Page 116 - Studentr's Book_THINK 1_A2

THJNK

Hard journeys for
schoolchildren

Culture

Look at the photos and answer the questions.
Then say what you think the article is going to
be about.
Where can you see ...
• a student riding to school on a donkey?
• children walking to school along some rail tracks?

<n>) 1 2 .0 7 Read and listen to the article and say
which country each photo is from.

har dt jour neis

EOR(S.GHO0KCH'IIsDREN' f / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / ^

‘How do you get to school?’ This question often gets an answer like ‘By bus’ or ‘I walk’ or ‘My parents
take me by car’. But not always - there are children in many different parts of the world who, every day,
have to go on a difficult journey in order to get to th eir lessons. They travel for kilometres on foot,
or by boat, bicycle, donkey or train . They cross deserts, mountains, rivers, snow and ice: for example,
the children of the Ihupiat community in Alaska go to school and then come back when i t is dark, in
extremely cold temperatures. And they are not the only ones. Kids in many countries do this and more.

These children in Indonesia have to cross a bridge ten have to go to work or get married young. So girls are happy
metres above a dangerous river to get to their class to take a risk in order to get to school.
on time. (Some years ago the bridge fell down after Six-year-old Fabricio Oliveira gets on his donkey every
very heavy rain.) Then they walk many more kilometres morning to ride with his friends for over an hour through a
through the forest to their school in Banten. desert region in the very dry Sertao area of northeast Brazil.
A pupil at Gulu Village Primary School, China, rides Their school is in Extrema. It’s a tiny village - very few people
a donkey as his grandfather walks beside him. Gulu live there.
is a mountain village in a national park. The school is These children live in houses on Chetla Road in Delhi, India.
far away from the village. It is halfway up a mountain, Their homes are near the busy and dangerous railway lines
so it takes five hours to climb from the bottom of the that go to Alipur station. Every morning they walk along the
mountain to the school. The children have a dangerous tracks to get to their school, 40 minutes away.
journey: the path is only 45 centimetres wide in some So one question we can ask is: why do the children do this?
places. Because their parents make them do it? The answer, in many
In Sri Lanka, some children have to cross a piece cases, is no - it’s because for them going to school means a
of wood between two walls of an old castle every better future: they hope to get a job and money so they can
morning. Their teacher watches them carefully. But in help their families and their neighbours. And this is why rivers,
Galle, Sri Lanka, many girls don’t go to school - they deserts or danger won’t stop them on their way to school.