More coun­tries (193) recog­nise the man­date of the Unit­ed Nations  Children’s Fund (UNICEF) than belong to the world body. So how does it come to pass that we’ve made chil­dren both a tool and a vic­tim in the per­pet­u­al con­tretemps of adult issues, from the picayune to the per­ceived life-changing?

Cre­at­ed in 1946, UNICEF’s man­date includes advo­cat­ing for the pro­tec­tion of chil­dren’s rights, help­ing meet their basic needs and expand­ing their oppor­tu­ni­ties to reach their full potential.
What’s not to cel­e­brate in that?
In Gaza, how­ev­er, UNICEF  has described the sit­u­a­tion for chil­dren as “cat­a­stroph­ic” and “uncon­scionable”. One would think any­one who’s served at the UN would be mortified.
Instead, hav­ing already said there should be “Hell to pay” in Gaza, for­mer U.N. ambas­sador Nik­ki Haley scrawled her name and “Fin­ish them” on a U.S.-supplied Israeli artillery shell.
Who, exact­ly, would “them’ be?
Maybe the civil­ians – includ­ing chil­dren —  in an alleged safe zone of Gaza who had the bad luck to be hun­kered down in squalor near the tar­get of an Israeli air strike? A Medecins Sans Fron­tieres emer­gency trau­ma cen­ter report­ed that: “Twen­ty-eight peo­ple were dead on arrival”. and “…180 addi­tion­al patients with severe burns, shrap­nel wounds, miss­ing body parts and oth­er trau­mat­ic injuries.”
Enough “hell to pay” Madam ex-ambas­sador?
Mean­while, back in the world where chil­dren live in hous­es with ameni­ties, not tent camps amid rub­ble, there is earnest debate about whether or not Smart phones harm children.
Real­ly?
It seems to me that’s only debat­able if you don’t care what kids do as long as it keeps them hap­py, or actu­al­ly believe that unfet­tered expo­sure to every per­ver­sion known and prefer­ably unknown,  cyber-bul­ly­ing, star­ing at screens up to nine hours a day (and that’s not an exag­ger­a­tion) or obses­sive­ly tex­ting is a bet­ter alter­na­tive to actu­al human con­tact and play­ing outdoors?
The unchal­lenge­able argu­ment in favour of allow­ing cell­phones in class (which some U.S. states ban), is kids being able to call for help if there’s a school shooting.
Again, the solu­tion to that lies with adults in the form of politi­cians,  who con­sis­tent­ly pre­fer “thoughts and prayers” over respon­si­bil­i­ty and hard decisions.

                      WHAT, WHEN AND HOW

What­ev­er is decid­ed, some­times even sug­gest­ed, is bound to pro­vide fringe  or minor­i­ty groups with some­thing to be offend­ed by. How­ev­er, that shouldn’t require  every­one to reflex­ive­ly bow before their lat­est self-impor­tant discovery.
Pro­tec­tion of one group’s rights and appre­ci­a­tion for sen­si­tiv­i­ties ought to be respect­ed by any civilised soci­ety, but by obvi­ous exten­sion that means not remov­ing other’s rights. That includes what to teach your chil­dren, as well as how and at what stage in their development.
Speak­ing of which, a UK out­fit unself­con­scious­ly titled “Lift­ing Lim­its” is part­ner­ing with a U.S.-based non-prof­it to cre­ate “a new evi­dence-based cur­ricu­lum” to give chil­dren aged 7 to 11 “an oppor­tu­ni­ty” to learn about “the role gen­der norms play in their lives…” and “…inter­nalise these new gen­der atti­tudes and norms by apply­ing them in their rela­tion­ships and lives.”
I know it sounds old-fash­ioned to the point of qual­i­fy­ing me as a Lud­dite, but how about teach­ing chil­dren civics instead? Then maybe, if  the world we adults are wan­ton­ly mess­ing up sur­vives long enough for them to be able to vote, our chil­dren won’t elect the kind of bone­heads their par­ents are man­ag­ing to do, which giv­en the advan­tages we had, is inexcusable.

                    LET’S TAKE AWAY THE FUN

Accord­ing to new research, 28% of ear­ly years par­ents slam nurs­ery rhymes as out­dat­ed. Appar­ent­ly words need to be altered (I thought that had already hap­pened) and tunes changed to hip-hop and oth­er gen­res of the day.
NEWSFLASH: Nurs­ery rhymes are one of the ways many par­ents soothe, amuse, teach and bond with their chil­dren. Their gen­tle  sim­plic­i­ty is what car­ries the rhymes’ joy from one gen­er­a­tion to the next.
Hip-hop and tech­no ver­sions don’t make the cut on that count.
Also, the math I was taught doesn’t make 28percent a win­ing major­i­ty, so maybe they should do what they want in the pri­va­cy of their own homes, and the rest of us can be left to raise our chil­dren as we see fit.
An unex­pect­ed excep­tion to that right is Scot­land. To mark “Inter­na­tion­al Pro­nouns Day”, a par­tial­ly tax­pay­er-fund­ed char­i­ty planned to present school chil­dren with forty terms that could be used for gen­der iden­ti­fi­ca­tion,  includ­ing “neo-pro­nouns” such as “per­self,” “xyr,” “vis” and “eir­self”.
Where that rel­e­gates gram­mar and spelling on the cur­ricu­lum wasn’t men­tioned, but none of the pro­nouns popped up in my spell check­er or Thesaurus.
The ancient Greek philoso­pher Dio­genes astute­ly observed:  “The foun­da­tion of every state is the edu­ca­tion if its youth.”
Con­sid­er­ing the foun­da­tions we are giv­ing our chil­dren, a more apt quote might be the one writ­ten above the gates of Hell in Dante’s “The Divine Com­e­dy” …”Aban­don hope all ye who enter here.”

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