Learning in Post-Conflict- Spring, 2001 Swai, Fulgence.
THE CHILD SOLDIER TO A SMALL POLITICIAN: The use of the powerful tool of resilience
Background
Children’s clothes printed in battlefield camouflage patterns, and toy automatic weapons all help young children in the U.S to play at being soldiers. But for many children around the globe, being a soldier is not a game which they enter and leave at will, but an all-encompassing part of their daily existence
(FCNL Washington 1997, p. 1)
With the above quote, let us read
the following from the article, “Stop the use of child soldiers.”
Because of their immaturity
and lack of experience, child soldiers suffer higher casualties than their
adult counterparts. Even after the conflict is over, they may be left
physically disabled or psychologically traumatized. Frequently denied an
education or the opportunity to learn civilian job skills, many find it
difficult to re-join peaceful society. Schooled only in war, former child
soldier are often drawn into crime or become easy prey for future recruitment. [WWW.document, Human Rights Watch,
http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/crp/]
The paper aims to find ways of creating a child soldier who
will not be drawn into crime nor become easy prey for future recruitment. We want
child soldiers who will become small politicians and develop a democratic
society where there will grow hope instead of despair. New societies that will
be have love in abundance instead of hatred and revenge. I believe it can be
done if the whole world can create the favourable conditions on both sides of
the warring camps. Let us start seeing who is the child soldier shortly before
we define this soldier in the middle part of the paper. The differences of the
child soldiers are highlighted on page 8 of the paper. When the differences are
not clear, treat the child soldier as
either as a concept and or a physical
human being or both.
Diagram 1: The circle of the
child soldier.
Child
soldier in combat The street child soldier
The civilian child soldier
The paper had
originally been planned to be on the child soldier who was in combat fighting
in a war for which he or she had been drawn in without one’s consent. On my
second reflection, through the review of literature and through the
kaleidoscopic view of my peers and from Professor Gretchen and the
co-facilitators for the Post Conflict class, an idea clicked in my mind on the
civilian child soldier and that made me write the first draft of fifteen pages.
On my third reflection, while writing the second draft an idea clicked in my
mind again. This time, it was the
street child soldier.
The paper is not
going to focus on the street child soldier for this would mean writing another
lengthy paper. The paper will focus on the child soldier in combat and the
civilian child soldier and where appropriate the street child soldier will be
mentioned. Additionally, however, there might be a paradox, there seems to be a
hypothesis in that, these three child soldiers in different circles of
resilience may share a certain degree of social cohesion and resemblance. The
child soldier can occupy any part of the circle and still become the small
politician. This is the thesis and the commonality of the three soldiers as per
my telepathic view. However, the paper for the time being will focus on the
child soldier who builds a lot of power from his or her critical thinking to
move from unfavourable, unknown, awkward positions to levels of charismatic
leadership. How can we be of help in developing the child soldiers of this
prophetic faith of liberating the minds with the cobwebs of fighting endless
wars. To my contention, the child soldier who becomes a small politician might
be the light in a tunnel. In Africa, we say he who is pierced by the arrow
knows the pain and sorrow.
Introduction
The concept of the child soldier who becomes a small politician is intriguing. It has also been addressed in different forms by Judith L Evans[1] and by Hammond (1998, p.4) who argued that students believed it was important to learn to read.
Sometimes you need to sign something and you can’t read it you do not know what you are signing. I add as an author of the paper that the right thumb is used as the authentic writing for the child soldier for his or her signature. (Hammond 1998, p.4 with emphasis added)
In the first place where wars are taking place, there is both extreme poverty in the developing countries and therefore imposing daunting problems. In this case, Hammond (1998, p. 5) has argued that there is the will to teach and learn
It is in this will that resilience is the powerful force for the child soldier. If one looks at the New Webster Encyclopedia Dictionary of the English language, resile is defined as ‘return to original position.’ Resilience in my own interpretation is then the ability to return to a normal situation after the some disturbance or within the turbulence of the disturbance. How for example the child soldier can comprehend what is going around and being able to make sense of the experience and knowing the right story to tell and the right direction to take is extremely fascinating. It is in my view, a spontaneous process of natural learning, natural teaching and changing the human memory, a view shared by Schank and Cleave (1995, p. 175 - 202). Resilience will come to be given a more befitting in the paper when considering the curriculum development for the child soldiers to be small politicians.
