4 ms·

Of course, it's reasonable to be horrified by what child laborers endured and the reasons why we created laws to send kids to school instead and outlawed child

Of course, it's reasonable to be horrified by what child laborers endured and the reasons why we created laws to send kids to school instead and outlawed child labor of this sort, but to this day most American public schools have spring break and summer break as artifacts inherited from a time when most people were farm workers and children only attended school when their labor wasn't needed for planting in spring and harvesting throughout the summer. Average age of education for women when Lincoln was president was 2nd to 4th grade. The GED was created by the military because dropping out of high school to go to work was common. Farm workers frequently stopped attending school after 8th grade. In the Deep South, with segregated schools, there sometimes weren't local high schools for Black students. Kids sometimes repeated 8th grade so they could stay in school until the family moved to a northern city where it was possible to attend high school. Currently, we have a great many people saddled with college student loans and it's an excessive burden. It's a real problem and it needs to be solved, but it grows out of the idea that if you complete college, you are practically guaranteed to have a good career making good money and so we let people borrow to get the good life and now so many people have college some are waiting tables because there aren't enough jobs in their field. In another 100 years, maybe having a doctorate will be some kind of default norm and hopefully we will have solved the problem of how to make ends meet when that doctorate doesn't get you a spiffy career and you are still waiting tables. Progress is a wonderful thing -- real progress, I mean, and never mind the growing pains involved in raising our expectations when things don't turn out like we imagined. I hope we continue to grow. But historically child labor was somewhat necessary to human survival. And given the apparently growing problem in the US with homelessness, I'm not sure it's reasonable to look back on this and feel morally superior.

cscurmudgeon 3y ago
> American public schools have spring break and summer break as artifacts I mean those are common almost everywhere and a quick search indicates another reason for their origin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_break https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_break > In the mid-1930s, a swimming coach from Colgate University decided to take his team down to Florida for some early training at a brand-new Olympic-size pool in sunny Fort Lauderdale. The idea clicked with other college swim coaches and soon the spring training migration became an annual tradition for swimmers nationwide. Now, spring break is an academic tradition in various mostly western countries that is scheduled for different periods depending on the state and sometimes the region. https://www.onlineschools.org/visual-academy/spring-break/ https://www.onlineschools.org/visual-academy/spring-break/
- DoreenMichele 3y ago
  That's college spring break, not spring break for minors attending K-12. The first public school in the US colonies was established in 1635, roughly 300 years before that. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education_in_the_... I'm not readily finding a nice, neat blurb that literally says "spring break in elementary school/K-12 was so kids could help plant on the farm" but my understanding is that is correct.
BeFlatXIII 3y ago
I'm not seeing the connection between a lack of child labor and an increase of homelessness.
- DoreenMichele 3y ago
  They are both a form of human suffering and hardship which can reasonably be traced back to cruelty or callousness by other people. If we could arrange society to send kids to school instead of the mines, we can arrange society to provide adequate housing for all instead of claiming it's a personal problem and they are all just crazies and junkies -- as if crazies and junkies just want to be that way and it's not a hard problem to solve, and never mind it's not even true that homeless are just junkies. Lack of affordable housing is the real root cause.
cmeacham98 3y ago
You seem to have fallen for the "is/ought" fallacy. You provide several examples of child labor occurring, but then conclude in the final sentence that "child labor was somewhat necessary to human survival". Similarly, if I listed several previous wars, that wouldn't prove that "war was somewhat necessary to human survival".
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

cscurmudgeon 3y ago

> American public schools have spring break and summer break as artifacts I mean those are common almost everywhere and a quick search indicates another reason for their origin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_break https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_break > In the mid-1930s, a swimming coach from Colgate University decided to take his team down to Florida for some early training at a brand-new Olympic-size pool in sunny Fort Lauderdale. The idea clicked with other college swim coaches and soon the spring training migration became an annual tradition for swimmers nationwide. Now, spring break is an academic tradition in various mostly western countries that is scheduled for different periods depending on the state and sometimes the region. https://www.onlineschools.org/visual-academy/spring-break/ https://www.onlineschools.org/visual-academy/spring-break/

DoreenMichele 3y ago
That's college spring break, not spring break for minors attending K-12. The first public school in the US colonies was established in 1635, roughly 300 years before that. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education_in_the_... I'm not readily finding a nice, neat blurb that literally says "spring break in elementary school/K-12 was so kids could help plant on the farm" but my understanding is that is correct.

BeFlatXIII 3y ago

I'm not seeing the connection between a lack of child labor and an increase of homelessness.

DoreenMichele 3y ago
They are both a form of human suffering and hardship which can reasonably be traced back to cruelty or callousness by other people. If we could arrange society to send kids to school instead of the mines, we can arrange society to provide adequate housing for all instead of claiming it's a personal problem and they are all just crazies and junkies -- as if crazies and junkies just want to be that way and it's not a hard problem to solve, and never mind it's not even true that homeless are just junkies. Lack of affordable housing is the real root cause.

cmeacham98 3y ago

You seem to have fallen for the "is/ought" fallacy. You provide several examples of child labor occurring, but then conclude in the final sentence that "child labor was somewhat necessary to human survival". Similarly, if I listed several previous wars, that wouldn't prove that "war was somewhat necessary to human survival".

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]