, future generations of haters.

And I haven't mentioned the wars forgotten in the West: Congo, to name a few, where millions of children were raped, murdered, exiled, fended for themselves; Somalia and Sudan, as well as millions, including many who starved to death. And the list is endless in other parts of the world.

Is it any wonder that most wars result in political leaders with fragile egos who act immediately without much thought beyond any threat, perceived or real? Their responses always seem to be immediate and violent retaliation, even when they know full well that violence only creates another cycle of even worse violence. We are currently witnessing a terrible tension in the Middle East. Often these leaders remain socially, politically and economically harmless.

Questions remain: Do we care enough, and when do we know when instant gratification or punishment will make things worse? We living in democracies really need to find ways to hold our leaders accountable for the damage they have done to the world, especially children.

“If every child really mattered,” we adults would curb our desire to conquer and seek alternatives to war to resolve our differences. I can barely contain my anger, my rage!

John R. Wiens is Dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba.