Betsy DeVos and the DeVos family give generously to many charities and think tanks, mostly skewed to libertarian, free-market, white Christian causes. One of their recipients is the Acton Institute. The Acton Institute has recently gained a lot of unwanted attention because of an article posted on its blog called “Bring Back Child Labor.” The post got so much attention that the author changed the title to “Work is a Gift Our Kids Can Handle.” In it, the author bemoans the fact that children don’t have the experience and the hardy character that is gained from working.
The author Joseph Sunde believes that what children are lacking today is the discipline of work. He quotes another author (Jeffrey Tucker) who recommends working in a fast-food restaurant, for example, as good character formation. Sunde asks:
In our policy and governing institutions, what if we put power back in the hands of parents and kids, dismantling the range of excessive legal restrictions, minimum wage fixings, and regulations that lead our children to work less and work later? (This could be something as simple as letting a 14-year-old work a few hours a week at a fast-food restaurant or grocery store.)
Now, I didn’t have time to do due diligence on the Acton Institute, but fortunately Peter Greene did.
He writes:
Acton is a member of the State Policy Network, the Heritage Foundation’s loose collection of right-wing and libertarian thinky tanks, but unlike some of their strictly political brethren, Acton is all about the religious aspects. While they don’t quite rise to the level of “greed is good,” they do rise to the level of “capitalism is God’s most blessed way of sorting out the world.” (My words, not theirs) The Institute puts out several print publications, including Religion & Liberty and the Journal of Markets & Morality….
Yes, coal mining and middle school football– pretty much the same thing, especially if your program involves playing games that last ten hours a day, seven days a week. Yes, Carnegie, Rockefeller and other Giants of Industry used to stand in front of their workers and declare, “I really value you as people,” and then finish with “So why would you want me to pay you more money?” Yes, we all remember those stories where Rockefeller and Trump and DeVos sent their children off at a young age to work in the mines because they wanted their children to be ennobled.
This is, simply speaking, nuts. This is one step short of saying, “Slaves were actually quite happy in their lives, with a noble purpose to fulfill.”
Sunde goes on to say that in modern times, the ennobling world of unskilled labor doesn’t require twelve hour workdays and unsafe conditions. And Tucker fills in the rest:
“If kids were allowed to work and compulsory school attendance was abolished, the jobs of choice would be at Chick-Fil-A and WalMart. And they would be fantastic jobs too, instilling in young people a work ethic, which is the inner drive to succeed, and an awareness of attitudes that make enterprise work for all.”
Right. Rich folks are making their kids work for minimum wage at WalMart all the time, so they’ll be better people with strong work ethics.
Look, I am a big fan of work. My dream world is not one where everyone sits around on their ass and the money just rolls in by magic. I will even confess to a bias, a tendency to think less of people like Trump or DeVos who have never actually done any real work, but have gotten rich by playing games with other people’s money and the fruits of other people’s labor.
But this is some Grade A Bettercrat bullshit. The line of reasoning for DeVos and her friends is simple– some people in this world really are better than others, and those people should be in charge, should be making decisions without being hemmed in by government and certainly not by uppity Lessers who form unions and otherwise thwart the proper order of things. Capitalism is God’s way of showing us who the Betters are (they’re the ones with the money) and so any government mandates that force us to spend our money on Those People– well, that’s not just bad politics or bad economics, but it’s immoral. The state has no business thwarting God’s will. Not that the Betters will turn their backs on the Lessers– not at all. It is a Better’s job to help Lessers find their rightful place, so that they can be happy in the work that God has made them for, which is to serve the interests and needs of their Betters. Our modern society is contentious and unhappy because government, often in the hands of evil bolsheviks and their ilk, has upended God’s natural order of things, making everyone unhappy. If we could just get the Lesser children back in the mines and their parents working quietly for whatever their Betters think they should get, everything would be okay again. (That’s why we call it Right To Work– we are re-establishing Lessers’ right to work the way nature intended them to.) And if we can’t get them back in the mines as children, at least we can put them in schools where they learn hard work and discipline and compliance and, God help them, grit, because that’s what the children of Those People will need (and who knows– every once in a while, we may find one who is made of Better Stuff and deserves to be elevated by Betters’ largesse). The only Civil Right people need is the right to happily know their proper place. America would once again be great.
