Defunding Schools -- Rolling Back Child Labor Laws and Reproductive Rights
Milton Friedman, libertarians, and reproductive healthcare cranks...
If you’ve followed me for any length of time, you know I speak about education a lot, but lately, the push toward defunding public schools at the same time we see a rolling back of child labor is more than upsetting…and it’s materializing in front of us.
Missouri is considering a bill right now to ban restrictions on child labor laws. Yes, ban them.
So, what do child labor laws have to do with vouchers and defunded schools? Well, everything.
Lawmakers in 11 states have either passed or introduced laws to roll back child labor laws — a push that’s come from industry trade organizations and mostly conservative legislators as businesses scramble for low-wage workers.
In the past two years, those states have moved to extend working hours for children, eliminate work permit requirements and lower the age for teens to handle alcohol or work in hazardous industries. At the same time, there has been a 69% increase in children employed illegally by companies since 2018, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
Kids at work, by Ariana Figueroa, April 7, 2023.
In Missouri, under that new Senate bill, kids as young as 14 would not need to get a special permit to go to work and the idea is to clear the way for more people to enter the workforce in Missouri — even if those people are children.
Missouri Republican lawmakers have received their mandate from their donors—pass a school voucher scheme and defund public schools in this 2024 session. For those who haven’t been paying attention, this is done with “school choice” and vouchers.
In Florida, a “career and technical education” bill would have allowed employers to hire 16- and 17-year-olds for work in roofing, in violation of federal laws that prohibit work in occupations known to be particularly dangerous for young workers.
This is happening under the guise of “education”, as they placed child labor under tech school status, in a state that has already defunded its public schools. All the while the Florida Capitol is swarming with “school choice” lobbyists vying to send taxpayer money to religious schools and even homeschools. They have successfully defunded the schools and are now working to fill dangerous positions with child labor.
In Iowa, a House bill would allow 16-year-olds to care for four infants or seven toddlers without supervision. Iowa also introduced a bill to allow minors as young as 14 to obtain a special driver’s license to drive up to 25 miles to or from work without an adult in the vehicle despite data showing Iowa having the highest share of young driver fatalities.
Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds’s school voucher scheme was passed and it is already devasting the state with $127,939,695 in taxpayer funds going to private and mostly religious schools in the first year. These schools are able to pick and choose their students and often do not enroll children from rural or LGBTQ communities and likely do not have services for children with disabilities. They can discriminate on the taxpayer’s dime.
School vouchers are a strategy to offload the burden of paying for education onto parents. Defund the public schools with vouchers for private schools and then remove the vouchers or raise private school tuition. If a parent can't afford to cover the new price of a previously public and free education, their child goes to work.
One of the earliest proponents of school vouchers was Milton Friedman, a famous Libertarian and notorious financial crank. School vouchers represented taxpayer money sent to White parents after the Brown vs Board decision. The vouchers were to be used at “segregation academies.” Vouchers were created to promote segregation in schools after the Supreme Court deemed it unconstitutional. Vouchers were born in racism and hate, but they are also useful for cheap labor.
In a paper, Nancy MacLean found that the father of school choice, Milton Friedman, hoped “school choice” and forcing low-income folks to pay for their child’s education would discourage low-income parents from having children in a form of economic social engineering reminiscent of eugenics. He predicted that once poor parents had to pay the entire cost of schooling from their own earnings, they would make different reproductive decisions.
But, how can poor folks make different reproductive decisions in states that teach no Sex-Ed curriculum and have draconian abortion bans?
Good grief! This is connected to abortion and the reproductive freedom that is also under attack in the same Republican-dominated states rolling back child labor and defunding schools? The exact same politicians and wealthy folks who want to subjugate women and girls, also want to close public schools and have access to child labor?
Yup. These points also have a lot to do with immigration policies, but that will have to be another post.
I could talk for years on the attack on working-class folks in these red states, and honestly I have. For years. It’s class warfare at its base and it’s so hard to show the folks in my community the plot, but here it is: marginalized and oppressed groups are supposed to stay that way by the creation of a permanent underclass.
Deny children an education unless their parents can pay for it. Create laws that allow corporations to hire children. Take away bodily autonomy and there you have it…a class of billionaires ruling over the rest of us who are too tired and too uneducated to do better or know better.
Stand up against the defunding of public schools, friends. Speak out against rolling back child labor laws. Link arms to fight for bodily autonomy.
We can do this.
~Jess
Referenced links:
Child labor remains a key state legislative issue in 2024
How Milton Friedman Exploited White Supremacy to Privatize Education
Kids at work: States try to ease child labor laws at behest of industry
It is just beyond my comprehension that a poor rural individual would vote for a Republican. I mean, I understand evangelicalism may be a factor and racism probably plays a role but as a whole it is just so against their interest to support these guys that I really just don’t get it.
Jess, it is a frightening proposal to disband public education by use of vouchers. My wife and I were both educators, as was my father. We fought public funding for buying books and providing bussing for the local parochial schools. The feeling was the students that attended those schools did so by choice, and that even though their parents paid taxes and paid tuition for those schools, if their children were not good athletes, or they were black, their chances of attending were far less. Vouchers are making it even more difficult for public schools.