Should children be expected to work?

Nguyễn Tú Lan Anh BABAWE170

Lương Thụy Nhiên BABAWE170
Hồ Bảo Trân BABAWE170
Nguyễn Nhạc Lễ Thi BABAWE17094

WRITING AE1 – HCM International University

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Should children be expected to work?

ABSTRACT
This report investigates the positive and negative impacts of early-aged working on
school children. The aim is to emphasize on the consequences of child labor by
suggesting one positive and three negative influences. This has been conducted by
collecting the facts and statistics about global child labor, followed by analyzing the
impacts of working on children and reasons why they should or should not work
according to several famous websites and books and end up with a slight solution.
Should children be expected to work?

FACTS AND STATISTICS

 More than 200 million children today are child laborers. An estimated 120 million
are engaged in hazardous work.
 73 million of these children are below 10 years old.
 The highest number of child laborers is in sub-Saharan Africa.
 The number of children in armed conflicts have risen to 300,000 over the past
decade.
 Most children work on farms that produce consumer products such as cocoa,
coffee, cotton, rubber and other crops.
 20 million child workers are employed in factories that make garments, carpets,
toys, matches and hand-rolled cigarettes.

Percentage of children aged 5 to 17 years engaged in child labor at the time of the
survey, by sex of the child and by region

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Should children be expected to work?

SHOULD CHILDREN BE EXPECTED TO WORK?

Children and work are two terms that bring many opposite opinions when mentioned.
Some people claim that kids need to work or participate in social labor to have more
“life-skills”. On the other hand, most people are opposed to the involvement of
children in labor force activities because they are at an age when other activities, such
as education and play, should be the central role in development. As far as I am
concerned, although working helps children improve living skills, it also has several
drawbacks, including effects on children’s health, education and childhood.

WORKING NEGATIVELY AFFECTS CHILDREN’S MENTAL AND PHYSICAL HEALTH

To begin, children are undeniably fragile and undeveloped that can mentally and
physically be affected by hard work. Indeed, they cannot handle the stress and the
intensity in manual work. According to World Report on Child Labor 2015, children in
hazardous work that directly harms their health, safety or moral development make
up more than half of all child laborers, numbering 85 million in absolute terms. The
damage, caused by even one of those reasons above, would be hard to recover. In
terms of physical health, child laborers are usually made to do jobs involving heavy
manual works for long hours and the use of pesticides or even dangerous tools.
Moreover, people do not value child’s productivity since their effort is small so they
tend to leave the heavy job to children without thinking. And they - the children - have
to suffer all of it due to undernourishment and poor working conditions. This could
result in lifetime-shortening issue or injuries, which may scar him or her for centuries.
Besides the working environment, immoral management should also be taken into
account. Children may be at risk of sexual abuse and exploitation. At the same time,
they are frequent victims of maltreatment, physical and psychological violence or
abuse by supervisors, co-workers and outsiders. Such problem may result in mental
trauma in these children. This is tremendously dangerous because children are not
fully prepared as well as capable of shielding themselves from the complicated
environment of workplace. When they grow up, they will eventually find it hard to
forget the horrible past which leads to depression and psychological obstacle in their
future jobs.
Should children be expected to work?

WORKING INFLUENCE CHILDREN’S EDUCATION

The second main reason that children should not work is the affection to their time
and strength to join classes at school. Every child should be educated by his family
members, friends and especially at school, where their brainpower and literacy can
be fully developed. Working full time jobs takes their time and health, which should
have been spent on educational activities. As reported by the Vietnam Living Standard
Surveys carried out in 1993 and 1998, it has been realized that child labor have
significantly negative impacts on children’s school enrolment and grade attainment.
Even for a developed country such as Portugal, child labor is found to increase the
student’s probability of repeating a grade (Goulart and Bedi, 2008). Furthermore,
there is an undeniable fact that at the tender age, children’s learning and approaching
to new knowledge is rather fast; therefore, working hard in this time will retard their
mental growth, which leads to incompletely-formed brains in adulthood. There is
nothing more essential to a child than fully growing up in ease and happiness and
being educated and it is not acceptable to fall behind just because of a few pennies.
Wide knowledge is the key to success and better earnings in the future. Although jobs
may help gaining soft skills, they also make children lose much more than they can
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Should children be expected to work?

receive. As they are too young, soft skills and experience should be achieved from
studying or outdoor activities rather than from work, which seems to be quite
overwhelming and inappropriate. Moreover, work pressure can at the same time
affect children education, emotion and behavior which eventually become main
reasons for school violence between students.

