Where are human rights organisations, not uttering a word in sympathy of small children of ages 2 to 5 years who are daily lifting and carrying heavy school bags of weight and volume, double than that of their own weights.
Daily in the early morning hundred thousands small children, with their innocent gloomy faces, (due to lifting unbearable burdens) are seen going to their schools. What kind of education is it? Are they going to acquire knowledge to become a learned people and scholars in future or to become beasts for lifting burdens? Is there anyone to feel the plight of innocent kids?
Some parents, who realised the pain of their beloved children, raised this matter at their level, with school management but the management is not willing to change it school timetables and daily schedules of teaching, thus not relaxing small children's hardships. Parents cannot fight more forcefully with the management, as they fear that this will spoil the career of their child or the child will be expelled from the school.
Human rights organisations should critically examine, how much a small child suffers and bears hardships. Not only on account of lifting heavy school bag, but on account of daily teaching/learning times and for hours he remains occupied. A child is treated like an animal for bearing burdens beyond his strength.
It is worth considering, to observe and study what a small child is doing in any single day - in his daily routine from rising early in the morning (in dark in the winter) going to school then to Dini Madrassah then to private tuition (to make good the deficiency of school teaching (which is always below the required standard) then completing homework assigned to him by class teachers - how much burden a small child bears is just painful to think.
It is surprising to note that many homework assignments given to tiny tods are justifiably much higher than the level of children learning and understanding capacity.
Let some of the members of Human Rights Organisations conduct the survey in detail and observe the situation with their own eyes, whatever I have narrated here. Then I hope, they will realise to redress the situation, for helping the over-burdened small children. Child labour, in any form is a cruelty to child and must be stopped immediately.
Recently, perhaps in the month of November 2007, some articles appeared in this paper about 'minimum age limit for sending children to schools.' Details about age limit of small children starting school going in Europe, United States, Japan and other countries were given. It is evident that mostly the age limit for starting schooling of small children is 5 years and above, even upto 8 years.
Whereas in Pakistan, management of our private schools, insists to get enrolled the child of 2 and 3 years for schooling. This is severely a cruel treatment with a small child of a such age.
A child who has still not learned to talk in his own mother tongue and is still quite unable to express his follies and pains in words. He is so helpless and miserable that he cannot protest against cruelty of school managements and cruelty of his own parents who forcibly send him to school with heavy burden of school bag tied to his shoulders. He can protest only in the language of tears and crying. How miserable is a poor tiny tod!
Organisations looking after the human rights issues must take serious notice of plights of tiny tods and must suggest some relaxed and justifiable solution of problems of small children.
One suggestion in this regard is this that schools should now, introduce locker and key system in schools. Every student be provided and allocated with one locker and key. Then the students will not be required to bring their heavy bags daily from home and carrying them back.
This new system will help not only the small children from lifting heavy burden of school bags but will also benefit all students, as well. Here it is worthwhile to draw the attention of school managements towards the inappropriate way of assigning homework to small children.
It is observed that schools are assigning the tiny tods to make big charts, maps, drawings and make models of house, relics and monuments like big things which is quite beyond the capacity of a small child, so ultimately the parents would be required to bear this punishment of completing the assignment.
In fact these are extra curricular activities and have no impact on prescribed course. Rather 'assignments' must be related to course for preparing the child to be able to pass the immediate school tests, periodical and final examinations with good numbers. In view of the above discussion, organisations looking after human rights issues must take serious notice of the plight of children and must suggest some justifiable solution.