All equal?
By Adam Roberts, age 15
We’ve all grown up believing children are different. In a sense, they are: they’re younger than everyone else – but they’re still people, they’ve still got feelings, and, like adults, they still need some respect. Yet children aren’t taken seriously; until they’re 18, nothing they say or do really makes any difference.
I’ve spent the past 15 years of my life being a kid, so I know what it’s like to be one. When I walk home from school, I see signs outside the shops, over and over again: ’2 children at a time’; ‘no bags’; even little printed notices barring you completely ‘unless accompanied by an adult’. Imagine if you were a child: waiting forever for your turn, and even then, watching the adults push you away, stroll into the shop, neither knowing nor caring how long you’ve been there. And why? Because they’re adults.
And what of those other signs? ‘No bags’, for example? You’d be offended, and rightly so, if someone asked you to leave your suitcase or handbag at the door. Those adults who don’t have children many not realise how much a musical instrument or kit bag can cost: more than you’d even consider paying for the laptop you’d be forced to leave – unguarded – outside the shop.
I often go out to watch a film at the local cinema, as many of my friends do. The thing is, once you’re over 15, you pay the same amount as an adult. Even though you can’t work, at least without a special permit), you have to pay just as much as those who have a job. And you don’t qualify for the Minimum Wage. It gets worse when you realise that the price of cinema tickets drops again if you’re an adult and in full-time education like we are. Yes, they’re studying, but so are we, and we don’t get this discount. We earn little or nothing, but we pay more.
Don’t think we haven’t tried to stop it. There have been campaigns in the past to try and get local businesses to change their ways, but frankly, they don’t care. We’re children; we can’t even vote. We’re normal, reasonable people, and yet no one bats an eyelid whether we get any respect or not.
A few years ago the local council decided to change the catchment areas for our local schools, each of which offers different opportunities, and is therefore better suited to different people. The council launched a consultation, yet they sought the opinions of our parents, not us.
Perhaps, this year, things may start to change. CRAE recently released an extensive report on how well the Government is protecting children’s rights. This June, a delegation of 12 children from around England presented the report to a UN Committee in Geneva, Switzerland, who will then take the issues further.
So what does this report – written and researched by children – actually say about children, and whether they’re given the respect they deserve? In fact, quite a lot.
They raised the issue of whether children are treated fairly in the media: the sweeping generalisations and unsupported stereotypes they are faced with, which in turn lead to many other issues, especially with regard to how children are treated. They identified particular groups which respected children least, such as councillors and MPs, bus drivers, and shop assistants.
They found huge numbers of children were discriminated against racially, and that very few knew how to formally complain if adults seriously abused them. They found that only around half of children had been consulted following a divorce as to which parent they would live with, and only a minority of children had access to or knew of counselling and mental health services in their area.
Unsurprisingly, they raised the issue of whether older children – those above 16 – should be allowed to vote. Though this may not seem like an issue with much credit, there are many convincing arguments for it: for example, these children can leave home, marry, apply for a job, fight and even die for their country, and yet still not vote; they can also, crucially, pay taxes to a government they don’t even have a right to vote for. For children to be properly respected – especially by MPs, identified in the report as some of the worst offenders – they need to be taken seriously.
CRAE’s message to the UN is crucial for so many children, many of whom are subjected to abuses far more serious than children in my area will ever be faced with. The UN takes children seriously; the government, so far, hasn’t. Politicians never grow tired of that age-old sentiment: ‘children are our future’. What they fail to realise, or perhaps simply overlook, is that children are our present too. Perhaps, just for once, they’ll listen.
Posted on Friday, July 04, 2008
