Rights and Wrongs of Children's Work

6. Education, School, and Work

The point is not to romanticize either work or traditional societies—there are hazards aplenty for children in both—but to point out that ideas and assumptions common in industrial society about work, and about the role of work in children’s development, have been shown by anthropological research to have very limited applicability elsewhere. Even some work that is so dangerous or otherwise inappropriate for children that it merits outside intervention may at the same time help them develop skills, attitudes, and relationships they must acquire in order to succeed in their society. That does not obviate the case for protective intervention, which may in any event be necessary, but it does suggest that a good remedy will retain the developmentally positive effects of working while reducing the negative ones. In many instances this will mean making work more appropriate for children rather than taking them away from it, and we note that such a strategy is consistent with the UNCRC. Unnecessarily draconian measures barring or removing children from even safe work may pose unanticipated developmental risks to children when that work is linked to other social mechanisms that protect and empower them. Some anthropologists have looked into the effect of interventions on children at risk based on the discourse of child rights, and have found cases in which biases of industrial countries against child work have led to actions inimical to children’s cognitive, social, psychological, or moral development. How this occurs can be glimpsed in a rather emblematic little incident related in a study by anthropologist Rachel Burr (2006) of Vietnamese children at risk. She cites a case in which a remand school for boys was trying to move from a punitive to a rehabilitative approach in dealing with the young people assigned to its care. Realizing that the students were trapped by poverty and lack of livelihood skills into likely recidivism when put back on the street, the staff started a vocational program to teach them bicycle repair. The school understood that these boys needed skills to make an honest living if they were to escape the cycle of crime and arrest. Not having money for a typical vocational school class, the school set up a small business which would take in bicycles that the boys could repair under the teaching and direction of a skilled workman . The boys learned their trade on the job. Apprenticeship arrangements of this type are usual for acquiring such skills in Vietnam and perhaps most of the rest of the world. However, this bicycle repair workshop, although established for a social and educational purpose, was surprisingly condemned as a case of child labor by a visitor representing UNICEF, who insisted that the program should be closed down. This visitor, a European, saw the program only in terms of its commercial aspect, ignoring its educational and developmental purposes. What caused this unanticipated reaction that seemed so alien to the high purposes and unexceptional approach of the school staff? Was it because the learning and work components were joined together—actually, an educational RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF CHILDREN’S WORK 104 advantage—rather than separated from each other, as they might have been in Europe or North America? It appears likely that an ethnocentric view of the role of work in children’s development might have led the visiting official not only to misinterpret the facts of the case, but also to misconstrue international child rights and labor standards, which in fact could easily, logically, and legitimately have been applied in support of the bicycle shop as an educational program. The View from Economics Chapter 4 introduced the economic view of human development and discussed research into the relationships between poverty and children’s work, presenting the economic finding that healthier and more skilled populations—those with more “human capital”—contribute more to society and the economy. For the purpose of this kind of economic analysis, child development is defined very narrowly in terms of measurable education, health, and similar variables that can be analyzed as contributors toward national economic development. The costs and benefits of schools, health programs, and other social infrastructure are assessed within that conceptual framework. Defining human development in terms of adult contributions to economic output is an extremely constricted notion that pays little attention to what people really expect and pursue to provide meaning in their lives. A purely economic construction of human development might be useful for helping plan economic development programs and relating to peoples...