Project

Essential Question: What role does a victim's gender play in the public's reaction to child abuse? My final project was aimed to address the issue of child abuse in Hawai'i. I felt that child abuse in Hawai'i was a very serious problem, because many of the parents often overlook the difference between discipline and abuse. The children, therefore, get seriously injured or may even result in death. It is entirely unfair for the children, especially when, often times, they have done nothing wrong. And even for the children that have done something wrong, there are other means of disciplining a child. Since the public plays a major role in this issue, because they are the ones that could save a child's life, I decided to examine the public's reaction to child abuse, and whether the child's gender played a role in how the public reacted. Through my research, I found that the age of the child plays a larger role than the gender. Although the gender of the child did produce different results, as far as the public's reaction, the age of the child definitely made the difference. For young girls and boys, there was a lot of compassion for the child. But for older boys, the public often viewed boys as tougher versus an older girl. Therefore, the public usually did not react with as much compassion as they did for a girl. Overall, I've learned that to better the child abuse situation in Hawai'i alone, the best thing that I could do was through my learning tool. It is literally a learning tool that any person with access to a computer and internet is able to look up on youtube the video I had prepared. I've learned that by educating and making the general public aware of how serious the situation is, is the first step to saving a child's life.

1) Proposal 2) Editorial 3) Research Paper 4) Learning Tool