It's called Listen! and the exclamation mark is important because, as one young contributor puts it so well: ''The saying 'children should be seen and not heard' gives adults more time to talk when they really have nothing important to say and children have a lot of important things to say but nobody will listen.'' Thank you, Jennifer Hardie of Broughton High School, Edinburgh.
Listen! marks the start of something of a fightback by Scotland's one million children and The Scottish Executive could do a lot worse than install a free copy of this volume in every bathroom in the land. It is part of the Million Children Campaign, launched last November by Save the Children to raise funds and give that chronically under-represented 20% of the population a chance to have their say.
Marc Lambert, Children's Programme Director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival observes: ''All too often the thoughts, aspirations, and opinions of children, if they are heard at all, are filtered through adult preconceptions and judged on the basis of adult concerns.''
The editors of Listen! have done their damnedest not to filter or shape the hundreds of poems, drawings, and short essays that poured in from schoolchildren throughout Scotland. Dodgy syntax, dreadful spelling, even smudges have all been faithfully reproduced. Miss Brodie might burl in her grave but the message is that this is the authentic voice of Scotland's youngsters, not some artifice contrived to please the mums and dads. There's something compulsive about this book. I'd intended to dip into it but then felt compelled to read it cover to cover. Some contributions are uplifting. Others made me cry. What stood out were the creative power of the writing and the confidence and resonance of these voices, whether celebrating family love or lambasting bullies.
Today, there's no doubting the number one menace in these children's lives: drugs. An alarmingly high proportion has that focus and if there is one policy message to be taken from this collection, it is that as a nation we aren't grasping this nettle. Kirsty McAlpine of Glasgow Braendam Link Project, writes: ''One day I was playing with my friend Jaqueline. It was sunny and we were playing with the ball and the ball landed on a used needle . . . all this happened in my back garden. I don't play in my back garden anymore my little brother Paul who is autistic could of gone out and found the needle and injected himself. If I was prime minister and I could pass one law it would be no more needles in gardens.''
Several children describe with chilling clarity the way their lives and communities are being destroyed by crime and drugs. One 16-year-old reveals how his brother set fire to the family home because their mother wouldn't give him money for drugs. There are several poignant contributions on bullying, including this heart-rending depiction of the misery and isolation of the victim from an unnamed Edinburgh child:
''Been tormented again today.
Until I almost cracked.
Lonely and afraid no-one would talk to me.
Like I am a leper or something.
You, stop this I told the bullies they just laughed, cruel laughs. Is there something
wrong with me?
Nobody can help me. Go away and leave me alone I scream inside my head. They never
will.''
In fact, all the big issues are here in some form - love, race, child abuse, alcoholism, the environment - all tackled with the sort of thoughtfulness and compassion children are rarely credited with. Their wishes for the future range from the simple (''I wish for a fish, said one five-year-old, clearly enjoying the rhyme) to the fanciful (''Wings''/ ''Xmas every Sunday''/''a tunnel under the Pentland Firth''). Some serve up rib-tickling futuristic fantasies, such as Rory Carmichael from Perth High School who, a century hence, has us learning our history from the talking heads of old
people, preserved in glass jars in a special liquid. But for now the heads that are talking belong to Scotland's children. Are we listening?
n Listen! The hopes and dreams of Scotland's Million Children (Glowworm Books #4.95). All profits to Save the Children.
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