Educating Refugee Children Essay

I. Overview People in exile, more often than not, see a dim light when concerned about their future in their foreign country. This is a natural response; of course, for they would have never left their country if they were not suppressed, aggravated or felt a sense of helplessness and seeking refuge in another country is the only choice left. However, countries which serve as refuge should serve not only as asylum or shelter but instead serve as the new permanent home for these unfortunate people; and doing so means prioritizing decent homes and jobs for the refugees and most importantly, quality education for their children, for they are the hope of those whose rights are oppressed in their homelands. II. Rights to a Better Education It is very essential to ensure that the children of refugees get not only literacy and a decent education in their adopted homeland, but not only the plain teaching of reading and writing will suffice the children’s hunger for a real home, a real family and all the fulfillments of their erstwhile depravations, economically and in health; because in most cases some refugee children do not have parents when they sought for refuge and that mere fact should awaken educators that they should not act as teachers alone, but correspondingly, as a second parent. Moreover, the refugee children have experienced a downward plunge in their living standard and their lives have had significant changes, or worse, they could have been witnesses to horrific events and subject to traumatic experiences in their home countries. The effects of these will prove to be very crucial to their learning capabilities, and so it is absolutely correct to first see and evaluate the refugee children to determine whether they need special caring, for the caregivers and the teachers do not have a clue on the degrees of suffering, oppression and depression. The teachers should also consider the fact that the schooling of the refugee children could have been halted for a long period of time, and so reacquainting them with the confines of the classroom will surely take some time. Commencing the schooling and education of refugee children should also be perceived as their new births, the first step towards rebuilding their lives. They, the children and their other family members should be acquainted with their social and educational rights in their new country, albeit they are only refugees. It should not be held in dispute that refugee children by all means have the full rights to gain education. III. Other Facets of Educating Refugee Children More often than not, the refugee children are of a different race or ethnicity, and so in the United Kingdom, the Race Relations Act of 1976 serves as a mediator between the government system which supervises the positive treatment of refugee children in regards with their education. This act is to improve the harmony between races inside the classroom and to give protection to those refugee children who are likely to experience racism, bullying and discrimination because of their statuses as new aliens and being of a different culture and race. In the United Kingdom, this is the primary duty of the Office for Standards in Education and the Local Education Authorities (LEAs), to protect the basic rights of asylum-seeking and refugee pupils from excesses. Library books and topics relevant to the refugees’ language, heritage and homeland should also be found, for them to have a sense of belongingness. Â  Furthermore, setting the United Kingdom as an example of a country providing quality education to refugee children, the Chief Education Officers and Directors always make it a point to ensure that schools possess quality language interpreting services, make it a point that late teenager refugees complete their education, and make sure that English will be taught as a second language to them, regardless of age for this would be their primary medium in surviving in their adopted homeland and English being the universal language.