6 votes

Child labour doesn’t have to be exploitation – it gave me life skills

3 comments

  1. ohyran
    Link
    Yes, yes we can. It's called laws. Child labour as in working on a family farm is not a huge problem or something that is prohibited - BUT blocking school absolutely is. We know exactly why...

    Involving parents enables them to make the right decisions. My advice has always been that children should have the chance to go to school, as I did 60 years ago, to play and to act their age. However, we cannot tell mothers and fathers how to parent or what to do in their own homes.

    Yes, yes we can. It's called laws.

    Child labour as in working on a family farm is not a huge problem or something that is prohibited - BUT blocking school absolutely is. We know exactly why children should spend part of their childhood to learn complex and sometimes abstract skills as that is basically when you can pick those up easily.

    The muddying of working as chores or for the family, and working as labour in this text is either horrifying or clumsy.

    Children, the farmers of tomorrow, play a crucial role in the rural economy. They learn skills by observation and participating in activities such as building houses, fishing, preparing food – all essential for survival.

    The issue is giving them a chance to not work in agriculture, to not tie the continent of Africa in to a roll of global farmers. The right to free education, the right to change your future, are critical and while that means children are tied to some core schooling that is way better than providing nothing.

    If this is an argument that parents should be able to ask their kids to work on the farm - sure, no absolutely NO ONE says they cant. If this is an argument that children should be relieved from schooling then that is moronic. If this is an argument that employers should be able to employ children as labour - we know exactly what that does. And it isn't making kids "despise labour", its creating incentive to only employ children as cheaper, expendable and non-argumentative workers at the cost of everyone else.

    Again: NO ONE says kids shouldn't help out at the farm or be forced not to learn how to deal with the farm or should be lazy and "despise labour" - who is she arguing with?
    Also that Gandhi thing was just odd.

    16 votes
  2. spit-evil-olive-tips
    Link
    (insert giant honking disclaimer that I'm posting this because it's interesting, not necessarily because I agree with the author)

    (insert giant honking disclaimer that I'm posting this because it's interesting, not necessarily because I agree with the author)

    10 votes
  3. mrbig
    (edited )
    Link
    There’s a false dichotomy at the core of this article, which I can counter as follows: it is possible for something to be both undesirable and enlightening. I was enlightened after being hit by a...

    There’s a false dichotomy at the core of this article, which I can counter as follows: it is possible for something to be both undesirable and enlightening. I was enlightened after being hit by a car, but that doesn’t mean that being run over is a good thing. With that in mind, of course you can learn life lessons from being a child laborer, but that doesn’t entail that child labor is a good thing.

    Furthermore...

    Is international concern on child rights relevant to Africa?

    Yes, absolutely.

    7 votes