I actual have some pictures on hand of kindergarten (YES KINDERGARTEN) kids working in rice field side by side with the farmers! Anyone care to make a report of this?

These are pictures of my daughter and her classmates on an organized outing to "educate them where the rice came from".

I agree with the host here that any system is somewhat open to exploitation - exaggerating these for some other purpose would be despicable.

My wife has told me stories about how she had to pick cotton near her hometown to help pay for school. She also had a few other field jobs that sounded rather unpleasant in her youth. Makes me appreciate some of the awful jobs I've taken (pizza delivery, mind-numbing assembly, box stuffer...)

This sort of thing is just as common in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and probably plenty of other cotton-growing places. So if you're going to start a boycott, it can't just be of Chinese cotton.

Cotton comes from plants?! I thought they made it in the underwear factory.

These kids should be playing computer games. I am outraged, and I will stop wearing underwear until these children are replaced with cotton pickin' machines. Burn your boxers! Lose your briefs! Xinjiang kids need relief!

I am fully in favor of making kids work and will actively campaign for it...as soon as I get out of school, of course.

Did you ever imagine, even 5 years ago, that you would be living in the wilds of Xinjiang, running a tomato business, and advocating child slavery?
Aint life crazy!

When I was in class in US college, I cleaned up the blackboard for the teacher. She was so amazed because that is supposed to be teacher's job.

But back in China, we clean up the blackboard, we clean up the classroom--sweeping the floor, clean the tables and chairs and windows and doors. Every Sataurday afternoon, we even clean up the whole school.

Yes. Every two weeks we spend some of times either working on the factory or the field for educational purpose, but in some times, we also worked in the school's factory to make some incomes for our school and teachers who are not paid enough for all their dedications for us.

We are a soceity who respect our teachers in pair with our parents. So most of us feel that small contribution to help our teachers out.

Our lot went to pick peppers this year, to be used for colouring of red lipstick. So, burn your jocks and your sheets, and toss out the tart red lipstick too!

The biggest whinging was from the teachers by the way... there were no cigarettes or coca-cola available at the shop near the farm. Slave labour? Pffft. Should get every kid in the western world off their fat asses and into the paddocks at LEAST once a year.

When I was in class in US college, I cleaned up the blackboard for the teacher. She was so amazed because that is supposed to be teacher's job.

Really? It is in no way uncommon for students in the US to help clean a teacher's board. Maybe none of the students liked that teacher...

The above post is in response to Sha's first paragraph. I tried to quote it, but the site did something weird.

If you want to quote someone else, use the "blockquote" tag... I've fixed your comment up above, Tiako.

No doubt that Sha was cleaning blackboards for the teachers to biuld guangxi as much as show respect.

Check out the haters over at CSR Asia who have responded to this post by calling me "somebody with the comprehension skills of a kid" and calling all you other commenters "clowns". Unbelievable!

Kids here in my state leave school in the fall to help with the potato harvest. I believe they are paid here, but it does not seem much different to me from what is being discussed here. At first wages might seem like a huge difference, but I think they are rather insignificant when everybody in both communities has a vested interest in the continued success of local agriculture. Two weeks cannot really be equated with an entire childhood of forced labor.

Also I have no idea what the point of the blurb on CSR Asia is at all. They seem to think we are not entitled to even discuss this. They post some negative things about us and disable comments ensuring we have no way to post a rebuttal or start a discussion there. It looks like a very childish attempt to ensure they get the last word in.

My opinion on the issue is that school should be for the mental and, to a much lesser extent, physical education of children. Therefore, I think that the only time the school should require students to pick cotton for a week is if they are taking a class on agriculture, and then it should clearly be framed as a field trip. The concept of a "moral education" (To speak tautologically, that is when a school chooses activities for the purposes of strengthening the students moral fiber), which seems to be what Michael is advocating, has been tried for several thousand years and has yet to make a person one whit more moral (It may make them more moralizing, but there's a wide gap there). It is an attractive proposition, but one that will not succeed.

