Marilaine, the girl who just wanted an education

I can't imagine a 13-year-old in the 21st century being denied the right to an education and forced into child labor. The New York Times Magazine did a feature on Marilaine, a 13-year-old Haitian girl with an impoverished family and separated parents, who walked all the way to her father's house to ask for money to go to school only to be forced into child labor. Although Marilaine did get more food and was allowed to attend a free afternoon school, her arms and legs were covered with scars from beatings and she was never allowed to see her parents.

It wasn't until an aid group called the Restavek Freedom Foundation stepped in that Marilaine was able to escape and take refuge in a safe house for child laborers. From there she was able to reunite with her family members and relatives, who were all shocked to see her alive but didn't display any sort of relief or gladness. She was just one more mouth to feed if she were to return and stay with them. Marilaine just wanted to return to the safe house and live there so she could get a good education.

The average child in America grumbles about school, complaining about not feeling like doing work and jumping for joy when vacation rolls around. We often complain when we don't feel like a topic is of much use to us, asking, "why do we even need to know this?" But kids like Marilaine have a real hunger for knowledge and they want an education because they want to simply learn. We forget what a blessing it is that we can acquire knowledge about the world around us, even when that knowledge won't be applied on a daily basis in our lives. At least we can fill our brains with facts that make us more knowledgeable people; at least we can know for the sake of knowing.

Every child has a right to education. Children every day are being denied education and sometimes even denied a home and a family because their parents or relatives are too poor to support or feed them. Human trafficking is often linked to poverty. Some families have to sell their children away because they can't support them. As is suggested at the end of this feature article, a solution to this can be to improve birth control methods in these countries so that families can limit the number of children they have. Another solution can be to make education free so that paying a tuition wouldn't be a burden to these families.