This is what we have headed for DC. Lord knows, it’s not a brand new philosophy, and it has been informing plenty of ed reform up till now. But now it’s likely to become a steamroller that pushes aside well-meaning reformsters (yes, I think there are such things) and crushes the notion of a one-tiered education serving all American students– as if they were not divided into Betters and Lessers.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
From Greene’s article: “Right. Rich folks are making their kids work for minimum wage at WalMart all the time, so they’ll be better people with strong work ethics.”
The argument is probably grounded in fear of what will happen to “the labor force” when all of those minimum-wage (or undocumented under-wage) workers are shipped off back to Mexico. What do we do now, Sam?
Good point, Catherine. With undocumented minimum wage workers all deported, who will fill their jobs as house cleaners, car washers, janitors, bus boys, itinerant pickers of crops, hotel maids, etc? Why of course, DeVos and Trump have it all figured out.
They will use our children and grandchildren to fill the void. They have hammered at doing away with even the minimum wage in favor of paying only a few cents an hour to these child trainees, to prepare them for their permanent jobs as cogs in the wheels, in the tentacles, of the oligarchs. It is why these uber rich have devised charter schools, but now DeVos says that there is no legal mandate for literacy for all. Keep ’em dumb, poor, exhausted, and that will make America Great Again.
As with the children in India, those Untouchables kids, they can start sewing Nike’s shoes when they are 5, and then their life expectancy dwindles to maybe 25.
At the Thanksgiving table I looked at my two little grandsons, ages 2 and 7, and tried to picture their futures, but now I know that Betsy DeVos has it already firmly in hand, She will send them into to mines of West Virginia to do their work, and she will sell it as allowing them to play a mile underground, like the vermin she sees them to be.
To Ellen Lubic: Trump is making all the petty dictators and mob bosses in the world jealous. As Bill Maher said the other day on late night (paraphrased), it’s proof-positive that the Europeans didn’t send their best and brightest either.
Actually Ellen and Peter, the mines in WV have been declining for some time now in favor of strip mining and other cheaper forms of getting to the coal, mostly out in western US. One of the reasons WV went for Trump is that he promised to bring back coal mining to the state. That’s not going to happen, as it’s just not profitable enough anymore to do deep mining.
The counties in eastern Kentucky are actually poorer than those in southern WV as they depended almost 100% on coal. There’s at least some other work in the county where I grew up.
My brother was a coal mining engineer in Logan County in southern WV. He took my wife and I down in a coal mine about 30 years ago. We rode down about a mile into the ground and watched a continuous miner dig the coal. One cannot imagine what it’s like to be down there working. It’s extremely hard work and it’s extremely dangerous. In the Sago mine disaster in 2006 where 12 men died and one survived, the mine was across the river from our home where I grew up. My brother-in-law, who felt the earth shake when the Sago mine blew, was commissioned by a local town to create a sculpture of the 12 men that died.
We can’t get away from coal mining fast enough in this country. I would not wish it on any adult, much less children.
Argh! The owner of that Sago mine back then is Trump’s pick to head up Commerce. He knew the mine was not safe but he didn’t want to fix what was wrong with it. 12 men sat in coal dust for hours waiting to die because of him. One survived.
Bring Back Child Labor! After all those kids are divested of their schools, they will go to work. Idle hands do the devil’s work. When are the dinosaurs returning? And on the seventh day, God rested.
Public school parents and local communities, be warned. This is the ed reform pick for US Department of Education:
“Failure of traditional public schools: “[T]raditional public schools are not succeeding. In fact, let’s be clear, in many cases, they are failing. That’s helped people become more open to what were once considered really radical reforms—reforms like vouchers, tax credits, and education savings accounts.” 2013.”
This is all this billionaire and this “movement” have to say about public schools.
90% of kids in the US attend public schools, and ed reform is opposed to public schools.
Doesn’t get any clearer than DeVos. Her goal is to shutter or privatize your school.
This story reminded me of my nineteenth century literature courses, especially the work of Dickens and Emile Zola. Children were considered little adults, and poor children were considered brutish like their parents. That is how the industrialists justified their exploitation of the working class including children. Children were prized for working in mines because they could fit into places other miners could not. Let’s be clear that there is a big difference between teaching children how to be responsible and sending them out to forced labor. With an administration run by billionaires, we can make some comparisons between our current times and the Gilded Age. We should remember that we still had much of the same Constitution during the nineteenth century, and a semblance of democracy. With billionaires and corporations in charge, our future is looking rather glum unless we stand up for ourselves.
