pro child-labor

What's the return on investment of education? Why bother? Why especially in poor communities? Just because I/you/we believe education is a silver bullet doesn't mean it is. As a skeptic, I can find many examples of education shooting blanks or even causing harm.

If I'm a parent of a family living in one room in a shanty town or village, why should I bother wasting my kids on education? How is grammar going to feed us? How are fractions going to heal my sick baby? How is history going to clothe us? I need none of this; it's a waste of my children's time and life. Go away.

Today UNESCO released The Hidden Crisis: Armed Conflict and Education, which states that: "Armed conflict is robbing 28 million children of an education by exposing them to widespread rape and other sexual violence, targeted attacks on schools and other human rights abuses."

Their agenda for change includes: "tougher action against human rights violations, an overhaul of global aid priorities, strengthened rights for displaced people and more attention to the ways education failures can increase the risk of conflict."

UNESCO is asking for US$2 billion to cover current budgetary shortfalls, and changing the proportion of humanitarian aid that goes to education (currently only 2%). All worthwhile goals, aimed at giving "them" what we have. But as Einstein famously said, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly, and expecting a different result.

Yes - 28 million children aged 5-12 are not in school, yes this is a crime, and yes it will result in bad things (disease, starvation, rape, war...). BUT - building more schools isn't the complete answer, nor is training more teachers or distributing textbooks or laptops.

Philanthropy is the least effective way to affect change. The best way is for the community itself to change because it values that change over existing subsistence priorities. This is the crux of sustainable transformation.

To get kids into schools, the parents need to be convinced that it is the right thing to do. Not "right" based on some abstract morality, but right based on what they care about, they need, and they value. This is what matters most; what we believe is irrelevant.

Parents will compel their kids to go to school if it enables survival of the family. If you can't directly and immediately connect to that, parents will choose other subsistence (food, shelter...) needs over education - you would, I would. Moreover, the "ROI" of education happens after graduation - that's at least a decade out! If you're starving now, that kind of future is meaningless.

We in the wealthy world delude ourselves into believing "if you build schools, they will come," or "it's so obvious - why don't they understand it?"

Ironically, we're clothing our ignorance in empathy, and believing that empathy will save the wretched from their ignorance!

We must give parents something they need now in exchange for their children's attendance:

1. School as a farm. The students will learn innovative farming techniques; they will plant and harvest crops; they will be required to work the farms in exchange for being fed and bringing food home for their families.
2. School as a factory. The students will learn innovative production techniques; they will create and produce goods that we will sell; they will be required to learn factory-work, in exchange for being fed and bringing goods home for their families.
3. School as a clinic. The students will learn about health care; they will assist in providing services to the injured and sick; they will be required to clean and cook and feed patients; in exchange for being fed and bringing food and medicines home for their families.

Yep - this is putting 5-year old kids to work. CHILD LABOR - get used to the term; learn to like it.

Children are not in school because their parents value subsistence over education. "In exchange" for being fed and bringing food home every day, these children will also happen to learn literacy and numeracy + skills that can help improve their family's health and standard of living. BUT if they don't get fed and bring food home, they will not have reduced the family burden sufficiently to warrant their parents' commitment.

We suffer from the desire to assuage our own guilt and feed our intellectual egos by over-engineering things. The issue is not education, it is survival. Education is nowhere near the top of Maslow's hierarchy for a reason. It's not important enough when you and your kids live on 500 calories/day, with dysentery and AIDS.

This feels dastardly - railing against child abuse/sweatshops/etc. is ingrained in us - but we're wrong.

If UNESCO is serious about getting 28 million kids in school, they need to first employ them, and then educate them. Let's spend money on that.