Hewing Wood and Drawing Water Young

This business about child labour is troublesome. A regular West Africa correspondent for the BBC looked into the matter recently and declared herself quite unable to draw the line between teaching a child the skills of life on the one hand and on the other, avoiding abuse in the child who does work:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-23332948

No doubt, many countries have come a long way since dark satanic mills blighted lives, including those of children in the now well-developed countries. But it must be difficult to preach the gospel of a labour-free childhood to the peasant living today in his or her African village and convince them of the evils of making their able-bodied child toil, fetch and carry when there is no other way in which food or water and other commodities can be delivered into the home. Indeed, such parents may be struggling mightily to provide the wherewithal of life, sustained by nothing more than the hope that when they are gone, their children would have acquired the skills by which to do likewise for their own.  

            I myself, at a tender age, had to fetch water, pound rice and even turn a cauldron or two of foo-foo meal over an open fire. And indeed, this was almost universally the case for those of my generation in many other families. Looking back, few of us have had any reason to regret or wish our life had been otherwise.

            Twenty-thirteen is of course another time altogether, and all of us now expect higher standards in our societies, whether in Africa or elsewhere. But how do you free children from the bondage of living within an impoverished community where existence may still be just a hand-to-mouth one? I think we all know the answer, which is that every child must be able to go to school, where he or she is taught by competent, knowledgeable and empathetic teachers.

That is one of the millennial challenges. Any takers?  

Tell Fren Tru