“The Institute puts out several print publications, including Religion & Liberty and the Journal of Markets & Morality”
One has to love the smell of fresh bovine and porcine excrement coming out of those so insanely and ineptly named publications.
Religion & Liberty means I have the gog-given liberty to shove my religion down your throat and hold it there until you digest it.
Markets & Morality means I am only moral when I exploit the markets better than everyone else.
In the wake of the election, a newspaper reporter was said to have remarked, “This is a terrible time to be a human being and a great time to be a journalist”.
Of course, there’s excitement to be had covering a slow motion political car crash…..a VERY big and potentially world-changing political wreck at that.
Truth is, though,out of this debacle is sure to come some of the best writing we’ve ever seen -in the media at large and on this blog. And, thank God for that.
Peter Greene is in top form skewering the preposterously nutty idea of “gifting” our kids more work and less education. Touché!
I’ve always been fascinated by the American preoccupation with jobs and working. MORE JOBS! Meanwhile, Americans work longer and longer hours. Why not fight harder for more vacation, more paid leave? Is it because the ruling class has brainwashed so many of us so successfully that we often don’t know the difference anymore? Work? Play? Has it all become the same thing?
So many schools have already become test prep machines eliminating recess, art and music. And, now we have Joseph Sunde apparently arguing that, hey, not even that situation is good enough. Get those tots out there working!
BTW evidence is all over the place that Americans work very long hours. I’ve been collecting articles for years about how public school teachers, specifically, put in much longer time in the classroom than their peers in other industrialized nations. But, you know, who cares about teachers? If people like Sunde are that far gone and actually suggesting doing this sort of thing to our kids, all bets are off. (For all of you teachers who voted for Trump, just watch now! I can’t imagine the Betsy DeVoses out there letting you burn rubber out of that school parking lot just as soon as the contract allows.) “Collective bargaining agreement”? Savor those words now, folks.
I’ll post a link to Wikipedia that documents the lack of leave time in the U.S.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_annual_leave_by_country
And, for any of you who doubt Wikipedia, just check out this endorsement from none other than Michael Scott: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvZBg7qLzU8 Gotta keep some humor here.
Actually, at this point, I think I’d feel more comfortable with a “President-elect Scott”,.
Sometimes the loss of the arts is not a choice. With charters draining budgets and some local politicians slashing budgets to make schools fail, art and music are dropped as schools struggle to keep the lights on. With charters, it is all about robbing Peter to pay Paul. The arts are often collateral damage.
Retired teacher: about the loss of the arts and music–don’t forget history and civics. This point should travel on up the line (with accompanying bells and whistles) and into teacher education departments–so teachers know more about what they are getting into. More than ever, they cannot be politically stupid about the whole thing that is democracy in education, and education in democracy.
Reblogged this on BLOGGYWOCKY and commented:
Oy!
The idea of putting younger and younger kids is nothing new among the right-wing. As some of you may remember, Newt Gringrich suggested some years ago that young children (as young as nine years old) be put to work as school janitors. Yes, that’s right. Fire the “over-paid” (yeh, right), often unionized school janitors and put those poor nine-year-olds to work.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/11/newt-gingrich-thinks-school-children-should-work-as-janitors/248837/
I don’t even know what else to say about all of this. Except to mention, if the so-called “Betters” think that this is such a great idea of the children of the “Lessers,” why aren’t they advocating this for their own children?
That attitude is what reminded me of the industrial revolution. Children of the poor were considered to have limited potential so there was an unwillingness to invest in them. It reminds me of some of the attitudes of the privatizers. Sell everyone on the notion of “choice.” However, the schools do the choosing according to where they think you belong. It is classist or even rascist. IMHO, most public schools offer far more choice of programs or curriculum than any charter ever could, and at least parents know the teacher has met the state certification standards.
Oy! Zorba.
Around grade 5, male students in my elementary school were enlisted to clean the hallways. This was a challenge. Sawdust saturated with pine oil had to be sprinkled on the floor in front of the broom. It helped keep the dust down. The floors were wood. Dust collected in the cracks. There was plenty of dust around from the unmoderated use of white chalk on “black boards.” The broom was four feet wide, heavy, and not easy to steer.
