The abused child and the school system.

Abstract

SINCE the dawn of civilization, children have been abused or maltreated by adults. Many cultures for centuries used infanticide to appease their deities, eliminate defective offspring, and control their population (an early form of planned parenthood). Examples have been provided for us through the writings of Charles Dickens and other authors. Who can ever forget the trials and sufferings of Oliver Twist told in such lurid detail by Dickens? The cruel indifference to the employment of children in the mines of Great Britain during this period was vividly described by the Earl of Shaftesbury in his speech to the House of Commons in 1842.1 In Oldham the mountain seams are wrought in a very rude manner. The ways are so low that only little boys can work in them, which they do naked, and often in mud and water, dragging sledge-tubs by girdle and chain. The child is obliged to pass on all fours-through avenues not so good as the common sewer, quite as wet, and often times more contracted. This kind of labour they have to continue several hours in a temperature described as perfectly intolerable.