I've often wondered about this.In an ideal world (the world of western values?) kids would just be kids, playing and going to school. But that's not how it works - sometimes, if you don't work, you don't eat.

Now some international researchers are questioning whether the good intentions of banning children from working are doing more harm than good.
Obviously, I don't support exploitation of minors, or children working in dangerous jobs, but in cases where the adults are not earning enough to feed the family, should it be forbidden for the children to help contribute to the family budget ? Is it worse for the children to work , or to not work and suffer the consequences ? Less money, less food etc.
I'm on the fence: I don't think children should be working, but they also need to be eating. Is it a mistake to ban all child labour ?

Article: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/ ... ng-mistake

UN’s ban on child labour is a ‘damaging mistake’
A group of international academics has condemned a United Nations convention which bans child labour as “harmful and unnecessary”, arguing that allowing young children to work can have positive effects which are not being taken into account.

In a controversial letter to the Observer, the researchers, who all work in the fields of child development or human rights, say the UN committee on the rights of the child has ignored available evidence in favour of outdated and ill-informed western prejudices and policies which can have a negative impact on the ground.

Across the globe, 193 countries have committed to ending child labour by 2025 under the UN’s sustainable development goals. But the academics want the existing minimum age (15 in some countries, 18 in others), to be abandoned, arguing that “age-appropriate” work can be beneficial for children in both the developing and the developed worlds and gives poor children a chance to improve their lives.

One of the signatories, Dr Dorte Thorsen of the school of global studies at the University of Sussex, said: “Banning children from work doesn’t bring them back into school; in fact, it might do the opposite if they were working to pay their school fees...

General Mackevili wrote:Selling bracelets on the beach will open more doors for them than half the shit schools around the country, so yeah, maybe their best option.

By doors, you mean pedo mongers' hotel doors?

So many kids in the west are slave labour to useless algebra and trigonometry, wasting hours of their precious youth away, every day, in stinky classrooms.

In the 1980s and 1990s in Bangkok you would see many young boys in petrol stations washing cars and doing odd jobs. These boys were dirt poor from the countryside or homeless orphans. The service station owners would provide them a place to stay and food in return for doing jobs in the service station. The owners were generally pretty strict with the boys and was often regarded as a father-figure to them. Many of these boys stayed for years and learned how to become car mechanics. They could then move on to a well paid job and a good life. Then the do-gooders came along and said it was exploitation and stopped the practice so these boys were expelled onto the street to fend for themselves.

Was this child labour? Were the boys better off on the streets?

I don't know the latest rules in Australia, but I believe anyone over 15 who doesn't want to go to school, can work. There are a few under 15 working in fast food chains part time while going to school.

Should that be banned too?

If it is OK in Australia, is it OK in poor countries?

I think it would be worse if those who leave school were forced to sit around doing nothing.

explorer wrote: ↑Sun Nov 24, 2019 6:18 am I don't know the latest rules in Australia, but I believe anyone over 15 who doesn't want to go to school, can work. There are a few under 15 working in fast food chains part time while going to school.

Should that be banned too?

If it is OK in Australia, is it OK in poor countries?

I think it would be worse if those who leave school were forced to sit around doing nothing.

In New South Wales, you have to go to school from when you turn 6 until you finish Year 10 or turn 17. If you have finished Year 10 but you haven't turned 17 yet, then you need to do one of the following things: do some other form of education or training (like TAFE or an apprenticeship);

School leaving age increases in SA. New laws mean high school students in South Australia will have to continue their education until they turn 17 years old. The school leaving age has been lifted by a year, although students will not have to stay in high school full-time

In Western Australia, the law says you have to stay in school until you finish Year 10, turn 18 or get to the end of the year you turn 17 and a half.

In Victoria, the law is: Your child cannot leave schooling until they are 17 years old. Your child must go to a school campus (or an approved alternative) until they finish year 10

True, you don t know the rules.

So the age has been put up.

Many finish year 10 when they are 16.

And meanwhile, in Cambodia, children as young as 6 years old are paid 7/10ths of a cent for each clay brick they make by hand earning them a salary of less that a dollar a day.