On child labor in general, the problem is this this: What if that ten year old's wages meant the difference between a home and the streets for the family? It's a much more difficult issue that the vast majority of Westerners realize.

Hahaha! LOL. Michael got a suck punch on his low IQ!

In most of poor countries or even poor communities and families in rich countries, children help the family on financial matter is very common.

I remembered that after classs, how we kids went to rivers and lakes to try catch some fishes for the family. We also went to mountains to pick wild vegetables and mushrooms. We collected Chinese medicion herbs to sell to Medicine store. We did a LOT of labors after school and during weekends. Guess that didn't hurt our ability to go to universities later on.

Just read the CSR Asia post. I must thank him for calling me a clown even though he has never met me or my wife and has never read anything I've ever written. Due to his rash generalization of the comments to this blog post, I feel that his opinion is now worthless to world. I teach academic writing and continually tell my students to avoid generalizations and to always support their ideas. I saw no such support from CSR Asia.

Dear Michael,
Most of the students and teachers I spoke to from my school in Korla, whose students pick peppers for two weeks told me it was absolutely awful, backbreaking work.
They advised me not to send my 13 year old daughter with her class because it was just 'terrible'. The teachers said it would probably do more harm than good.
Now I am probably more likely to agree with them after I have been hearing stories from my daughter about her classmates that are suffering from long term injuries from the work.
It's one thing to 'educate' our young about hard work, but it's another to force them to do really strenuous labour for two weeks in the hot sun all day. Especially if they are physically not used to this kind of work- i.e. spend most of their time studying.
I was thinking it would be a good experience for my daughter but now I'm glad I didn't send her.
A few days of this kind of work is educational, two weeks is exploitation.

The problem with this report (along with most literature which comes from Developed Nations aimed at Developing Nations) is that it assumes the entire world is at the same level as those developed Western Countries. The reality of the situation is that the idea of children NOT working is a relatively young byproduct of modern economies. From that "First World" prospective childhood is a time for studying, and studying can't be fully accomplished when one is working 12 hours a day. But what these Western "authorities" don't realize is that in many parts of the world, a family's survival still does depend on the labor of the children, as has been the case since primitive times. Education is the means to a better life, and this is the same across the board. But when it comes down to a matter of having enough labor to survive, education must take the back seat. Fortunately, in most Western countries we no longer encounter this dilemma. But to assume it does not exist in other parts of the world will not solve any problems.

I fail to see how this is worse than the corn detassling and soybean walking I did when I was 14 in the midwest US. I also remember wading through ditches full of water (and chemicals!). Where were these activists for me. Boo-hoo, how hard life was!

The kids will be fine, as long as they're not doing this full time all the time, I'd much rather see them do a little of this than becoming some damned 'gold farmer' on internet computer games.

Most of the students and teachers I spoke to from my school in Korla, whose students pick peppers for two weeks told me it was absolutely awful, backbreaking work.
They advised me not to send my 13 year old daughter with her class because it was just 'terrible'. The teachers said it would probably do more harm than good.环保设备
填料
除尘器
化工机械
反应釜
Now I am probably more likely to agree with them after I have been hearing stories from my daughter about her classmates that are suffering from long term injuries from the work.
It's one thing to 'educate' our

I’m sure the "greater good" analysis offered by our blogger would have been of tremendous comfort to my great-grandparents as they picked cotton to make clothes for, may I venture a guess, our dear blogger's great-grandparents.

Nah... my great-grandparents were laying bricks and probably doing other jobs similar to cotton picking in places like Romania and Belarus. But you're really missing my point. I'm not advocating child labor as a replacement for school, only suggesting that it may not be the worst thing in the world for kids to work hard for a few weeks a year.

i think this child labor should stop and it sdhould of never happened

a href="http://www.kvov.net.cn/" title="无锡网站建设">无锡网站建设
超声波清洗机
电加热器
多层实木地板
网站制作公司
超声波
实木复合地板
自助建站
清洗机
无锡网站建设