How is society effected?

My parents always encouraged me to go to school, get an education and find a profession that interests me which will allow me to support myself when I am older. I realize now that my friends and I and other classmates are a group of young adults who are on our way to making up a new generation of professionals who will ultimately support, influence and impact our society. We rely on the lessons our parents and elders teach us as well as our education to guide us through to adulthood. Thus, a society, which raises child soldiers, must be greatly affected by the loss of such a large population of future leaders, doctors, teachers and good citizens. What can the future of a country be if they lose a generation of children? One of the most impacting results of being a child soldier is the loss “of education and work experience . . . largely because of the time away rather than violence and brutality.” It must be extremely difficult for a former child soldier, who was under the pressures and threats of death and violence, to assimilate back into a functioning society. I have heard many times that my teenage years are supposed to be considered the best years of my life. Child soldiers are missing these years, fighting when they could be learning to read, write and learn life’s lessons outside of war. The lack of education does not only affect the individual but also society and its economy. The nation’s economy ultimately suffers when “children who are in the army do not go to school, [and] do not prepare to enter the workforce, etc.” It makes me sad to think of the plight of child soldiers who not only are loosing the freedoms and joys of their youth but are also robbed of a functioning and stable adulthood.

http://blogs.cgdev.org/globaldevelopment/2007/10/former_child_soldiers_pariahs_1.php

http://www.itvs.org/beyondthefire/Lesson_plan2.html