Post: GLOBAL: Spotlight on violence against children

Just noticing the high level interest in violence against children (email below on UN Special Representative on Violence against Children)

Many thoughts go through my mind relating to just one aspect of violence - children being beaten - including:

English vocabulary on a school blackboard in Nigeria - the first sentence "My father is beating me."
A discussion I had with some teachers about the use of beating in school - with me asking if being beaten (or the fear of being beaten) had ever really helped any of them to learn something more effectively. I was trying to explore the idea that beating might be limited to bad behaviour (which I felt the children had more control over) rather than failure to understand and learn (which I felt they had little control over). NB It was taken as given by the teachers that beating pupils was correct and I was certainly not in a position to effectively challenge that idea.
Some children's detailed drawings of whips etc.

I also think of the local initiatives being done through Fantsuam Foundation - children's parliament etc and wonder how the UN initiative and local ones should relate to each other.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: IRIN <no-reply@irinnews.org> Date: 3 September 2010 18:34

GLOBAL: Spotlight on violence against children

DAKAR, 3 September 2010 (IRIN) - After her first year in the job, the UN Special Representative on Violence against Children, Marta Santos Pais, told IRIN her major achievement has been to bring violence against children out into the open.

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Http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=90390

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GLOBAL: Spotlight on violence against children September 5, 2010