This kind of a child can articulate the theory and rationale of fighting the war for whichever side of the war front he or she is in. He or she has a potential talent to be tapped. This is the theme of the paper. It reminds me of the era of Plato and Socrates in the Republic that the chief function of the state is education as noted by Sterling and Scott (1985, p. 15). Socrates argued that that suffering injustice is better than inflicting it. In the eyes of the children, the state is the immediate surrounding which gives them food and the suffering and that is how the children see the micro and ecosystems
The paper will give a few vignettes, followed by what I think part of the solution of the conflict lies in the child soldier who can be moulded to be a small politician. The principle of resilience is the corner stone for the child soldier in his or her way to become a small politician.
The vignettes.
I am told of a story that when Bill Clinton was very young, President John Kennedy asked him what he wanted to be. The young Clinton answered that he wanted to be the President of the United States. Later, he became one among the famous Presidents of USA. He was not a child soldier and if he were told to be a child soldier is the prerequisite condition to be USA President, Clinton would definitely follow that path. How he went through the ordeal of personal attack while in office and managed to survive indeed needs a high degree of coping up with tension. This ability to sustain a lot of pressure has been remarkable for Clinton. Can the child soldiers learn from a president of the most powerful nation on how to handle political pressure? I end the note with a song from my home country Tanzania which sings with the hymn that,
I would prefer the death of being crashed by a track trailer
than the death of love between two lovers,
the love of my love that I cherish to love forever.
I would rather die on the road by being tramped by the track trailer,
Rather than miss the love. (A Swahili translation by the author from his mother language)
The message here is that the passion for the thing you strongly love can be so strongly guided by the will at the point of listening to not other voice. Many leaders have gone through these events as though they were blind. Such leadership can have a bearing on the child soldier to become a politician. Their ways of life, how they lived and how they governed their countries can shed light on the child soldier to become a politician. Let us see different other vignettes.
When one looks at the life of Paul Freire, one can see that he had a kind of resilience. Freire’s life and work as an educator is optimistic in spite of poverty, imprisonment and exile. He is a world leader in the struggle for the liberation of the poorest of the poor, the marginalized classes who constitute the “culture of silence” in many lands. The child soldiers do belong to this class. My concern is how can we liberate them from where they are. Paul Freire himself learned what it is to go hungry when he was a child. He never got resentment, anger nor did he despair. It was in the childhood that he determined to dedicate his life to the struggle against hunger. This is the message in the paper, that can we develop the child soldier to make a statement of commitment and make it the goal through out her or his life, come rain or come storm. The child soldier can be nurtured to becomes a small politician and in turn becomes a future leader to prevent future wars.
When Jomo Kenyatta, was fighting for the independence in his country Kenya, he was at a very young age. Upon visiting England, so the story is told, an English person threw on his face broken rotten eggs. That was a clear conflict but he never gave up in the struggle. After his country got independence, he wrote the book with the title, “Suffering Without Bitterness.” He did not seek revenge for atrocities though he had been in jail for several years under the British rule. I view Jomo as being a child soldier at his time.
Imagine the story of Vanni, the Sri Lanka young woman, who had to run away from the war situation and tied her child on a branch using the remaining of her sari. How she masters the skills of coping up with the environment for survival makes me recall the theory of natural learning as noted by Schank and Cleave (1995, p.175). It is the child on which I am writing that if he becomes a child soldier and later a politician, he will change the world. This is my thesis and the focus of study.
When Mwalimu Julius Nyerere was young in school, he wanted to be a biologist. As he saw the situational environment, as a young person at an early stage found an ill social system of being colonized by a foreign country. He got that drive to study social sciences His papers were at the University were on the ill system of colonialism. He freed his country and wrote the book, “Freedom and Development.” During his reign, he sent nearly all-young people just about the age of 18 to get military training. The youths were given basic training for protecting their land. Those who were semi literate were given well planned literacy classes. It was this at this time; he made a global impact in raising the literacy rate of Tanzania from low ebb to 93% and also established Universal Primary Education.
There is a case where the mother fled fourteen times and the last time she lost all her belongings including her only son. By losing the son, does not mean to my contention that the son died but he is no longer in the company of her beloved mother. The question being raised in the paper is where did the child go. If he becomes a child soldier and brought up as a small politician, will the world be a better place to live in?
