[\u2026] What becomes of children in this marginalised world? How do they experience living in poverty? In a recent book, Peter Townsend, a leading British expert on poverty, accused the world of having \u2018declared war on children\u2019. The expression is provocative. Does this accusation also apply to France and Belgium today? While clearly, we have not openly declared war on children, we will see that some of them still ask us why we resent them.<\/p>\n
Child labour<\/strong><\/p>\n First, in a world that denies work to the most disadvantaged adults, children are compelled to work, to contribute to their family\u2019s survival. Can you believe it, child labour in the richest countries in the world? Henriette, the eldest of six children, gets up at five in the morning. \u2018I get up at the same time as my mum,\u2019 she says, \u2019because I must be awake to get all my brothers and sisters to school.\u2019 As for Roni, he collects scrap copper from rubbish dumps, in all weathers, to help his unemployed father. Joel wanders round the building sites, always on the lookout for a forgotten tool or some piece of equipment that his father might put to good use.<\/p>\n Another child makes deliveries for a shopkeeper in the evening, after school. He comes home late, exhausted from pushing a bicycle that’s too big and heavy for him. In the evenings, his friends push leaflets through letterboxes. Lucien and his father go out at 3 o\u2019clock in the morning, miles from home, to pick daffodils during the season, which they later sell by the roadside.<\/p>\n On a housing estate near Paris, children and their mothers undertake subcontracting work at home, colouring little plastic toys with toxic paint. \u2018Doing that for more than an hour gives you a terrible headache\u2019, one of them, aged twelve, confides in us. \u2018Anyway, if we\u2019re to eat, I have to do this, it\u2019s only normal. Otherwise I\u2019m not paying my way, am I?\u2019<\/p>\n All these children carry a burden of responsibility and anxiety that deprives them of their childhood and youth.<\/p>\n \u201cMy house isn\u2019t a home\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n They are also acutely aware of the dehumanising conditions they live in. Their experiences and dreams speak volumes. Let’s listen to them. \u2018There should be water on the site.\u2019 \u2018I’d like to live in a quiet, clean neighbourhood with big kitchens and no graffiti in the stairs.\u2019 \u2018It would be great if we lived in a place where mum could sing. She loves singing, you know!\u2019 \u2018My great-grandmother lived in a shanty town, my grandmother in a caravan.\u2019 \u2018If you’ve got furniture at home you can\u2019t pay for, a man comes and takes it all away. All we have left at home are wooden boxes.\u2019 \u2018Most houses are a kind of grey. I’d like to live in a blue one.\u2019 \u2018My house isn’t a home, there’s no door on it.\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018I couldn\u2019t learn anything at school.\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n Worry, rejection and humiliation prevent children from learning at school. They are among those find themselves in a special education stream, those who barely reach or never go beyond technical vocational training. They are the children who get left behind, spending their school years on the margins of education. Like most of their parents, they don’t even get a real grasp of reading and writing.<\/p>\n The most serious obstacle though is that schools do not enable Fourth World children to make sense of who they are and what they are experiencing and therefore how to talk about this with others. What they are being taught in school reflects a very different reality. They are forced to feel ashamed: ashamed of their bodies, their clothes, their neighbourhood, ashamed of feeling that their parents are disliked, ashamed of the huge gulf that set them apart from the others.<\/p>\n \u2018When you can’t read, everyone laughs at you\u2026\u2019 \u2018At school, I couldn\u2019t learn, I had too much on my mind, thinking about our house, my mother, my brothers, what if we were homeless?\u2019 Valentin tells us: \u2018I’m the butt of everyone\u2019s jokes. The teacher can\u2019t do anything, he doesn\u2019t even see me!\u2019<\/p>\n Worst of all is the way their families are treated: \u2018You\u2019ll never get anywhere\u2026 in your family, you’re all good for nothing!\u2019 All that’s left for these children is to turn in on themselves, or become violent, all the while desperately wishing they could: \u2018\u2026 just get out of school, work, and give money to my Mum.\u2019<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [\u2026] What becomes of children in this marginalised world? How do they experience living in poverty? In a recent book, (…) Read more