A Child's Right to Work

A recent worldwide survey claims teenagers in the Third World are up to six times happier than those in the developed world.

Now, it is one thing to accept that wealth cannot buy happiness. But this seems to suggest that it actually leads to misery.

But I suspect the real issue here is not wealth at all. It is education.

Do-gooders in the West protest a great deal the use of “child labour” in the undeveloped world. After all, these kids should be in school, right?

Leaving aside the obvious problem that there are no schools to go to, though, who really thinks school is more fun or fulfilling than work? And did they have the same teachers I did?

Not usually. And, perhaps more to the point, it pays far worse. Teenagers in the Third World are already adults, in control of their own lives, and making their own decisions. That feels pretty good. Teenagers in the First World, full of the vitality of youth, are stuck in endless classes, required to obey teachers’ arbitrary commands, almost always taught things that, even when true or somewhat interesting, will be of little use to them in their later lives. How many jobs really require calculus or fluency in French?

This, of course, would be even truer in the Third World, where the only job on offer is usually agricultural labour.

We enlightened first-worlders nevertheless force our young through years of appalling ennui, poverty, and external control. They are fully equipped for it, physically and intellectually, but we will not let them take control of their own lives, marry, and have children. We will not let them earn a living, or do as they wish with their days. Imagine doing this to any distinct segment of the adult population, and the proper term for it would be “slavery.”

And we have the gall to condemn the Third World for not following suit? At the same time, insisting with perfect inconsistency that they must make their women work outside the home, but must not permit their children to do so.

Those from the First World who go off to teach in the Third are almost always struck by the same thought: outside the West, there seems to be no such phenomenon as “adolescence.” People just seem to go one day from childhood to adulthood.

Those who well remember adolescence will recognize this as a good thing.

Let’s send the little beggars down the mines where they belong.