The fundamental way to eliminate child labor is to root out poverty
It can be confirmed that the "child laborers" exposed this time are not isolated cases.
If we stand in the position of the families and villages that send out "child laborers," they may have reasons to convince themselves to make this choice, but it must be recognized that this choice is illegal and, more importantly, dangerous: allowing children who are in a period of physical and psychological development to engage too early in high-intensity manual labor and to step independently too early into a complex society may come at a cost far exceeding the income earned as "child laborers."
Merely offering legal and moral persuasion and condemnation is meaningless. Rural parents cannot possibly understand the dilemmas of wealthy urban families over whether to send their children to expensive extracurricular training, nor do they understand their hesitation about buying homes in school districts, and urban parents can hardly appreciate the pain behind children from families in desperate straits being beaten and scolded by their parents for losing a pencil.
Different living standards correspond to different philosophies of life. "Child labor" is illegal, but it is also worthy of sympathy.
The reporter himself grew up and studied in the countryside and has maintained continuous attention to rural areas for more than 10 years. This in-depth visit to "child labor" families made the reporter more deeply aware that the complexity of the "child labor" problem exceeds imagination, and that solving the "child labor" problem cannot be fundamentally achieved by a single word: "ban."
The emergence of the "child labor" problem is rooted in the poverty of some families and their lack of paths and hope for escaping poverty; it is also rooted in these families' insufficient understanding of the meaning of learning and their lack of firm faith that "knowledge changes destiny." Some parents are unable to pay the full cost of their children's education from childhood to adulthood, and even look forward to their children earning money as soon as possible to support the family. Therefore, once faced with the choice between schooling and working, they abandon the former and choose the latter.
It can be said that as long as poverty has not been fundamentally changed, it will be difficult to completely eliminate the phenomenon of some children becoming "child laborers." To solve the "child labor" problem, the most fundamental thing is to raise the income level and awareness level of families with the lowest incomes. They need help; with their own abilities, they can hardly complete a "turnaround."
To this end, first, it is necessary to vigorously advance "targeted poverty alleviation."
For those families that are extremely "blood-deficient," moderate "blood transfusion" should be carried out, truly helping the poor and truly alleviating poverty, doing less "bonsai" and shouting fewer slogans, and advancing poverty alleviation in a realistic and locally-adapted manner.
They long more than anyone for the decision to "develop a group through support for production and employment, relocate and resettle a group through migration, provide a fallback for a group through the minimum living allowance policy, and support a group through medical assistance" to be implemented as soon as possible. Once a family escapes the mire, children do not need to bear the obligations of adults, but instead enter school and write their own future.
Second, it is necessary to continuously advance urbanization and let children with the conditions enter towns and cities.
Gradually grant urban household registration to part of the agricultural population that has moved to cities, let more farmers increase their incomes through employment transfer, and enjoy better public services by becoming urban residents.
Adhere to industry nurturing agriculture, cities supporting rural areas, and "giving more, taking less, and loosening control," increase the intensity of coordinating urban and rural development, gradually narrow the urban-rural gap, and promote coordinated progress in urbanization and new rural construction.
Third, it is necessary to advance industrial transfer so that farmers have opportunities to work nearby while also taking care of their families.
Some industries in the east should be guided to transfer in an orderly manner to the central and western regions, driving new urbanization in the central and western regions, allowing poor areas to have more paths to prosperity, expanding employment opportunities, and attracting migrant workers to return home to work nearby while also caring for their families, reducing the emergence of the "left-behind children" phenomenon of intergenerational education.
Rural areas look forward to a higher level of infrastructure construction and expect infrastructure such as water, electricity, roads, and gas to be networked between urban and rural areas and jointly built and shared. Farmers look forward to a higher standard of social security, so that basic public services in urban and rural areas are roughly equal.
Fourth, it is necessary to advance moderate-scale operation so that farming families can obtain income roughly equivalent to that of other industries.
Large-scale land operation is difficult to implement, and traditional production methods are difficult to change. This is the root of our country's "three rural" issues.
Our country's per capita arable land is only 0.1 hectares, and the average land operation scale per farming household is about 0.6 hectares. If farmers cling to their own "one mu and three fen of land," farming income can only provide subsistence, not prosperity. Once major illness or misfortune occurs, they fall into poverty. This is a difficult reality to avoid.
To this end, every effort should be made to advance the common development of household operation, collective operation, cooperative operation, and enterprise operation, encourage contracted management rights to circulate in the open market to specialized large households, family farms, farmers' cooperatives, and agricultural enterprises, and develop various forms of scale operation, so that farming families can also obtain income roughly equivalent to that of other industries.
At the same time, in response to the problems of "hollowing out" in some rural areas and the resurgence of abandoned land, more relaxed policies and measures should be introduced so that the value of this land can be utilized and the total size of farmers' "cake" can be increased.
Fifth, change the thinking of "the uselessness of education."
Today, the public generally attaches greater importance to education, but at the same time, "the uselessness of education" has also resurged in some backward rural areas. Because they cannot rely on "competing on parents' backgrounds," they not only lose at the first step, but at almost every step.
But this should not lead to despair about knowledge. These parents should be made aware that the value of knowledge is reflected not only in the present, but even more in the future. As time goes on, the value of purely manual labor will become lower and lower. Once there is no knowledge and no skills, not only will one remain at a relatively low income level for a long time, but it will also become increasingly difficult to find a "rice bowl."
Sixth, strengthen the balanced development of urban and rural compulsory education so that rural children can see the future.
Today, the gap in education levels between urban and rural areas is already very large. Coupled with the gaps in urban and rural parents' economic strength and educational concepts, the "scissors gap" in urban and rural education is becoming more and more obvious. "It is difficult for children from poor families to pass examinations," and some rural children lose interest and confidence in participating in examination competition. Once their minds leave school, the "child labor" phenomenon will become inevitable.
To this end, practical measures should be taken to ensure that funding and teaching staff are tilted toward rural areas, so that the proportion of rural families' actual expenditures on their children's compulsory education in total household income remains at a relatively low level, so that every family can afford the costs of schooling, thereby enabling children to remain in school.
Seventh, it is necessary to advance "free" and more "useful" secondary vocational education.
Our country has gradually implemented a broad free policy in secondary vocational education, enabling "poor children" to become qualified workers with low input or even "zero input," providing "timely assistance" to children from rural families in difficulty.
But secondary vocational education should avoid degenerating into "inferior education" because it is "free." Its function is not "poor children can have a teacher raise them even without spending money," but "students can truly learn one or two skills." Otherwise, once "learning and not learning are the same," some rural children will think that "working earlier can still earn two more years of money."