Girls of the same grade were enlisted to clean the chalk boards and chalk trays–wash them down with water. The chalk erasers were taken outside and banged together or against the wall of the building.
You volunteered for these tasks (or not). Doing them brought some low-level respect from some peers and the teacher, much lower than be selected a school crossing guard who was issued a neat white shoulder and waist ban, and shiny badge,
If you signed up for these tasks you were pretty much guaranteed a “good citizen” comment on your report card.
I don’t think anyone thought of these cleaning jobs as demeaning or putting anyone out of work. They were viewed as a matter of pitching in at school, just as many of us had routine “chores” at home.
In this respect, and looking at my a fairly close generational link with Gingrich, his comment is not so outlandish but more a naive longing for what (in his memory) might have been the good old days…when allergies, dust, asthma were a “non-issue” and full time janitors were rare (some worked weekends only).
The thing about the Newt though, is that his comments are usually uttered with a really whiny voice and delivered with a pompous “you people are stupid” and “I am perfect” attitude.
We had school jobs, too. Washing the chalkboard was a prized assignment. Getting to go outside and clap erasers was a sought after assignment as well. My aide and I used to wash the board and the desks on a regular basis. I broke my lazier students of the habit of throwing their trash on the floor rather than putting it in the trash. They seen to think it was the janitors’ job to pick up after them. Being deprived of teacher provided snacks seemed to help change their minds although I gave them a piece of mine as well. There was no way I was going to give out Jolly Ranchers and let them toss the wrappers on the floor! It also made an impression on them that my aide and I washed the desks periodically. My janitor loved me. 🙂 There was definitely a difference in focus, though. It was really all about not fouling your own nest and working together to make it better for everyone…55 years ago and 5 years ago. Being prepared for the nobility of work (in the sweatshops) didn’t cross anyone’s mind.
A common theme uniting all of Betsy’s mercantile-missionary work seems to be Religion In The Service Of Corporate Interests (RITSOCI).
Frances Perkins and FDR are having heart attacks from their graves over Donald Trump, Mike Pence, Jeff Sessions, Steve Bannon and Betsy DeVos and I am having a breakdown on behalf of our nation’s children.
I have a novel idea for producing free electricity. We should place speakers with the news blaring in the graves of many of our forefathers, then use electrodes to get electricity from them as they rotate violently in their graves. We could start with Robert Owen, who knew child labor was exploitation as far back as 1810. We could get megawatts off Jane Addams. John Stuart Mill might spin a little, but Elanor Roosevelt would power Manhattan if she did not rise to haunt it.
Child labor indeed. Jesse Stuart, the great Kentucky author who described his teaching experience in Thread that Runs So True, used to have to wait until after the harvest to hold school. They did what they could. His generation understood. The leadership of my own generation have sold out.
The most outrageous part of this matter is the use of my mother’s religion to justify it. Since when is Christianity the basis of greed?
There are many students who need to learn to work. In my experience, the ones who need it most are the heir to fortunes. Even Andrew Carnegie knew that.
Roy, I agree; children need to work but Peter Greene is going from one extreme to another. It is not clear what this posting is purporting. How does this posting define work? Working in salt mines? Slave labor? Dropping out of school to work is for sure a no no.
Young people should get a job at the age of 14 working after school hours and during the summer. If they can’t get a job, they should do volunteer work. Young people are lucky if they can get a part time job; jobs aren’t always available for them. My children all had jobs of one kind or another during high school and college. If nothing else their work history looks good on their resumes. The BA degree was free for my children so work was often volunteer work. Young people need to give back to their community. Work gave them a sense of responsibility and appreciation. The experience helped guide them in their choice of careers. My one son knew for sure that he didn’t want to flip burgers the rest of his life.
My one daughter found working for the Johns Hopkins’ campus police dept. and Peabody Conservatory of Music a great experience as she worked her way through a Master’s degree. Throughout her three Master’s degrees, she worked. Her work ethics paid off by receiving a grant for her doctorate.
Work ethics begins at home with children given responsibilities at home but all in moderation. It bothers me when children don’t pick up their toys, clothes, and clean up expecting adults to do it. If they have to clean up at school; they should be expected to clean up at home.
As Roy said, some children need to learn to work. I maintain that all children and students need to learn to work.