CHILD ABUSE REVISITED

I must admit that when talking about child abuse, I am inclined to thinking of those poor kids doing grown men's jobs to survive or to benefit the welfare of those grownups or corporates.

You see on the streets in Jakarta kids singing out-of- tune songs for some changes and they are being watched over not very far by adults who later collect the money these kids would receive or who later beat them if the kids have not done enough to raise people's pity showed in their giving away their money.

Many countries, in particular developing ones like China and Indonesia, have been engaged in this shameful practice, with some ignorance and nervousness. Thanks to these kids, they have help push the countries' economies upward but at the same time the source sacrificed to generate the economies is less. They know kids are inevitably cheap and employing them represses wage expenses, part of manufacturing costs, so the products the companies from which these government receive tax money would maintain competitiveness, something to strive at any cost.

These governments have never been that strict for it would hurt any body (of course, with the kids not considered as anybody); they want the companies to keep producing and grownups who are their constituents to know that they made it right to have elected them.

But enough with the above introduction.

I have come to realize that the abuse has occurred to those kids with wealthy and ambitious parents. Sad but true, any system in the world can not hold any of these wealthy and ambitious grownups accountable.

I have worked as a teacher and seen that this kind of parents have burdened kids with this silent abuse. The parents with their money would send the kids to the best school and the best school means that the kids study from 7 a.m to 5 to 6 p.m, leaving them no time to understand that there is more to life than schooling. To make sure that they do their other best, piano lesson, guitar lesson, English lesson, Mandarin lesson, and all those important lessons are taken AFTER school. Having to study in my class right after finishing school and exhausted, they had me many times lie to their parents, telling them that their kids had done okay in my class. What they did not know is that I had assured the kids that it was all right if they wanted to rest (by asking them not to follow my class and sleep at the corner of the class instead).
Who wouldn't have been torn apart when one of these kids came to you and told you if he didn't attend the class, no matter how dead tired they were from school, his parents would punish him?

But again, I will always find that anybody with money always has the reason.