If I remember the story of Wilson Churchill, when I was in the Middle School, how he escaped from South Africa, it is also a fascinating story. Where does this courage come from? Has there been training for doing things that later make one a big politician. What is the formula? It is only when we come to study the individuals and reflect upon their lives that we seem to see patterns of severe patience and sometimes doing things that are unimaginable with success that makes me believe that there are certain forces which shape the child soldiers to become politicians. What forces are those? We have come to see that Sir Wilson Churchill is a great politician in the so-called Great Britain. I do not know much about his early life, but I believe the story rewinds in my mind, he would fall under those people who have been child soldiers.
Recalling the experience of my own home village, called Alleni, for which in the middle of the 19th century, there was born a child called Horombo. His father who was a Chief never liked this child and child was chased away from the family. His father gave the reason that he was disobedient to obey his wishes. The orders were for oppressing other people, a thing Horombo never liked. Also he was to take of the cattle, which did not in any way belong to him. It was a sad story from her mother to see his child chased away from the family. He was declared a non-family member.
Horombo fled and exiled to the forest eating wild fruits and not knowing what to do at his age. Her mother frequently secretly sent food to him without the knowledge of the father. Horombo grew up and made his decision to be brave, survive and liberate the people his father was oppressing. He got the resilience to survive in the wilderness of wild animals by day and by night. To his father and the ruling class, Horombo was a non-entity.
This was a positive force for him that he must do events that would make him great. He figured that the best thing was to do something nobody else could do. This would restore his image to the father and at the same time enable him to be accepted by his age mates. If he is to have friends, and for him to get a wife to marry, he has to restore his image. He decided to kill an elephant with the crudest tool. He studied the habits of elephants, how they eat and what is their weakest point. He realized that by being able to cut the trunk with a sharp knife, would render the animal lifeless and therefore, it would die.
At that time the elephant was the most feared beast and even today, is still feared in the part of the country. The strategy was kill the elephant and have the story sent to the village. For several years he struggled with that goal and finally, he was able to trap and kill the elephant. The story went into the village. At the village, they said who is that Horombo, after all he was exiled, he cannot do that. But when the age mates went to check and found out the truth, they discovered that it was one of their age mates, the child soldier. Horombo had killed the elephant. They rallied around him as their natural leader. Horombo took the advantage to liberate the oppressed from his father. His father realizing that Horombo was with the strong young people for whom Horombo trained as part of his army, he declared him the Chief of the village. He became popular and always winning wars and fighting with passion and with strategic plans. Whenever he won a war, he would bring all the generals together and distribute the material gains to all the people openly. Even today in the 21st century, Horombo is known as the Great Chief that has ever lived from Kilimanjaro in Tanzania and has a district named after him in his honor.
This was great morale for the soldiers to continue fighting. There is one thing he declared that in wars, no girl or woman was harmed. May be could be due to her mother helping her while he was in exile. This was also a strategy for winning over the enemies. As the women in the enemy camps knew the Horombo army, do not kill girls and women, they would not run away. It was only the men and the boys who had to run away Horombo won wars with ease and brought home more liberated families from the cruel rulers. Horombo fully used the theory and ingredients of social capital such as families, communities, trust and a common sense of purpose, participation, welfare, tribal ties and gender. . He had a lot networking, those who could not fight were to build the stoned fence while at the same time doing the communication to strengthen their war tactics,
The stories of all the above vignettes seem to tell one story. Each vignette shows a condition of hardship beyond the normal suffering of ordinary human beings. How these heroes in the own capacities are able to cope with resilience is still a mystery to me. How they are able to be patient, endure and cope up with difficult conditions without thinking of committing suicide or giving up is a matter of grave concern. Those who commit suicide are not child soldiers to become small politicians as well as those who give up. How the existing conditions “cooked’ the leaders to be what they have become is a lesson for us in the resilience for the child soldier.
The remainder of the paper will now dwell on building the child soldier to become a small politician. What we have taken so far was to lay the ground work of what is known and be able to use the known to see how resilience can give or build a more structured approach of building the small politician from a child soldier who falls among the three definitions. My foes may still think in being at the war situation or after the war should be the focus, but my thinking is meant to cut across. It is the civilian base, which might cause tension and unrest resulting in conflict. When the conflict is there, there is still civilian life within the war front. What is needed or what can be done for creating the child soldier. To me it looks like a dream for the story is untold, it needs to be tapped Whether it is ethnography or grounded theory or another paradigm, for sure I do not know. Certainly, it is through the stories and the events we can develop some patterns that can be coded in order to come out with the theory of creating child soldiers to become small politicians through resilience.
Definitions of the child soldier
My definition of child soldier has three parts. The first part is the civilian child soldier. This is any child who gets a kind of drive to survive unique sufferings that fold and unfold under a complex unpredictable situation that after a long enduring life, the child soldier becomes a hero of human life. People like Nelson Mandela fall in this category. Though strictly, he was not a child soldier from his birth, if he had the choice, he would grab the opportunity. Others like Mwalimu Nyerere and Kenyatta are the other African giants whose lives have shone over darkness. These political figures from Africa put on the “shoes” of the child soldier and fought using their brainpower. How then can Africa produce these charismatic children who will bring less torture to the rest of the world.
The second child soldier is as defined by Machel. This is the child who fights in the conflict areas where there are two different groups opposed to each other over the power of rule. Child soldiers besides fighting in the war front are also abused in the most untold manner[2]. This is the non-civilian child soldier. Do we stop the suffering of these child soldiers by making international declarations and blaming those committing the atrocities or really what is the way forward?
The third child soldier is the one whom I have him or her in my head but I have failed to give her or him a real name. By calling him a street child soldier, may not be the right concept but at the same time, these children come from such marginalized conditions. Either out of abject poverty, these children become world heroes in ways that cannot be explained by the ordinary phenomenon. It is the way, they are able to contain their ego and the way they survive through a turmoil of life that they need special consideration. To support this theory of mine, I shall give short vignettes of Pele and Mohammed Ali who are all world magnets in sports.
We can have people like Pele, the legendary world famous soccer player. His life started in very poor conditions unimaginable and yet, he has made a name to the top of the world. Having being unable to complete his classes like his colleagues, he was still able to come to take his degree at a University.
His life as a child has some resilience, which can be used to handle other children oppressed by poverty or war. How he could be so patient and yet able to establish his deep interest and excel in soccer and the support he received from his people has a bearing on the way we can help the children in war torn areas. The way he could survive under harsh conditions of poverty and yet made him a world figure of soccer politics and of civil politics as well being a Minister in Brazil. At the early age of his life, no one could tell. If Pele speaks to the world, they do listen to him. This is also a quality of the other child soldiers who have become not only small politicians but also big politicians.
If one looks at the life of Mohamed Ali the world boxer, had also a life of a child soldier. If you come to see the way, he could articulate the phrases he made that attracted the whole world is not something we can ignore. There was something in him that he had to endure and the conditions from which he passed through enabled him to pass through some kind of resilience. This kind of resilience is not easily noticeable for it is mentally construed but it has resemblance to the one the combat child soldier faces. The difference is that both have one common enemy, who is hard human conditions. The phrases Mohamed Ali made will later have an impact in the paper for rationale for developing a syllabus. The phrases are, “I am greatest. I sting like a bee.”
The building of child soldier to a small politician
The child soldier is not by default what is he or she has been. Social, political and military forces have reconstructed her. Girls and boys have been involved. Child soldiers share a similar profile; they come from poor and disadvantaged sectors of the society. They are children struggling to survive. It is this struggle through resilience that makes me write the paper. Child soldiers face a grim fate. Training for them is the same as for adults regardless of differences in physical or emotional maturity. The treatment involves physical and psychological torture to break the spirit, dehumanize and accustom the individual to sadism and brutality. The question is how can these child soldiers receive training to make them small politicians and come to reverse the bad deeds done to them without revenging to those who put them in the child soldier slavery.
I believe in the inquiry approach where by, we have to be positive in addressing issues and people. The setting of education in a war zone will create an opportunity. It has been noted by Hammond (1998, p. 5) that the will to teach and learn grew out of the commitment to struggle for economic, justice and dignity. That the child soldier is the person I am addressing. My concern is what kind of training to be given to the child soldier. A kind of training that will be accepted on both sides of the warring parties. This is a radical idea but the bottom line is that there has to be a minimum training package that has to be accepted by both sides. A syllabus has to be developed by specialists and both parties in the conflict have to be involved. Machel (2000, #8) can be the starting point as she recommended the following.
v Educational support should include life skills training, landmine awareness, HIV/AIDS prevention, and human rights. Peace education and psychological support on the core curriculum.
v Specialized accelerated learning programs for adolescents should form a key part of the emergency educational response.
v Parents, the community and young people should be involved in curriculum planning and development to ensure that teaching materials are locally relevant and also child rights based, giving full attention to gender-sensitivity and ethnic and religious tolerance. Machel (2000, p.24). Also UNESCO (1999, p.4) shares the same view in terms of the recommendations.
It is essential that education programs be viewed as a central part of the continuum from emergency relief to reintegration and development. This is especially important in protracted civil wars where education is not, and cannot be, merely a short term emergency measure Machel (2000, p. 24)
Machel argues that education is vital during armed conflicts, offering a sense of continuity and stability for the whole community. If there is a stability brought about because of children, it is a wonderful opportunity. This education is valid for the child soldier who is going to be a politician. We do not know which child soldier is going to become another Mandela and the safest way is train them well on both camps of the antagonistic groups. A proposal for kind of syllabus is being thought of under resilience.
The generic knowledge
Education is the right of the child, and not a privilege, right in the early days of disaster or after becoming a refugee or being internally displaced. As has been noted by UNESCO (1999, p. 69) the field of education is complex, emergencies have suffered from a lack of systematic study and there an atmosphere of improvisation which hampers effectiveness. It is being recommended that it should be given the intellectual attention it deserves, through applied research and evaluation and through the development of training courses. Hammond (1998, p. 5) writing on popular education, shares the same feelings by saying that intellectual development must be linked with the personal growth. There is need for community organization, political struggle and social transformation.
Education will develop the political consciousness of the child soldier. During the war, the recruits, some of whom were child soldiers had never been to school (Hammond, p. 53). Though education may not be the military priority, education has come to mean two elements.
a. To develop skills needed for warfare
b. Education forms the whole person was needed to make the soldier more efficient.
The child soldiers were trained how to use the weaponry and also trained for combat. To win the war especially the guerilla one, it was through the power of the human resource and hence the stronger need to train the child soldier. The enemies in principle had more powerful weapons. The management of the combatants to win a war had to do with using more of the brainpower and further showing the need for training the combatants.
Given the scenario of all the above vignettes and the need for education, what then should be contained in this education, which has been described as complex. We first look at the generic staff before we embark on the more detailed knowledge for the child soldiers. Basic education must play a part in every education program. Universal Primary Education through formal or non-formal means is a key goal. The implementation of the principles of education for peace and dialogue in the education systems of warring countries is a pre requisite for the phase of national reconstruction.
This is important that both sides of the camp should offer training for the child soldier. Elements of education for peace and human rights are important. It is a battle the world has been fighting to bring together warring sides without much success. It is an area for action research and the paper cannot address it for the time being. The need to cultivate a culture of tolerance, respect for all persons and the need to enhance social capital by building sustainable development. Equal access to girls has to be given priority as an educational requirement. In the process, the young soldiers will be able to grasp better with resilience. They will need the literacy and work skills that would prevent them from regressing into the state of abject poverty, which could again undermine peace. This is the favorable condition for the child soldiers to become politicians in the communities and societies they are going to live in.
In summary for the generic education, in bullet form, the following can be regarded as some of the knowledge areas for the child soldier. For a time I thought why I have called them knowledge areas, because, it is term I believe can be agreed on both sides of the warring sides. The package has to cut across to both camps so that when they come to reconcile as one people, there will not be any more educational discrepancies. Thus the generic knowledge areas are:
1 Jomtien’s expanded vision in terms of education for literacy, life skills and livelihood (vocational training)
1 Health education emphasizing coping skills for adolescents.
1 Human rights, mutual respect, tolerance, democratic principles, justice, solidarity and peace. [Education for peace] Reference has been alluded to Arnold et al. (1998, p. 18)
1 Building social capital in the community of child soldiers.
1 Environmental education in any attempt to solve and avoid conflict over environmental matters.
1 Sports and other recreational and cultural activities have a major role to play in building peace, allowing the child soldiers to work off some of their feelings and stress. They can build the resilience of coping with anger, disappointment and frustration when they lose a game UNESCO (1999, p. 59). We might get talented sportsmen and women who could act as soothing agents for healing the war wounds. Also, this is one way of getting ambassadors who become small politicians from being child soldiers.
1 Basic skills in conflict resolution and mediation skills among the groups as a team.
1 Pedagogical skills for the teachers/instructors. This will later develop a pool of highly skilled personnel for more capacity building at a later stage.
1 The principles of Moral Re-armament, the principle of absolute love, absolute honesty, absolute unselfishness and absolute purity. {This is my own coining so that the package can be accepted on both sides of the camps} The view in the bracket is supported by Machel (2000, para. 8) for which she says … All possible measures must be taken to maintain education systems during conflicts.
Having dealt in a very generic form, it is time to look at issues that need to be addressed as we move closer to the specific syllabus that might create the future child soldier being a politician.
The issues of inequalities have
to be addressed.
The first inequality is on girls whom I believe can be child soldiers to be small politicians. MaKay and Mazurana have expressed my point very well as follows.
Where Are the Girls? The marginalization of girls within peace accords, their “invisibility” as children in armed forces and armed opposition groups, and methodological difficulties all pose challenges to obtaining current and accurate data to expand our knowledge about girls in armed forces and armed opposition groups. Systematic collection and analysis of data on girls are needed to better identify the scope of girls ... When there is discussion of girls in armed forces or armed opposition groups, it is often embedded in a paragraph or several pages of larger reports or conference proceedings... We have found that among quotes and anecdotes used in reports, many times the only mention of girls is in worst-case scenarios of sexual violence, which highlight girls as “wives,” rewards for soldiers’ valor, or as victims of sexual terror. While it is not our intent to minimize the occurrence or severity of sexual violence, these scenarios ignore girls’ multiple other roles and realities, including the fact that in many countries where they are present in armed forces and armed opposition groups, girls serve as front-line fighters McKay and Mazurana (2001, p. 2)
UNESCO (1998, p. 35) has noted that in the 1990s there were multiple efforts to meet the educational needs of populations affected by wars. Quantitatively, there are gaps in coverage and in meeting the needs. This is a gray area for research. Due to lack of assistance from humanitarian agencies, it has been difficult to help the displaced children. UNESCO developed a Teacher Emergency Package (TEP) as a ready-to-use kit for functional literacy and numeracy instruction for children. It can accommodate about eighty children in a two-shift class almost anywhere. The TEP or school-in-box contains the following.
a. Blackboard paint, brush and tape measure (to enable teachers to create their own blackboard on a wall if necessary)
b. White and colored chalk
c. Pens, pencils. Pencil sharpeners and felt markers
d. Ten “scrabble sets” (for language and number games)
e. Three cloth charts (alphabet, numbers and multiplication)
f. An attendance book, a note book and
g. A teachers’ guide, which outlines the pedagogical methods by lesson.
Inside the war zones, there are also inequalities; people of higher and lower status were treated differently as were men and women as noted by Hammond (1998, p. 52). In addition ideology is used to give the child soldier more morale to fight and more vigor to be able to explain why they are fighting. Ideologically imbued child soldiers fight with passion for success. My contention is that with the difference of having a theory to fight the war, makes differences on the other side of the camp. When these groups come to reconcile, they will discover that they have different opposing ideologies. One camp may harbor collective labor production and the other camp may harness the capitalist mode of production.
The concept of blood being thicker than water may have to be revisited. An example will elaborate the concept. In the year 1999, Sierra Leone received relief of $ 20 as compared to $ 216 given to Kosovo. Suffering child soldiers need the basic minimum to survive. That is why I want to rely on giving training to the child soldiers. One cannot develop a child soldier to be a politician when there are inequalities of the human basic needs. The Kosovo children are closer to the donors as compared to those in the third world. This is will continue in the future. I am suggesting by developing the child soldier to be a politician, chances are that when the children mature, they may change the political wind of enmity. This is my contention that as the child soldier grows up, the child may be able to present an analysis of the situation and perhaps come up with changes that will turn upside the warring parties. The children will be able to make political analysis as developed in the next section.
Political analysis
The military struggle without equal attention to the political struggle is fruitless Hammond (1999, p.190). Here we are able to find a few examples as found in the battlefield where child soldiers have been found. Later we shall develop a critical syllabus for the child soldier to be a politician.
I tell you, you cannot feel the pain of this suffering if you don’t see it physically. If you only glance at it, a sword of sorrow will pierce your heart. …What on earth is it that man today does not care for his fellow humans? (Uganda schoolgirl who escaped abduction by the Lord’s Resistance Army[3] as quoted from Machel chapter1)
The quotation has a clear message, the way it is written, has some analysis. Each sentence builds on the other. The values of avoiding the conflict are well registered. Children can be good campaigners for stopping the child soldiers. That is why I am for the child soldier being a small politician. Let us examine another short analytical note from a child from Bosnia. Sanel at the age of 12, he said, “It is very difficult to live in war. You just wait for the moment you will die” Again here one can see the reasoning power of the child in a war situation. What makes these children so bold and courageous and have the capacity to think like full grown up. This makes us go the next point related to resilience.
