On SOS it is our commitment to continue helping young people who often have nowhere else to turn and trying to reach the many more who need our help. Sadly, despite our very best efforts and the kind support of our loyal funders, we lack the resources to be able to this and call on commissioners to act now. Receiving our newsletter will mean you will be the first to hear about the impact of our work.
Get the latest from the St Giles Newsletter. Subscribe now. From neither of these views can tragedy derive, simply because neither represents a balanced concept of life. Above all else, tragedy requires the finest appreciation by the writer of cause and effect. No tragedy can therefore come about when its author fears to question absolutely everything, when he regards any institution, habit or custom as being either everlasting, immutable or inevitable.
In the tragic view the need of man to wholly realize himself is the only fixed star, and whatever it is that hedges his nature and lowers it is ripe for attack and examination.
Which is not to say that tragedy must preach revolution. The Greeks could probe the very heavenly origin of their ways and return to confirm the rightness of laws. And Job could face God in anger, demanding his right and end in submission. But for a moment everything is in suspension, nothing is accepted, and in this sketching and tearing apart of the cosmos, in the very action of so doing, the character gains "size," the tragic stature which is spuriously attached to the royal or the high born in our minds.
The commonest of men may take on that stature to the extent of his willingness to throw all he has into the contest, the battle to secure his rightful place in the world. There is a misconception of tragedy with which I have been struck in review after review, and in many conversations with writers and readers alike.
It is the idea that tragedy is of necessity allied to pessimism. Even the dictionary says nothing more about the word than that it means a story with a sad or unhappy ending.
This impression is so firmly fixed that I almost hesitate to claim that in truth tragedy implies more optimism in its author than does comedy, and that its final result ought to be the reinforcement of the onlooker's brightest opinions of the human animal.
For, if it is true to say that in essence the tragic hero is intent upon claiming his whole due as a personality, and if this struggle must be total and without reservation, then it automatically demonstrates the indestructible will of man to achieve his humanity. The possibility of victory must be there in tragedy. Where pathos rules, where pathos is finally derived, a character has fought a battle he could not possibly have won.
The pathetic is achieved when the protagonist is, by virtue of his witlessness, his insensitivity, or the very air he gives off, incapable of grappling with a much superior force. Pathos truly is the mode for the pessimist. But tragedy requires a nicer balance between what is possible and what is impossible. As a result of these conditions, Afghan children suffer from one of the highest mortality rates in the world.
According to UN data, the mortality rate for Afghan children under five years of age ranked second in Life expectancy remains low, at 44 in With such grim statistics for the adult population, children would be unable to thrive even under peaceful conditions. A large number of Afghan children are physically disabled.
During the late s, according to United Nations estimates, more than , Afghan children, victims of war, were disabled. A survey taken in found that there were between , and , disabled Afghans, or 2. Among the disabled, half were under the age of Afghan children also have had to contend with the destruction of the educational system. Much of this destruction occurred during the Soviet occupation.
Since , the argument that much progress in education has been made is repeated often. The most frequently cited statistic is that more than five million children, both boys and girls, now attend school.
Given that in one million children were going to school, the new figure is good news. But this good news offers an incomplete picture. In fact, just as many children of school age do not go to school due to a variety of constraints, including the primary reason — they serve as the main income earners for both urban and rural families.
In addition, schools are not evenly distributed throughout the country; in the south and east, for example, where the war is being fought, few schools are operating. Some of the problems faced in this area are discussed in two recent reports from Kabul. These reports disclose, among other things, the practice of US and other foreign military forces of offering school supplies as part of its campaign to win over the population, which has placed children and the schools that they attend at risk of attack by armed insurgents.
In , the high death toll continues. Meanwhile, as many as six million Afghan children are acutely vulnerable. They are not attending school. They are searching for work on urban streets and in fields. And they are at risk of exploitation, poor health, severe injury, and needless death.
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