BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – For Illinois Wesleyan University Professor Irving Epstein, who has studied issues involving street children, child labor and delinquency education, a society can be judged by the welfare of its children.
“Children symbolize the way in which societies interact,” said Epstein. “You can ascertain much about a society by the way its children are treated.”
Epstein enlisted his interest in the welfare of children as the general editor of a new encyclopedia that goes beyond facts and figures. The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Children’s Issues Worldwide is a six-volume set that includes essays by 174 contributors covering 126 different countries. Issues including children’s education, child labor, child abuse and neglect, play and recreation and religion are analyzed in each chapter.
“On a global level, children’s lives can be thrown away and neglected. They don’t have political capital in many societies,” said Epstein, an instructor with Illinois Wesleyan since 1996 who teaches a course on international human rights. “Even in our own society, children are the ones who are the casualties of poverty and abuse. There needs to be some accountability for how children are treated.”