I've wondered quietly to myself occasionally about why people get upset about child labour. I can understand that child education might be better than child labour, but is children working on farms really the work of satan? Isn't the issue child exploitation rather than labour or do people seriously want children to sit around playing while they and their parents starve? Compulsory education is largely a western thing. Having experienced primary school, secondary school (sort of) and university, I'm not convinced that educating us all to go off and become investment bankers is a lot kinder than giving us a little patch of land would be.
This issue is especially relevant in light of recent increases the rates of child obesity and overweight1. The fats kids you see in India aren't the labourers. The fatties are the educated kids, who have great dreams of investment banking, and child exploitation from the top of the exploitation chain. If Australia had the option of hard labour in place of less vigorous educational forms (which I'm convinced a lot of children would accept), then perhaps we could make a dent in our child obesity crisis
I believe education is important for equity, but not in itself. And given that 500 years ago virtually even child on the planet would have engaged in "child labour", I'm not convinced working is such a terrible thing. If you turn it into something miserable, with 10 hour days or heavy lifting, that's obviously a completely different story. But child labour is not necessarily child abuse and exploitation.
That said, I'd work hard to get more kids out of the field and into classrooms, if only so they have the power to make a choice between going back to the fields or becoming an investment banker.
1. Happily plagiarised straight from every journal article on child obesity I've ever read.
Well, the last sentence sums up the need for education, i.e. the power to make a choice.
I work for an organisation Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA) which works on child labour and education. And you would be surprised to know that there are thousands of children exploited at work. You said child exploitation is not necessarily child labour, but that is false. The child is exploited in a lot of ways- physical (perhaps even sexual), financial and moral in order to extract more work than is possible out of them.
I invite you to go through our website http://www.bba.org.in where in you shall read stories of children who were once exploited, but are now happy after their rescue. BBA has rescued and rehabilitated over 70,000 child/bonded labourers in the last 25 years.
Sandhya / 1:56pm / 15 September 2006
No, i just like food,sir
Indian Kid from India / 11:29pm / 15 September 2006
I’m worried that replacing “child labour” with “education” is one way that foreigners can come into a country, decide people are doing everything wrong, and try to change them. Education is extremely difficult to do well, and often ends up being a device for controlling people and changing cultures subversively. Truly culturally sensitive education is essentially an oxymoron. I think we need to examine each case individually before we decide that changing everything is the only option.
But I agree that in all those cases you mention, something should be done. And education is definitely a powerful force for empowerment.
Ryan / 6:21pm / 16 September 2006