Songs in the Children's Hearts

In 1990, the Children's and Women's Activity Center of Hunan Province established a study office for children's paintings. Ever since then, the center has offered painting courses for children in the province. The teacher is Xie     

Women and Children's Health in Tibet

AS a doctor in the management of maternity and children's hygiene in the Tibet Autonomous Region for nearly 20 years, I would like to present a brief introduction of the situation of Tibetan women and children's health, as well as the related services. Prior the Liberation in Tibet, this region coveting over 1.2 million square kilometers, had few health care facilities for women and children. Such activities were carried out by three Tibetan medical institutions, a small number of folk doctors of Tibetan medicine, and a few private clinics. Under the feudal serf system in Tibet, women who gave birth were discriminated against because it was considered an obscene act. Women could not give birth in their tent homes, but were instead forced to seek shelter in cow stalls or sheepfolds no matter how severe the weather. Women and children at the time had no rights to health care. Countless women and children died of birthing complications or     

Woman Artist Engages in Children's Fine Art Education

XIE Lifang was born into a physics professor's family in Changsha, Hunan Province in 1949 when New China was founded. Living in a place surrounded by beautiful landscape of the Yuelu Mountain, she was fond of painting from her childhood. After she graduated from a junior high school, she was admitted to the Hunan Theatrical School to study stage arts. During the ten years' chaos of the "cultural revolution," (from 1966 to 1976) the school's regular education     

Children's Pottery

These simple and innocent designs reflect the innermost of these young artists. These children do not imitate others but use their own creativity. Coming from the children's pottery sculpture class under the Hunan Provincial Women and Children's Activities Center, the children attend pottery class every week. In addition, they often visit ceramic plants     

Women and Children's Health Care in the Yimeng Mountain Area

The Yimeng Mountain area in the central and southern part of Shandong Province, is very poor.     

Children's Development from a Cultural–Historical Approach: Children's Activity in Everyday Local Settings as Foundation for Their Development

A central dilemma in developmental psychology has been to combine general concepts with research of the individual child in all her complexity in everyday life activities. Psychologists such as Riegel, Bronfenbrenner, Burman, Morss, Hedegaard, and Walkerdine have criticized research approaches that study child development from a functional view. Sociologists and anthropologists, such as Corsaro, James, Jenks, Prout, and Qvotrup have instead argued for childhood studies as the alternative to developmental psychology. None of these approaches is alone sufficient; instead, it is important to formulate a theoretical approach of child and youth development that combines general psychological concepts with research of children and youth in concrete settings, such as home or school. The aim of this article is to argue that this will be possible by building on Vygotsky's cultural–historical theories of the zone of proximal development and developmental crises. A theory of children's development should include more directly than it has in the past the practice in children's everyday institutions and the conditions the society give children for development and at the same time attempt to grasp the child's perspective. A theory of children's development has to be anchored in societal values, that is, what different institutions value as a good life. Examples from my research on children in Danish kindergartens and immigrant children in Danish schools are used to exemplify the arguments.     

Children's Action Against Smoking

In dissuading their parents from smoking, children play a role outside the law in China.     

Urban parks: refuges for tropical butterflies in Southeast Asia?

Rapid economic development has accelerated urbanisation and biodiversity loss in Southeast Asia. Studies of urban ecology have suggested urban parks can be effective refuges for wildlife in temperate regions, but their effectiveness as refuges in rapidly urbanising tropical regions is understudied. We examined the species diversity of butterflies in urban parks in the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur and investigated the relationships between butterfly species richness and three park variables: i) park size, ii) distance from the central business district and iii) park age. Standardised butterfly sampling was conducted across different microhabitat types at each park: i) groves, ii) hedges, iii) flowerbeds and iv) unmanaged areas. We recorded 572 butterflies belonging to 60 species (97 % considered common) from five families. Although species richness was positively correlated with park size and age and negatively correlated with distance from the central business district; the correlations were weak and not statistically significant. However, species richness of host-specialist species was significantly positively correlated with park size and age. The highest species richness (65 % of observed species) was recorded in the unmanaged microhabitat. It is likely that both park planting scheme and the presence of early successional plants in unmanaged microhabitat led to highest butterfly species richness in parks that contained all four microhabitat types. Whether a diverse planting scheme and increased size and number of unmanaged areas in urban parks can improve the ability of parks to sustain populations of rare butterflies in the face of future urbanisation remains to be seen.     

