'Somebody think of the children'
IT’S an old line, but one that has been spoken in many families over the years.
‘Mum, you know you’ve got Mother’s Day? And dad has Father’s Day? Well, why isn’t there a Children’s Day?’
‘Ha! Every day is Children’s Day!’
But it’s not for every child. Which is one reason why, over the years, World Children’s Day has been celebrated on 20 November, bringing attention to the Declaration of the Rights of the Child by the UN in 1959, and increasingly, the focus on Rights Respecting Schools.
Yesterday we received an email from an eight-year-old pupil at La Houguette, one of the schools in the vanguard of the Rights Respecting movement in the island.
‘On this day, everyone should think about children’s rights and children should be listened to so that they can share their ideas for a better world,’ they wrote.
It’s a responsibility that we all share – parents, educators, grandparents, and wider society, both in schools, at clubs, out and about and at home.
Arguably some children today have better opportunities than have ever been available to previous generations. Many of those in Guernsey would fall into that category. But not everybody does.
And giving children that best start in life to enable them to flourish as adults, and particularly to be a useful and contributing member of our community in Guernsey, is all important.