by Mark Waybill

Created on: November 25, 2009

Child labor is these days seen as a bad thing by many, especially in the more well off areas of society. It is seen as a remnant of a less civilized and harsher past, and many will think of Dickensian thoughts at the mention of it, many will associate it with times past and best forgotten or despised. But the thing in itself is not a good or bad thing, and taking as one does the purely rational perspective, it is to be treated as such until one finds an issue with it.

When thinking on the issue one was reminded of the issue of slavery and one came to some conclusions on that issue. The gist of the conclusions were that slavery in itself is not good or bad, it is the unfairness created by its use in select areas of society which is bad, and then one was reminded of ones conclusions on a tiered social structure and how there was no unfairness if one group was below another, so long as all individuals within each group were equal.

Child labor is similar to slavery, although it is often paid work as well as slave work. As such it should be treated similarly, as a form of work that in itself is not a bad thing, so long as certain children do not have to work more than others and the conditions of work are good. But in both these tests it fails, as child labor is not uniform throughout society. Poor children work more than rich children. Thus child labor's real state fails the fairness test. The working conditions are often not good either, especially in the past, and as such it fails twice.

However theoretically it is not a good or bad thing. It is good because it does extra work for society, and bad because it takes up time that could be spent educating children to higher positions. But somebody has to do the grunt work, so why not children? After all they outnumber adults, are stronger than many adults and are fitter and more alert than adults. Surely they make the ideal workforce for factory and mining work etc? Well as well as the aforementioned unfairness and bad working conditions that will inevitably arise from a reintroduction of the system, it is also inefficient.

Child labor worked in the past. But when education became compulsory this began to change and now more people are getting good jobs. The sort of jobs once performed by those hard working children are now performed by machines (think of modern mining techniques, the lack of chimneys with the replacement of the fire by the electric heating device etc) or are outsourced to poorer countries where workers will work harder for their bread and water. So, it seems like child labor is unecessary and unfair. Why use it?

Why indeed. Whilst there are pros for its usage, the cons far outweigh it. Some might argue it instills a sense of hard work and discipline in young people. but this can be done by educators and by work colleagues, or if the young people play sport by their sporting masters. Others might argue that it deprives children of their childhood, but if this were uniform and all children 'suffered' equally the terrors of working for their bread and water, there would be no unfairness, and only an idealist could argue otherwise.

Thus child labor is unecessary, inefficient, and outdated.

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