The Senate voted on a bill allowing 14-year-olds to work six-hour night shifts, and passed it at 4:52 a.m.

The return of child labor is right up there with the loss of abortion rights in terms of shocking backslides but people don't seem to care as much about it.

  • TreadOnMe [none/use name]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Just a reminder as well, that these 'work-based learning programs' are probably going to be the same kind of packets that are given to child actors, which are not reviewed or graded by anybody. We will likely have 10-20% functional illiteracy in the U.S by 2030.

        • happybadger [he/him]
          ·
          2 years ago

          I'm surprised it's only 21%. My phytopathology professor likes to ask really basic questions about geography and history. A class of 100~ couldn't answer what or where Carthage was.

            • happybadger [he/him]
              ·
              2 years ago

              I sentence you to playing 100 hours of video games that are just maps.

          • Nagarjuna [he/him]
            ·
            2 years ago

            I don't actually know, but they sacked Rome by way of Spain, so... Morroco?

        • BeamBrain [he/him]
          ·
          2 years ago

          54% of adults have a literacy below 6th grade level.

          :agony-limitless:

          On the other hand I guess this explains the weird popularity of YA novels among older people

        • UmbraVivi [he/him, she/her]
          ·
          2 years ago

          "In middle-income neighborhoods the ratio of books per child is 13 to 1, in low-income neighborhoods, the ratio is 1 age-appropriate book for every 300 children. "

          Jesus

          Edit: From this article about child literacy statistics and man... I've read a lot of things about child poverty and all the injustice in the world, but these statistics got to me a lot more than others. I always knew that I had a very privileged upbringing and this might sound ridiculous to those who didn't, but this made me really sad:

          Children in low-income families lack essential one-on-one reading time, whereas on average, children who grow up middle-class families have been exposed to 1,000 to 1,700 hours of one-on-one picture book reading. The average child growing up in a low-income family, in contrast, has only been exposed to 25 hours of one-on-one reading.

          In general, when I read the line "In a study of nearly 100,000 U.S. school children, access to printed materials was the key variable affecting reading acquisition." my first reaction was "Come on, what kids don't have access to books?" only to read a few lines later that... low-income families really don't have books. They can't even read the Very Hungry Caterpillar to their kids. It's a $10 expenditure that some families literally just can't afford.

          When I was like 10-12 I'd sometimes read as much as a 300-page book a day and back then I'd always brag about it because it made me feel smart, it never occured to me that all those books cost money that many people can't afford to buy for their kids even if they might want to.

          Learning to read is fun and easy if you can afford it, but only then :deeper-sadness: