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Writing That Breaks Stones: African Child Soldier Narratives is a critical examination of six memoirs and six novels written by and about young adults from Africa who were once child soldiers. It analyzes not only how such narratives document the human rights violations experienced by these former child soldiers but also how they connect and disconnect from their readers in the global public sphere. It draws on existing literary scholarship about novels and memoirs as well as on the fieldwork conducted by social scientists about African children in combat situations. Writing That Breaks Stones groups the twelve narratives into categories and analyzes each segment, comparing individually written memoirs with those written collaboratively, and novels whose narratives are fragmented with those that depict surreal landscapes of misery. It concludes that the memoirs focus on a lone individual’s struggles in a hostile environment, and use repetition, logical contradictions, narrative breaks, and reversals of binaries in order to tell their stories. By contrast, the novels use narrative ambiguity, circularity, fragmentation, and notions of dystopia in ways that call attention to the child soldiers’ communities and environments. All twelve narratives depict the child soldier’s agency and culpability somewhat ambiguously, effectively reflecting the ethical dilemmas of African children in combat.
In working to build a sense of nationhood, Ghana has focused on many social engineering projects, the most meaningful and fascinating of which has been the state's effort to create a national culture through its schools. As Cati Coe reveals in Dilemmas of Culture in African Schools, this effort has created an unusual paradox: while Ghana encourages its educators to teach about local cultural traditions, those traditions are transformed as they are taught in school classrooms. The state version of culture now taught by educators has become objectified and nationalized—vastly different from local traditions. Coe identifies the state's limitations in teaching cultural knowledge and discusses how Ghanaians negotiate the tensions raised by the competing visions of modernity that nationalism and Christianity have created. She reveals how cultural curricula affect authority relations in local social organizations—between teachers and students, between Christians and national elite, and between children and elders—and raises several questions about educational processes, state-society relations, the production of knowledge, and the making of Ghana's citizenry.
This is the story of a child whose parents, in an attempt to find solution to their problems, find comfort in alcohol which robbed them the right to their only child and their reputation. This child, being a toddler, was filled with emotional trauma and spirit of isolation, was taken to a foster home because of his parents irrational behavior which was brought about by their excessive consumption of alcohol, became a father of two adults and a subject of ridicule among his peers because of his parents addiction. He was rescued by his uncle who took him and nurtured him up to his teenage stage and sent him to university for further studies. In the university, being a vulnerable child who never experienced parental love and attention, he was desperately looking for that attention by all means. Eventually, he got it from being a potential victim of a gang robbery in the school to a partner in crime. This deprived him of his career, led him to jail, and made him a fugitive for many years. Being on the run, he got married, and his love and affection for his friend became a stumbling block in the relationship between him and his wife. His friends character is the exact opposite of his, so with the intention of starting another life of crime, he became totally transformed by his new friend who was searching for his lost sister for many years. The friend salvaged him from going to jail once again as a result of a petty crime which he committed in a corner shop. This brought them together very close that they became inseparable. On their quest to find his friends sister, he displayed his true nature of sympathy and mentorship for the vulnerable, which got them into a misfortune that ruined their hope of fighting for the freedom of the less privileged and those in captive. This misfortune disconnected him and his best friend who rescued him from the life of crime to a freedom fighter and also led them to jail and brought separation between him, his friend, and the three other friends they met during their adventure to find his friends sister.