What Is the Meaning of Meaningful Purpose in Children's Remembering? Istomina Revisited

In a classic study, Istomina (1977) found that preschool children remembered more items when remembering served a meaningful purpose then when it was for the purpose of reporting recall to an adult. Istomina's findings have not been replicated in several recent attempts; however, we argue that these attempts have not focused sufficiently on the purpose of remembering. We report a study in which we asked parents to present a set of pictures of 10 grocery items to their 4-year-old children (with the same order of items and number of presentations) in one of two conditions: Either, the remembering fit into a clear functional goal (making a sack lunch), or remembering was itself the goal (in a memory test). In the lunch condition, children were told that they were to remember the items so that they could get them from the "grocer" on the other side of the room in order to make a sack lunch. In the test condition, children were told to remember the items so that they could tell an adult what they were. Children remembered more items when the remembering served the goal of making lunch than when the purpose was simply remembering the items to tell someone else. We discuss the findings in the context of the other replications, some of which created fun activities to contrast with a test condition but often did not embed the remembering as a necessary way of reaching a meaningful goal. We also discuss the likelihood that across differing historical periods and cultural settings, the activities that are meaningful for young children are likely to vary.     

Parents’ Experiences of Reporting Child Sexual Abuse in Urban Tanzania

This article reports parental experiences of legally reporting child sexual abuse in Tanzania. Based on in-depth interviews, four types of sexual abuse incidents are portrayed. Each evokes different reactions from parents and the community. An incident characterized as the innocent child was associated with a determination to seek justice. The forced-sex youth elicited feelings of parental betrayal of their child. The consenting curious youth resulted in uncertainty of how to proceed, while the transactional-sex youth evoked a sense of parental powerlessness to control the child because of low economic status. Differentiating between types of sexual abuse incidents may increase awareness of the complexities of child sexual abuse reporting. Education on laws regulating sexual offenses and a functional national child protection system are needed to address child sexual abuse complexities and safeguard the rights of children in Tanzania.     

Families Should Cultivate Children's Good Habits

"HABITS—character—fate," this is the summary of Mr. Li, head of the senior high group of the No. 35 High School in Beijing, who has been teaching for dozens of years. He believes the habits that a person cultivates will finally decide his fate. In other words, the most important factor in determining a person's fate is not his disposition, but his habits. Habits can help change one's disposition. An ancient admonition says, "The habits     

Debt and the Built Urban Environment: Examining the Growth of Urban Slums in the Less Developed Countries, 1990–2010

The present study examines the influence of external debt on the change in the proportion of the total population living in urban slum conditions in the less developed countries between 1990 and 2010, drawing from a political economy of the world-system theoretical perspective. Ordinary least squares panel regression illustrates external debt as a percent of gross national income has a statistically significant positive effect producing higher levels of urban slum growth. This result is recurrent across all developing countries but is particularly strong among sub-Saharan African nations. Further, urban population growth 1960–1990 exhibits a positive effect contributing to higher urban slum growth. The results support the hypothesis that external debt burden is an important factor contributing to higher levels of urban slum growth in the less developed countries between 1990 and 2010. This effect, moreover, is particularly strong among sub-Saharan African countries relative to developing countries within other regions of the world.     