WORKING RUINS CHILDREN’S CHILDHOOD

In addition to having a negative impact on children’s education, child labor is believed
to ruin their innocent childhood. Childhood is commonly seen as a time for play and
learning, so children who are forced to work undoubtedly lack the sophisticated
memories and experience of being pure-hearted and playful. Besides, child workers
cannot feel the freedom that is unique to their time of childhood because they are
employed in factories. “Children who are compelled to work are robbed of childhood
themselves.” UNICEF Executive Director Ann M. Veneman said today on the
International Day Against Child Labor. Indeed, a number of children have been seen
to be deprived of their childhood and do not get the opportunity to enjoy life as
children should do. They are not allowed to play, study or go to school since they are
striving hard to earn their living by working in roadside stalls, shops, markets, railway
platforms, restaurants and in several households as domestic help. Most commonly,
children are seen doing odd jobs such as polishing shoes, washing dishes. They are
not paid well and are seen as a cheap source of labor that makes them vulnerable to
exploitation by the masses. These children are seen to toil over working hours and
slog their lives out for a meal or for a few pennies to support their families who are
below the poverty line instead of playing video games and doing all the things that
normal children do. This might result in children having trouble understanding basic
knowledge and difficulties in logical and abstract thinking. Moreover, the amount of
pressure from work has a tremendous impact on the psychological development of
children. As a result, children may suffer from depression which prevent them from
making friends and integrating into the community.
Should children be expected to work?

WORKING IMPULSES CHILDREN’S MATURITY

By contrast, if children go to work at the early age, they will be more mature and ready
for life than others. For example, they will know how important money is and learn
how to use it in a correct way. Moreover, they can gain soft skills that are not taught
at schools, such as communication skill, how to control money, and how to live
without technology. According to Markmerrill website, when children go to work, they
will gain self-discipline and will learn how to appreciate the work of others.
Furthermore, work is healthy for both mind and body (After the headline). In addition,
besides working in the morning, they can also attend night classes to improve their
knowledge. However, despite there are few benefits for children to work, there are
still many opinions say that they should not work. Base on Deabate.org, working can
cause stress by overworking and some children may even make big mistakes. When
they know about the money’s value, they might become greedy and start stealing
valued things. Additionally, even they attend night classes, they still do not get enough
knowledge and working in the morning and studying at night, they will be exhausted
and cannot do anything when they get sick. One more thing, although they can live
without technology, they will have less opportunity than other. For instance,
nowadays, if they want to become a driver of Grab Bike, they have to know how to
use a smartphone in order to get their customers.

CONCLUSION
In general, letting children go to work has both advantages and disadvantages. They
can be have physical and mental injuries, do not have enough time and strength to
study, and be ruined their childhood. Besides those drawbacks, there are also several
benefits that they will be more mature than others and can gain soft skills for their
real life. However, the disadvantages still outweighs the advantages. “Children should
have pens in their hands not tools”, said Iqbal Masih. Therefore, the government
should encourage children to go to school by providing stipends to the children’s
families to compensate them for the lost income. “There can be no keener revelation
of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children", President Nelson
Mandela said at the launch of the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund. Children are
today’s future, they need to be cared and loved with whole heart, in which way they
can be fully developed and become useful members of the society.

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Should children be expected to work?

REFERENCES

Fran Abrams, BBC News (2010). Should children be expected to work? Retrieve from
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-11351057

The World Counts (2014). From the sweat of our children. Retrieve from
http://www.theworldcounts.com/stories/Child-Labor-Facts-and-Statistics

UNICEF global databases (2017) based on DHS, MICS and other nationally representative surveys, 2010-
2016. Retrieve from https://data.unicef.org/topic/child-protection/child-labour

Nelson Mandela (1995). Speech by President Nelson Mandela at the launch of the Nelson Mandela
Children's Fund. Retrieve from
http://db.nelsonmandela.org/speeches/pub_view.asp?pg=item&ItemID=NMS250&txtstr=Mahla

Natasha Sum, ChildFund Australia (2017). Child labour: depriving children of childhood. Retrieve
from https://www.childfund.org.au/child-labour-depriving-children-childhood

UNICEF Media Press Release (2006). Child labour robs children of childhood, impedes development.
Retrieve from https://www.unicef.org/media/media_34504.html

Anonymous (2011). 5 Reasons Your Child Should Work. Retrieve from

http://www.markmerrill.com/5-reasons-your-child-should-work/

Should children be allowed to work? Retrieve from http://www.debate.org/opinions/should-

children-be-allowed-to-work

International Labour Organization, World Report on Child Labour 2015. Retrieve from
https://www.compassion.com/multimedia/world-report-on-child-labour.pdf

Journal of Asian Economics 36 (2015), The Impact of Child Labor on Children’s Educational
Performance, 1-13.