Resilience
The age and characteristics of the child have a mediating effect on how well the child survives and thrives. Also important is the child’s previous experience with violence, the child’s degree of resilience, and the child ‘ knowledge, skills and abilities. Physical health plays a part as well; a strong, healthy child is likely to be resilient emotionally and psychologically than one who is weak or sick.
Evans (1996, p. 7).
Children who develop constructive coping strategies are better to manage their feelings and emotions than those who accentuate the difficulties and sense of hopelessness. A key dimension of children’s coping strategies is a child’s resilience. My belief is that the child soldier has the ability to understand and to realize that the best solution is to work towards a solution by having emotional stability. It is still a mystery to me how children become great politicians after they had endured such hardships to come to prominence and to have power given to them by their own people. Children of this caliber are able to think critically. It has been argued that children in wars grow very fast. These children are able to convert their position and make sense out of it. They tend to find an intrinsic vision of direction. The sense of hopelessness is no longer in them. These are the child soldiers I am interested in because they become small politicians in the long run.
The capacity for the human being to face, overcome and even be strengthened by adversaries of life is called resilience[4]. I call the child with this potentiality as the one able to become a small politician. In order to develop the child soldier to become, I suggest we use the approach of the principles of Groberg (1995) with the following modification. Let there be a complete package of the course for preparing the child soldier to be a small politician.
The course I am proposing will have three main categories. This is addition to the generic one proposed in the previous pages. I believe that they compliment each other. The syllabus will be based on the three sources of resilience as propounded by Groberg (1995). The three sources of resilience are: I Have, I Am and I Can.
Diagram
2: The graphic representation of the three resources for resilience (the vision
is of my own making).
I
am The Generic Syllabus I
have I
can
I believe this is an innovative program that promote the education and do the reintegration of the child soldiers. I t will have an impact on the psychosocial needs of the child soldiers. It will acknowledge the right to education even under conditions of emergency. Education will no longer be felt as a relief effort but as a planned concept as the child soldier is constricted. It will be able to cope with the ecological model of human development as noted by Bronfenbrenner (1977, p.515) who argued that much of the developmental psychology is the science of the strange behavior of children in strange situations with strange adults for the briefest periods of time.
The new awareness of the rights of the children and of prompt restoration of education as a tool for peace building may help generate future child soldiers to become small politicians. In addition, there might more scholars to dig more in the kind of education to create the child soldier to become future leaders in their communities and in the bigger societies. The program if successful, it will no longer need to provide refugee education. The education will focus on bringing forth future leaders who will be able to stick to principles of non-violence. It will also enable the disabled people in the war torn areas to feel that they have been addressed, as the small politicians will take of the entire society.
Before we can start with the education from the three sources, let us define education as the center of interactive triangle of “peace-development-democracy.” The most exciting part of the argument is as to whether the triangle is related the three sources mentioned above. It has been left for the reader to say which is for I Have, I Am and I Can given that each edge of the triangle might have a similar resemblance. The triangle can rotate so that the edge is at any point of the paper and it is within an ecological environment of children as zones of peace.
With the above juxtaposition, let us start with the syllabus for the “I have syllabus”
The syllabus package for I have category.
These package will develop children who can make the kind f the following analysis as done by Mohammed, 13 years old, in Basra, Iraq, who said, “ There is no use going to school because life is so hard. I’m going to help my father[5].” The boy clearly sees that there is some one who cares about him. The child soldier has to make sound decisions and yet the decisions made are applicable in the conflict situation. A father has been used here to simplify the concept; it could be any one the child soldier feels he is under full care and protection.
The I Have category represents the external support that provides children with security and safety. The main tenets for this category are.
I HAVE:
” People around me, I trust and who love me, no matter what;
” People who sets limits for me so I know when to stop before there is danger or trouble;
” People who show me how to do things right by way they do things;
” People who want me to learn to do things on my own;
” People who help me when I am sick, in danger or need to learn.
In this category, we intend to achieve the following qualities inculcated to the
child soldiers by borrowing the work of Staub.
a. The quality of helping will be developed according to the needs of the child soldier when she or he is in most need. This quality will the child soldier to feel good and promotes helping with others.
b. The quality of warmth (character), which develops kindness and character. When elders act warmly with children, they are more likely to be helpful with others and remember positive interactions.
c. The quality of coaching enabling the child how things can be done better. It also means facilitating effective action and valuing child’s efforts to generate motivation.
d. Quality of developing structure and order in their lives as well as predictability and consistency. Children knowing what adults expect from them and how they will react and knowing what will happen to their lives will make them feel much better.