Developing a Common Language in Children's Services through Research‐based Inter‐disciplinary Training

Two sources of inertia to improving services for children in need are the difficulties of getting evidence into practice and the complications of inter‐agency working. Current training arrangements in social work and disparities between children's services professions as regards training requirements are contributory factors. The Common Language project is a work in progress, adopting a research‐based, inter‐disciplinary approach to working with social workers and other children's services professionals. It comprises core ideas and methods to complement the more specialist knowledge and skills required in each profession. Underpinned by a child development perspective and a scientific development cycle, it rests on a conceptual framework including need, threshold, service and outcome. The approach has three components (each of which includes training): (1) the implementation of practice tools; (2) the planning and development of integrated services; and (3) supporting materials, including practitioner‐orientated modules and a curriculum for PhD students. Distinguishing features include research utilisation, notably a focus on inculcating research‐mindedness as opposed to imparting findings, and also collaborative professional working, in particular via practical connections between different agencies, stakeholders and countries. The project is being evaluated in terms of uptake, change in professional thinking and practice and effects on child well‐being. Next steps for the project relate to broader lessons for social work training emerging from research and development elsewhere.     

Changing Attitudes to ‘Passing For White’ in an Urban Coloured Community

The paper suggests a framework for the comparative study of the situations in South Africa and Northern Ireland. It builds on John Rex's view of a race relations situation and compares both the overt practices of discrimination and also the inner perceptions and interpretations of the participants. One aim is to establish, for these two areas, whether the decisive causes of the intractable character of the conflicts lie in the economic and political conditions which obtain or in the way these situations are perceived and understood by the groups in them. Another aim is to suggest how the differences between South Africa and Northern Ireland ‐ in both the practice of inequality and also in the racist or sectarian ideology used to justify it ‐ might or might not make for a peaceful resolution of the conflicts.     

Do Sons or Daughters Give More Money to Parents in Urban China?

The patriarchal structure of the traditional Chinese family suggests that sons, more than daughters, provide financial support to elderly parents. The norm of receiving support in old age primarily from sons, however, may have been undermined by dramatic demographic, economic, and cultural changes occurring over the last several decades in China, especially in urban areas. We examine gender differences in adult children’s financial support to parents using a recent data set (“Study of Family Life in Urban China”) collected in 1999 (N = 1,801). The results show that married daughters, especially those living with parents, provide more financial support to parents than married sons do. This significant gender difference can be primarily explained by daughters’ resources, such as education and income.     

Where Are the Children's Experiences? Analysing Social and Cultural Exclusion in 'Special' and 'Mainstream' Schools

In this paper we employ ethnographic data to illustrate that disabled children encounter discriminatory notions of 'normality' and 'difference' in both 'special' and 'mainstream' schools, and that these experiences relate to both the structural forces in schools, and the everyday individual and cultural practices of adults and children. In contrast to much of the literature in the field, this paper examines the everyday life experiences of adults and disabled children from their own perspective. We highlight disabled children's own criticisms of 'special' and 'mainstream' schools to illustrate the fluid nature of disabled children's lives within educational settings. We argue that schools will be prevented from becoming fully inclusive until adults who control schools take account of children's views of specific educational processes and until educational policy makers adopt a more nuanced multi-level approach to inclusion. Children should be enabled to challenge the structural, cultural and individual conditions which create disability.     

Back to nature! Or not? Urban dwellers and their forest in berlin

What type of urban nature do urban dwellers prefer? Contributing to this ongoing discussion, this study presents the results of an internet and on-site field survey on general use and visitation pattern conducted in Grunewald Forest via a questionnaire; this is a 3000 ha area southwest of Berlin, Germany. The questions were developed in close cooperation with the local forestry administration and targeted the uncovering of user-specific needs and climate change-related conflicts. More than 1300 valid answers were analyzed, which made it possible to (1) identify and characterize different visitor groups, (2) identify reasons for an urban forest visit, (3) uncover the needs for infrastructure and information, (4) reflect on the survey methods used. The interesting findings include (I) the reasons for a visit highly coincide with forest-related properties in particular; however, the infrastructure preferences reveal the desire for managed greenspace; and (II) the answers obtained from the field differ significantly from those obtained online in various respects. The differences found suggest that the survey, with both online and on-site answers, is a major advantage for future studies regarding urban green infrastructure use. These results can be fruitfully used to inform urban forest management regarding user needs and create a better forestry information policy in the future.