Saturday, October 1, 2011

Consequences of Stress on Children’s Development

Racism

Racism has been here forever, can we ever give an exact date when it has started. There is an issue of racism including color, religion, sex, abnormality. We can never really know when it hits us but it does in every shape and form.

I can tell you a story of how color affect a country, In the the country of my parents Haiti. There is heavy racism between light skin and dark skin. When I was younger I didn't understand it because my mother said likely light skin people were rich and dark ones were considered poor. It did not matter if you were educated, in some parts of Haiti if you are dark skin, some parents would forbid their daughters or sons from marrying them because they would feel that child would grow up and be ridiculed.

As I am older, I have seen the effects because my mother is using bleaching cream. Also my aunt is a different tone of black and as it shows that the everlasting effects of thinking being dark skinned is considered ugly and light skin is pretty.



Africa

Africa and their issues on poverty and education is something that interest me very much.
On the Unicef site http://www.unicef.org/mdg/poverty.html there is a pleather of information regarding poverty and education.

"More than 30 per cent of children in developing countries – about 600 million – live on less than US $1 a day.
Every 3.6 seconds one person dies of starvation. Usually it is a child under the age of 5.

Poverty hits children hardest. While a severe lack of goods and services hurts every human, it is most threatening to children’s rights: survival, health and nutrition, education, participation, and protection from harm and exploitation. It creates an environment that is damaging to children’s development in every way – mental, physical, emotional and spiritual. " (unicef 2011)

There are trying to fix this by

-Building national capacities for primary health care.

"Some 13 per cent of children ages 7 to 18 years in developing countries have never attended school. This rate is 32 per cent among girls in sub-Saharan Africa (27 per cent of boys) and 33 per cent of rural children in the Middle East and North Africa.
-To that end, UNICEF works in 158 countries, calling on development agencies, governments, donors and communities to step up efforts on behalf of education for all children, and then coordinating those efforts." (Unicef 2011)

1 comment:

  1. Hi Cynthia,

    you are right that the issue of racism including color, religion, sex, abnormality...etc... it is everywhere in the world, maybe long time ago since human exist...

    When we realize this potential, it is our responsibility as an educator/teacher or parent to teach the right way of thinking about that issues above to our children.

    Great posting, awakening!

    Evita Kartikasari

    ReplyDelete