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Wang
Ling (center), 10, is no longer afraid to speak in front
of class because “the trainer told me to imagine the
audience as carrots and cucumbers.”
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Beijing
Professor Jiao Jian talks to fifth-grade Qi Xiaoyun about
education rights at the training workshop.
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All
the students aged 9 to 11 enjoy expressing their own thoughts
and playing games.
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She clambers up a rock, reaches both hands into crannies in the
shabby cement wall and heaves herself up, being careful not to
catch her school bag on the protruding bricks. She straddles the
top and then gingerly jumps down onto the pebbled ground beside
the railway line.
She leans into the curve of the track, lifts her right hand to
shade her brow and trains her eyes on the light seeping through
branches of a tall tree at the corner. Then, like a hare, she
darts across the tracks.
About 60 more children will follow her – some giggling,
pushing and shoving, others accompanied by their teachers, all
on their way to Xinhua Elementary School in Tianzhu Tibetan Autonomous
County, Gansu Province.
Four times a day, for 30 years, this has been the way to and
from school for most of the children in Xinhua and no child has
ever been hit by a train. Yet.
Pei Suping is an 11-year-old fifth-grader that has captured these
scenes on film. Pointing to a photo of the tracks, the girl says,
“A tunnel should be built to protect us from the dangerous
track. Children have the right to be protected.”
She also snapped vendors’ stalls that blocked the school
entrance, saying they also “suggest children’s rights
are not fully protected.” Suping says, “Through the
pictures, I became more aware of my living environment and learned
to make suggestions to students and teachers.”
The term “children’s rights” was not familiar
to Suping a month ago. Nor did she know how to use a camera. “Afraid
I might break it, my parents always kept the camera to themselves.
If I hadn’t attended a workshop last month, I don’t
know when I might have been able to take a picture.”
Pei learned her new skills at a UNICEF-funded participatory training
workshop on children’s rights in Tianzhu last October. Forty
teachers and 32 students aged 11-13 came together from five schools
in the county for the three-day course on children’s rights
awareness and the skills needed to realize these rights. At the
end of the workshop, each school received one Kodak camera with
72 exposures for students to interpret children’s rights
from their own perspective.
The workshop is one small but significant part of the UNICEF
girls’ education programs that started in 2005 in 12 project
counties in five western provinces in China. Such programs focus
on gender-sensitive, child-centered effective learning in a safe
school environment, free of discrimination. The workshop was the
first time in 26 years of UNICEF co-operation in China’s
educational projects that students and teachers discussed children’s
rights together, according to UNICEF educational project official
Guo Xiaoping. “Children should advocate their own rights
and become the watchdogs that safeguard these rights,” she
said at the opening of the workshop.
Four experts came from Beijing to root the theoretical principles
in the children’s minds. Students played games, held group
discussions, and drew pictures and charts: totally new exercises
for village schoolchildren.
Liu Wenbo, a 10-year-old student of Chengguan Elementary School,
illustrated children’s rights using apples. Each apple represented
one right: the right to be protected, the right to participate,
the right to life, and the right to subsistence and development.
“I used to take a nap during classes at school,” he
says. “But this workshop keeps me busy and motivated. It
is much more fun.”
Ba Tingting, 10, initially thought the workshop was about improving
English skills, “because it was supported by the United Nations.”
But the student of Tianzhu Elementary School, affiliated with
the Tianzhu Normal Institute, found it “more interesting
than our English class.” During a group discussion about
the “four fundamental rights of children”, Tingting
argued the right to parental care wasn’t that important.
“We should learn to take care of ourselves, and later on
take care of our parents,” she said.
Meanwhile, her 11-year-old schoolmate Qi Xiaoyun insisted that
the right to privacy was much more important than food and clothes.
“Everyone has secrets, and we children are no exception.
I don’t mind eating simple food and wearing old clothes,
but I do need somewhere that only belongs to me,” said the
fifth-grader.
Zhu Yue of Chengguan Elementary School has gained her own understanding
of the right to protection. “We cannot always wait for others
to protect us. Instead, we should learn to protect ourselves,”
said the 11-year-old during the discussion.
