What is a Child to a Deregulated Capitalist?
An Argument for Socializing Schools to Save our Capitalist Economy
The logic of meritocracy in the vision of the Common Core, which now lives in state departments of education in almost all 50 states, is simple. If schools are working well, every child with merit will have an opportunity to graduate from a public high school ready to compete as an adult in our capitalist economy.
But at least some Americans are unwilling to postpone gainful employment in a career until high school graduation. I, myself, have some personal feelings about the issue.
I got my first job when I was 11 or 12 in the 1960s, emptying garbage cans for a catering company that built a tin structure on a concrete slab in a bucolic holler in Illinois where I was raised up. I made enough money to put new strings from time to time on my guitar I begged for as a wannabe Beatle and eventually got for Christmas from a Sears Roebuck catalog.
A federal investigation into violations of child labor laws reported to the public just last month in this 23rd year of the 21st century raises questions about the sincerity of our national commitment to the Common Core1:
If conservative ideologues had their way, there would be nothing illegal happening here. Brought to you by the same folks urging scripted Phonics lessons for all on the first day of school, the same folks who would regulate the curriculum in public schools to include book censorship, deletion of culture and identity and historicity, and anti-comprehension pedagogy, the idea that deregulation of child labor laws should be done for the child’s own good has gained purchase since the early 1980s.
If one were cynical, one might conclude that the conservative decision to regulate or deregulate hinges on the belief that the State has no interest in children beyond keeping the economy humming along. Let the kids fend for themselves.
Recall that 1980 marks the ushering in of Reaganomics. Is it a coincidence that the Reading League, a movement to ground reading instruction in SoR, dates the birth of SoR sometime around 1980 with the publication of Philip Gough’s Simple View of Reading?
David Koch, who passed away a few years ago, must have been unusually meritorious, because he amassed billions of dollars and helped bankroll the political movement to free capitalism from the shackles of regulation. Together with his brother, he pushed the logic of meritocracy to an extreme. In 1980 he ran for President on the Libertarian ticket, the ticket of Rand Paul, arguing for among other things the deregulation of child labor laws.2
The Governor of Alabama, Sarah Huckabee, has been in the spotlight the past week or so for signing legislation to remove the regulation that parents sign a permission form legally permitting a child to work for an employer. According to those who support the deregulation, requiring parents to give such permission places the federal government’s interests in a child above the rights of parents and employers.3
"The Governor believes protecting kids is most important, but this permit was an arbitrary burden on parents to get permission from the government for their child to get a job," Sanders' communications director Alexa Henning said in a statement to NPR.
In 2014 the CATO Institute published a rationale for abolishing child labor restrictions on the grounds that bleeding heart liberals myopically make life harder for poor children and their families by shutting off the possibility of gainful employment for youngsters:4
In my recent book, Out of Poverty: Sweatshops in the Global Economy, I argue that much of what the anti-sweatshop movement agitates for would harm workers and that the process of economic development, in which sweatshops play an important role, is the best way to raise wages and improve working conditions. Child labor, although the most emotionally charged aspect of sweatshops, is not an exception to this analysis.
What is a child to a deregulated capitalist? Do we need to ask what sort of learning outcomes emerge from working in a sweatshop? In 2023 we, the people, are getting a good whiff of the moral stench behind our collective neglect of public schools in the age of Core. In 2024 we, the people, have a chance to weigh in.
https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/whd/whd20230217-1
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/david-koch-billionaire-industrialist-who-influenced-conservative-politics-dies-at-79/2019/08/23/91c29a20-a264-11e8-83d2-70203b8d7b44_story.html
https://www.npr.org/2023/03/10/1162531885/arkansas-child-labor-law-under-16-years-old-sarah-huckabee-sanders
https://www.cato.org/economic-development-bulletin/case-against-child-labor-prohibitions?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email