Warning: Controversy ahead
There is this training for children. Every year, thousands of children go into depression because of this. A few hundreds even commit suicide. Yet there is no law against it and no one talks against it.
We say that children should not work. Yet we think nothing of burdening not just their bodies, but also their minds, with content that they are unlikely to use again for a long time. We see no crime in taking them away from curiosity and pushing them into memory games that they nothing for the spirit.
Why is it, that no one thinks of formal education as child labour? Because, inherent in this whole "education is best for children" lie, is the assumption that formal schooling is the only kind of "education" that a child should get. Anything else is "child labour".
Yet, to a child not interested in rote learning, or what we call "formal education" that is the worst form of child labour - where you tame the spirit and teach the mind to absorb rather than question.
Even in the new age schools that promote discovery and a spirit of enquiry rather than rote learning, there is a curriculum to be covered.
Obviously, there is nuffink that is universally suitable. So i want to know why parents of multiple generations have believed the lie that formal schooling is the "only best thing" for their children? Why did no one look at their children and say, "this one? he wants to learn vocational work. His heart is in wood."
I am not saying keep children unlettered. Nor am i saying that we should accept child labour for what it is. I just want to modify the definition of child labour - What a child is being forced to do is child labour. A child labours in school just as s/he labours in a vocation.