There is no term so heavily contested in social science literature/nomenclature than ‘Development’. This book brings Indigenous perspectives to African develop¬ment. It is argued that contrary to development as we know it not working, a greater part of the problem is that conventional development approaches that work have in fact not truly been followed to the letter and hence the quagmire. All this is ironic since everything we do about our world is development. So, how come there is “difficult knowledge” when it comes to learning from what we know, i.e., what local peoples do and have done for centuries as a starting point to recon¬structing and reframing ‘development’? In getting our heads around this paradox, we are tempted to ask more questions. How do we as African scholars and research¬ers begin to develop “home-grown solutions” to our problems? How do we pioneer new analytical systems for understanding our communities and offer a pathway to genuine African development, i.e., Indigenist African development? (see also Yankah, 2004). How do we speak of Indigenist development mindful of global developments and entanglements around us? Can we afford to pursue development still mired in a “catch up” scenario? Are we in a race with the development world and where do we see this race ending or where do we define as the ‘finishing line’? A Publication of the Centre for School and Community Science and Technology Studies [SACOST], University of Education, Winneba, Ghana
EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. Millions of children throughout Africa undertake many forms of farm and domestic work. Some of this work is for wages, some is on their family’s own small plots and some is forced and/or harmful. This book examines children’s involvement in such work. It argues that framing all children’s engagement in economic activity as ‘child labour’, with all the associated negative connotations, is problematic. This is particularly the case in Africa where many rural children must work to survive and where, the contributors argue, much of the work undertaken is not harmful. The conceptual and case-based chapters reframe the debate about children’s work and harm in rural Africa with the aim of shifting research, public discourse and policy so that they better serve the interest of rural children and their families.
They are laborers, soldiers, refugees, and orphans. In areas of the world torn by poverty, disease, and war, millions of children are invisible victims, deprived of home, family, and basic human rights. Their chances for a stable adult life are extremely slim. The powerful interdisciplinary volume Vulnerable Children brings a global child-rights perspective to the lives of indigenous, refugee, and minority children in and from crisis-prone regions. Focusing on self-determination, education, security, health, and related issues, an international panel of scholars examines the structural and political sources of children's vulnerabilities and their effects on development. The book analyzes intervention programs currently in place and identifies challenges that must be met at both the community and larger policy levels. These chapters also go a long way to explain the often-blurred line between vulnerability and resilience. Included in the coverage: Dilemmas of rights-based approaches to child well-being in an African cultural context. Poverty and minority children’s education in the U.S.: case study of a Sudanese refugee family. The heterogeneity of young children’s experiences in Kenya and Brazil. A world tour of interventions for children of a parent with a psychiatric illness. An exploration of fosterage of Owambo orphans in Namibia. UNICEF in Colombia: defending and nurturing childhood in media, public, and policy discourses. Vulnerable Children is a must-have volume for researchers, graduate students, and clinicians/professionals/practitioners across a range of fields, including child and school psychology, social work, maternal and child health, developmental psychology, anthropology, sociology, social policy, and public health.
Childen's palliative care has developed rapidly as a discipline, as health care professionals recognize that the principles of adult palliative care may not always be applicable to children at the end of life. The unique needs of dying children are particularly evident across Africa, where the scale of the problem is overwhelming, and the figures so enormous that they are barely comprehensible: over 400,000 children in Africa died from AIDS in 2003, and out of the 166,000 children a year diagnosed with cancer, 85% of these are in the developing world. Despite the enormous need, provision of children's palliative care in Africa is almost non-existent, with very few health workers trained and confident to provide care for dying children. The challenges of providing palliative care in this setting are different to those in more developed countries, contending with the shortage of physical and human resources in addition to the vast scope of the care needed. Written by a group with wide experience of caring for dying children in Africa, this book provides practical, realistic guidance by improving access to, and delivery of, palliative care in this demanding setting. It looks at the themes common to palliative care--including communication, assessment, symptom management, psychosocial issues, ethical dilemmas, end of life care, and tips for the professional on compassion and conservation of energy--but always retains the focus on the particular needs of the health care professional in Africa. While containing some theory, the emphasis is on practical action throughout the book. Children's Palliative Care in Africa provides health care professionals working in Africa, and other resource-poor settings, with the confidence, knowledge, and capacity to improve care for the terminally ill child in constrained and demanding environments.
This volume describes how children’s experience with violence may affect and endanger their education, as well as their physical safety and their general well-being. It includes all forms of physical , psychological and sexual abuse, and neglect against children at home, at school, and in public spaces in two different areas of Kenya (rural and urban), while taking into account its environmental and cultural factors. This volume is unique, not only because of its focus on a less researched yet highly acute social problem but also because it provides inside knowledge by giving the children a voice through their direct participation in the data collection.