Even in the B.C. centuries, we have the support of this kind of training. Plato (1985, p. 113,) presented the analysis which is
I shall try to persuade first the rulers, then the soldiers and the rest of the people that all the training and education they have received from us are actually products of their imaginations just the way it is with a dream Plato (1985, p.113)
The syllabus package for I am
category.
This kind of education will help the child soldier who can have the vision of people like Mandela, Mwalimu Nyerere and the like who had to face situations for which they had an intense resilience. This analysis will bring forth a child soldier who will declare that, “We are the seeds that will stop the war.” (Mayerly Sanchez, age 14, from the Columbia Children’s Peace Movement).
We shall be able to have people like Mohamed Ali who will have the stamina and be able to say different words or words that provoke a sense of one’s concern. Mohamed Ali said, “I am greatest. I sting like a bee.” The I am category describes who children are in terms of their internal sense of self and how they present themselves to the world. The main tenets for the I Am syllabus are as follows.
I AM:
The following qualities will be developed in the child soldier.
a. The quality of sensitivity, which caters for nurturance, understanding and mode of reacting to child’s needs. The child feels secure, safe and free to explore alternatives.
b. The quality of flexibility where the parents or the adults look at reasons behind a child’s behaviour. The adults are more cautious in enforcing rules and they are sensitive to complexities and nuances of human experience. Children become humanistic and passionate to others.
The syllabus package for I can
category.
The syllabus will look at proximal processes for the child as a developing person as noted by Bronfenbrenner in Husen and Postlethwaite (1994,p.1644). It will show how the child soldier are within their Microsystems, how they will fit into the mesosystem and the ecosystem for which they will be the future politicians. We expect to see the child soldier declare, “I want to go to schools and become a journalist so I can speak about my country and how useless this war is.’ (TC. 16, former child soldier[6])
The I can category has the following format.
I
CAN:
b talk to others about things that frighten me or bother me;
b find ways to solve problems that I face;
b control out when it is a good time to talk to someone or to talk to someone or to take action;
b find someone to help me when I need it. Machel (2000)
The following qualities or outcomes will be developed in the child soldier.
a. The quality of affection. There will be developed the caring of welfare and sensitive to feelings. This will develop health growth of the child soldier and for the development of caring and helping.
b. The quality or empathy where the child soldier learns the ability to listen others, entering another’s experience and affirming simply by understanding. Empathy is healing in times of pain and anguish and the one who receives this is able to help others.
c. The quality of values and rules will develop what is preferable and desirable and good. Rules provide guidance and structure, as they will have meaning to the child soldiers. Explaining the value of rules has a value in itself. Letting children acting in some ways is better than others, tends to lead to more caring individuals.
It must be noted that children do not need all these features to be resilient. On the other hand, one is not adequate. Resilience results from a combination of them all as adults interact children through words, actions and upon the ecological environment. To be able to have child soldiers who will be able to live in a society for enhancing the components of social capital like honesty, trust, community networks, societal norms, coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit is not that easy. The concepts for social capital have been mentioned also by Krishna and Shrader (1999, p.3). However, with the kind of child soldiers who will have the resilience as alluded to in this paper, there can be hope.
Summary
Resilience has made it possible for children to survive and some children have somehow gotten what they need on order to thrive, even within the most devastating contexts. With the limit of number of pages, I have been able to show famous people of world on how they have had resilience as their weapon. These suffered and in the end they were able to make ends meet. They had some kind of resilience and determination that could not be determined as they were growing. My burning passion for developing future politicians using the child soldier looks feasible. This can be done if a syllabus proposed can be implemented under the principles of resilience. Finally, I gave the definition of a child soldier as the world sees it and I gave my own civilian child soldier and the street child soldier. From both cases, charismatic leaders have been brought to the attention of the child soldier. The final product of the paper is the syllabus for the child soldier to become a small politician.
I would like to present a question to the readers. If a child soldier has fully accepted an idealogy of hatred of the other (like the Taliban or the what is in the Middle East or in Northern Ireland), then the question is how can the world develop a curriculum to address the powerful beliefs towards tolerance? This question and many others that were raised in the paper and others that will emerge in the minds of the readers may become further areas for research. This is still a ground for further thought. Finally the child soldier is real.
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