Has Anything Changed

QUOTATION PROMPT
"There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children."
- Nelson Mandela


Britain's children haven't always had the good life that a majority of them have today. Throughout most of the 19th Century children as young as five worked to earn money for their families. Their working environment was harsh because of the work itself, and the behaviour of their employers; mistreatment and abuse were normal. There were outcries from several well-known authors, through their literary work. Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist and Charles Kingsley's The Water Babies, for example, both highlighted the plight of young children's working conditions.

It was towards the end of the 19th Century that things began to change. It was the introduction of the first Education Act in 1870 introducing School boards. These boards built or set up new schools. This was extended to Scotland in 1872. In 1880, a further law was passed stating that all children from the ages of five to ten had to attend school; this was raised to age twelve in 1899. These laws were the beginning of the school system that we know today1.

Changes in the ages of children attending school, of course, have taken time. I met a woman who, during World War II, began working as a secretary in our local comprehensive school. One of her main jobs was to make sure the whole school was empty when an Air Raid Warning was sounded. She was fourteen years old and had to be the last one out of the premises and into the air raid shelter. So even as recently as the nineteen forties, children were leaving school at just fourteen.

Now, we can look back on our history and think to ourselves that we have made great strides in the care and education of our children. Yes, there is still child poverty in this country, that is perhaps not being addressed as it should. According to the Joseph Roundtree Foundation, child poverty currently stands at 29%, so almost a third of our population’s children currently live under the poverty line2. We also have our share of an underlying problem with child trafficking. At least 732 children were trafficked from the UK in 20143. The UK is the third highest country to have children trafficked from it across the world4. It is signed up to the Palermo Protocol with the United Nations, with an aim to stop all people trafficking across the world.

It is a sad reflection on society today that a small percentage of our children are still exploited or live in terrible conditions. As Nelson Mandela points out it reveals the soul of a society in the way it treats its children. All of these problems, however, are at least being addressed, even if the success rate isn’t as high as most of us would like.

So, we should celebrate how we educate our children and the fact that we’ve stamped out child labour for good. The question is, have we stamped it out? It appears not. We have a nation of children, working underage and unpaid, sanctioned not only by government but also by society. Who are they? The Office for National Statistics stated that in 2013 there were about a quarter of a million young carers in this country. These are children ‘providing regular or continuing care and emotional support to a family member who is physically or mentally ill, disabled or misuses substances’ approx. 23’000 of these are under nine years old. For example, ‘Kerry is 6 years old. She looks after her mum who is very poorly. She is seen as a young carer by society. They live on benefits and some days Kerry can’t get to school, as her mum is too poorly to get out of bed. Kerry does the best she can but what more can she do? She is only six years old’5.

There are definite similarities in how we treat some of the children of today with those at the height of Child Labour years. Just as they did in the past, the government have turned their back on the families that are affected. Many of them are poor, just as in the past. Families on higher incomes have always been able to pay for their care, so have never needed to rely on their children to either bring in a wage or care for them. Even worse is that as these young carers of today aren’t paid for the work they do, it saves the government millions of pounds a year because they don't have to pay out for social care. All these children get is exhaustion as they try to balance school, home life and the complications of looking after a parent, who could be suffering from anything, including physical or mental health issues; they often have to look after their siblings as well.

As a society, we are in fact, not only exploiting these children but we put them on show. Whereas working children of the past were hidden away, today we parade them on National TV, giving them awards for being Young Carers, making them out to be heroes. They aren’t heroes, they are this generation’s child labourers, and this makes them no better off than the children of the 19th and early to mid-20th Centuries. It also makes us worse than the adults of that time because we celebrate it openly.

So what would Nelson Mandela say about a society that not only doesn’t support its most vulnerable adults, but that makes its youngest children look after those vulnerable adults? What would he do as he watched these children struggle to attend school, the very education that was fought for by so many people?

Word Count 949

Footnotes
1  http://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/livinglearnin...
2  http://www.jrf.org.uk/data/child-poverty-rate-over-time
3  https://www.nspcc.org.uk/preventing-abuse/child-abuse-and-neglect/child-traffick...
4  https://www.nspcc.org.uk/preventing-abuse/child-abuse-and-neglect/child-traffick...
5  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-22529237