How we treat children reflects the true progress of society

This week, I saw a mass grave dug and filled for the little girls, among the 175 people killed in a missile strike on a school in Iran. Preliminary reports on this war crime identify the USA as responsible. This image, of mass graves mainly for children, is not a new sight. Children, murdered in cold blood, at the hands of fascist colonial regimes claiming to liberate the world has become a common sight.

The abuse, trafficking, and sexual assault of children is also a common feature of news stories across the world these days, added to a long list of things we have accepted we cannot do anything about. The murder and abuse of children, however, cannot be something we become desensitised to. This is possibly the worst kind of abuse of power in the world: targeting the most vulnerable, most dependent members of society. There is a depravity that directs the choice to target children, particularly because they are defenceless. Our acceptance of such a development in social relations sets an extremely dangerous precedent that needs urgent attention.

As a society we have an atrocious track record when it comes to protecting children, making them one of the most oppressed groups on earth. The way we have normalised exercising power over children in the name of discipline and guidance must be critically examined. The harm we do to children still has standing justifications, widely agreed upon, that even go as far as people advocating for physical assault as an acceptable method of parenting. In fact, many people, reeling from the trauma of their own abuse, cannot wait to have children so that they too can feel the thrill of beating them. They verbalise such sentiments with very little pushback from anyone because the abuse of children under the guise of discipline is not a sentiment but an aspiration among people who dream of parenting.

Though we have outlawed corporal punishment, we know that this still happens far too often in schools, where teachers, sometimes with their own children, and sometimes without, take great pleasure in severely beating children for minor transgressions.

These are practices that still do not enrage people enough, with many first seeking reasons why it may be acceptable. Parents have also beaten their children to death in this country for the most arbitrary reasons, and in those scenarios there remain people who can also find valid reasons for it. These realities beg another interrogation of our collective humanity, and what our desires for power entail. Are laws enough to protect children from our rage as adults?

Our view of children needs to change urgently. We must engage more thoroughly with the idea of children as oppressed people in society, and we must realise that we, adults, are their oppressors. We claim responsibility for their well-being only to enforce ownership over their being, instead of temporary guardianship during their most vulnerable periods of development. The examples cited above only cover the examples that make it to public view, leaving countless experiences of child abuse unaddressed and unaccounted for.

It is the responsibility of all adults to guard the well-being of children while they develop their own capacities for living. The question of who we must protect children from is also an important one and ironic one. Yes, adults must protect children from other adults, which also requires us to reflect on what kind of adults our societies are creating and why. We are creating violent adults who use their adulthood to avenge all the abuse they experienced as children. However, because the vengeance has more immediate and dire consequences when meted out to fellow adults, the lesson taken forward is that the easiest outlet resides in the powerlessness of children, especially when we can claim them as ours. This is a feedback loop which has upheld the normalised abuse of children for centuries. Even the most fluent among us on matters of power and justice have engaged in this abuse of power and justified it.

Conversations on power and justice must include children more substantially.

Our attitudes towards the presence of children in public space must be scrutinised in these disconcerting times. Our sense of entitlement to child-free public spaces must be questioned. Our impatience with children and their learning must be problematised. The consequences of giving children these painful experiences is an endless loop of people who cannot wait to grow up and escape the power exercised on them, not to end cycles of violence, but to acquire that same power. When the lesson is that we need power to survive, and not that we need to create safety from violence, we simply renew our contract with violence.

The success of a society is measured in how it treats its most vulnerable, and by that metric we are failing dismally as global society. When faced with the task of addressing the problems of our time, many opt out by highlighting that they have enough problems of their own to focus on. But who can justify shirking the responsibility of protecting children and still retain a shred of ethical clarity? The one place where our claims of overwhelm with the world’s sickness fall flat. The one place where nobody can legitimately opt out for any reason, is the well-being of children, all children. Our treatment of children is a mirror of the progress of humanity, not how fast we can develop technology to replace human thought. Children deserve so much better from us, and their vulnerability demands answers from us about the suffering we have normalised for them.

I am reminded of the late Toni Morrison, who said, while speaking about white supremacy: “If you can only be tall because someone else is on their knees, then you have a serious problem.” When considering the way we have treated children throughout history, it is clear to see that we have a serious problem that has now reached its most bold-faced, evil form, and it has happened on our watch.

Dr Jamil F. Khan is an award-winning author, doctoral critical diversity scholar, and research fellow at the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study.