The Global Sociology Blog

First, via Le Monde comes this report from the World Health Organization stating that 1,000 children die every day from preventable injuries (the WHO press release puts that number at 2,000 but every other source I have read puts it at 1,000).

WHO | Preventable injuries kill 2000 children every day via kwout

That’s 10 million children a year, half of them could be saved with prevention measures. Africa has the highest rates of road crashes and poisoning whereas Southeast Asia gets first place for burns and the Middle East has the highest rates of falls.

The report also makes recommendations for each type of injuries:

• Seat-belts and child-restraints, helmets, pedestrian lanes, use of daytime running lights for vehicles, speed limits, laws against drinking alcohol and driving, and graduated driver licensing (which limits driving privileges for new drivers) are among the most successful interventions to prevent road traffic injuries.

• Use of life jackets, fencing around swimming pools, covering water hazards and prompt first aid in an emergency.

• Smoke alarms, child-resistant lighters and hot-water temperature regulators effectively prevent burns. Access to dedicated burn centres, where trained staff and equipment are available, can reduce the consequences of such injuries.

• Severe falls can be avoided by the use of fitted window guards, and specially designed children’s products and playground equipment that meet safety standards.

• Effective ways to prevent poisoning include safe storage of toxic agents, child-resistant packaging of medicines and other poisons, distributing medication in non-lethal quantities, and wider access to poison control centres.

A tall order, easier said than done especially considering the fact that, as usual, poverty is a major factor in all these risks with limited access to prevention and treatment. Children in poorer communities are more likely to live in hazardous conditions, in homes with open fires, unprotected windows, unsafe roofs and stairs, or near dense, fast-moving traffic. They often lack spaces and facilities for safe play.

And then, also from Le Monde, the Trends in International Maths and Science Study (TIMSS 2007) reveals that once again, Asian countries dominate these fields. Students in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan dominate Maths whereas students in Singapore, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea got the best scores on sciences.

The study tested 425,000 student at two levels (4th and 8th grades) in 48 countries. Even in the US where students are distinguished by ethnicity, Asian Americans score much higher than the American average. The ranking is especially bad for Yemen and the Gulf states both in Maths and sciences.

How do we explain these results which tend to be similar with the Program for International Student Assessment studies, conducted with 15 year-olds in 57 countries? Language seems to be key, especially Chinese, Korean and Japanese which allow children to decompose tens and promote faster mental calculation. As a result, according to international studies, three year-old Japanese children are behind compared to anglophone children but they are way ahead by age seven.

The UK record the best improvement in maths which might result from education reforms implemented in the 1990s which emphasized mental calculation whereas Hong Kong got the most improvement in sciences.

Now, of course, from a sociological point of view, I would love to see which social categories of children take these tests and participate in these studies. Social class might be a factor but not entirely, otherwise, the gulf states and Saudi Arabia might do better.