“Through expressing their own thoughts, children can associate
the literal meaning of rights with their daily life. More importantly,
participation itself is one of the children’s rights,”
says Chen Ying, one of the trainers from the China National Children’s
Centre, an organization affiliated with the All-China Women’s
Federation.
Another trainer, Jiao Jian, a professor from China Women’s
University, agrees. “Participation increases one’s social
consciousness and responsibility. The values of democracy, including
respect for the rights and dignity of all people, for their diversity
and their right to participate are first learned during childhood
and adolescence,” she says. “Children know what is best
for them. When they are involved, they can make a difference –
for themselves and for their communities,” she says.
The mother of 10-year-old Wang Ling has noticed her daughter’s
changes since she attended the workshop. “When she came back,
my once-shy little girl was a lot more outspoken,” says Wang
Shuxian. “She asked me not to read her diary any more, because
she has the right to privacy. She told me not to favor her younger
brother because they are equals.”
The 33-year-old farmer stood outside their three-room brick bungalow
in Shimen Town of the northwestern province, watching Wang Ling
at play in the backyard. “I don’t really understand
what children’s rights are, but my daughter’s words
sound right. Anyway, it’s good to see her smiling face.”
However, not every adult welcomes advice from a ten-year-old.
“Some grown-ups had no patience for our suggestions and asked
us to go away,” said Ren Chengyu, 10, from Shuiquan Elementary
School, while presenting her findings at a follow-up session in
late November. “Even my father said to me, ‘you are
not my teacher. When you grow up, you can talk to me like that,
and only then!’”
Nevertheless, participation empowers children to contribute to
their own subsistence, protection and development, explains Guo
Xiaoping. Children’s civil and political rights include the
right to information, to expression, to decision-making and to
association.
“Although the students are still young, they can remember
one sentence or even one word from grown-ups for a lifetime,”
she says. “Teachers and parents must therefore create an
environment that encourages children’s participation, and
allows them to realize their own rights.”
Interacting with children is a learning process for adults –
it veers from the traditional relationship. For this reason, Guo
says, teachers were also involved in the training workshop. They
were given basic information about children’s rights, and
shown how they could help their students realize those rights.
They also recognized positive changes in their students’
behavior. “I noticed the students were more willing to raise
their hands to answer questions here than they in my school class,”
says teacher Wei Rong.
When discussing a plan to improve student learning, Wei found
her students often had better ideas than she did. “I wanted
to set up a special class at weekends and invite teachers from
other schools to give poor students extracurricular art classes.
But the students thought that setting up a reading room was good
enough, because all students, rich or poor, could read interesting
storybooks together, and share them with each other.”
The 33-year-old Wei, with ten years’ experience as a Chinese
language teacher in Tianzhu Elementary School, admits it is more
difficult to be a teacher than it used to be, because “students
have so much access to acquire information that they often raise
harsh questions and ideas that challenge your authority.”
Xinhua Elementary School’s Chen Yufeng brought pictures
taken by her four students, including those by Pei Suping, to
the follow-up session, where officials from local educational
bureaus and UNICEF were present. “We have appealed to the
county educational bureau many times about students’ safety,
but nothing has been done about it,” says Chen, a Chinese
language teacher with 13 years’ teaching experience. “This
time, with these pictures and the students’ own pleas, I
hope they’ll take notice.”
Children’s participation is a process, says Guo. “On
the one hand, children’s capacity to take part in family
and community matters develops through participatory practice
over time. On the other hand, the understanding and recognition
of the power and potential of child and youth participation by
grown-ups needs time to develop.”
For a place like Tianzhu Tibetan Autonomous County, with a population
of 217,400 made up of 16 ethnic groups, where annual incomes average
RMB 1,523 (US $190), a couple of workshops cannot not wipe out
traditional conceptions overnight. “Society here is still
male-dominated,” says Li Shengdi, deputy director of the
Tianzhu Educational Bureau. “I hope this training course
is like a seed planted in children’s hearts, which can blossom
in the future through the combined efforts of the government,
teachers, parents and students.”
Pei Suping is happy to hear the local educational bureau chief
has seen her photos and has promised the situation will soon be
changed. “I never believed my photos would have an effect.
But if they actually construct a tunnel for us, I will be truly
gratified.”
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