This is a critique on Moffet's article.
This article certainly represents a quintessential instance of the exasperating boggle of being caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place. Vicente’s predicament is indeed dire, grim and fraught with unfavorable circumstances that he could potentially incur by preserving his new ‘career’ at the shoe factory. However, there is something important to be said about the prospects that await children and their families should they decide to stay in school and continue their education at the expense of their loved ones and their extremely daunting financial straits.
The article gets the ball rolling: “When Vincent Guerrero reported for work at the shoe factory he had to leave his yo-yo with the guard at the door” (Moffett 88). Poignant as this narration is, it is impossible to ignore the pitiable pathetic fallacy it contains. This red herring raises a waiving yellow flag not worth overlooking. Moffett wends describing the precarious and perilous conditions of the workplace and the environment in which Vicente was being foisted to perform. The poor youngster had to “shinny up the press and throw all his 90 pounds backward to yank the stiff steel bar downward”, and of course this “reminded him [this inexperienced little facetious boy] of the playground contraption” (Ibid). I am completely sure that older people, too, are often forced to work in far more dangerous and physically challenging environments. Notwithstanding this shameless piece of casuistry, there are corresponding legal regulations that must be taken into consideration before moving forward. It is true that Mexico jurisprudence prohibits infants under the age of 14 to join the workforce, such regulatory injunction being enacted in order to prevent abuse by parents who send their unwilling kids out onto the streets to make a profit. However in this case, the article does not provide good reasons to believe that Vicente was being compulsorily instituted as a member of factory’s staff. Quite the contrary, it elaborates on how the 12 year old kid acknowledged the benefits of having dropped out of school and becoming one more pillar in his family’s economy incrementing significantly their revenue stream. Granted, a decent case can be made condemning the perils that await laborers working for extended periods of time in such insalubrious conditions, i.e., inhaling the allegedly poisonous effluvium which emanates from toxic glue, especially given the absence of adequate ventilation. The fact that Vicente came down with a respiratory illness presenting symptoms like: cough, burning eyes, nausea, etc., also casts our position in a dimmer light. Nonetheless, I have long been a strong advocate of personal autonomy, and although children at this age cannot be relied upon to make truly informed decisions, the reading makes it clear that “Economic necessity is stronger than theoretical prohibition” (Ibid).
It is apparent from the narrative as well that, given the meager financial freedoms Vincent’s family live in, being employed at the age of twelve by a shoe making company is not so much a matter of heedful decision making as much as it is a matter of finding a way to subsist. If their reality is as red in tooth and claw as it is being portrayed along the touching lines of Moffett’s impeaching article, then scouring the moral landscape for favorable alternatives in this context is, indeed, a fool’s errand.
I shall now proceed through the scant number of alternatives imaginable and the way in which these embody a frivolous disservice to this unprivileged class. One -and perhaps the most conspicuous, alternative path to follow is that of a continued education. The article emphasized the promising intellectual character of the child; doubtless a prosperous mathematician, possibly a future educator or engineer and maybe even a doctor. Nonetheless, the wages therein mentioned are, at the very least, dispiriting. Vicente’s dad is purported to make 180,000 Mexican pesos per week. The twelve year old is said to earn weekly the miserable amount of 100,000 Mexican pesos per week. Despite their joint income (and bearing in mind that two members of his household had been laid off) and after 3 decades of hard work, they are forced to live in the most destitute and marginal habitat, evinced in the article as:
This article certainly represents a quintessential instance of the exasperating boggle of being caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place. Vicente’s predicament is indeed dire, grim and fraught with unfavorable circumstances that he could potentially incur by preserving his new ‘career’ at the shoe factory. However, there is something important to be said about the prospects that await children and their families should they decide to stay in school and continue their education at the expense of their loved ones and their extremely daunting financial straits.
The article gets the ball rolling: “When Vincent Guerrero reported for work at the shoe factory he had to leave his yo-yo with the guard at the door” (Moffett 88). Poignant as this narration is, it is impossible to ignore the pitiable pathetic fallacy it contains. This red herring raises a waiving yellow flag not worth overlooking. Moffett wends describing the precarious and perilous conditions of the workplace and the environment in which Vicente was being foisted to perform. The poor youngster had to “shinny up the press and throw all his 90 pounds backward to yank the stiff steel bar downward”, and of course this “reminded him [this inexperienced little facetious boy] of the playground contraption” (Ibid). I am completely sure that older people, too, are often forced to work in far more dangerous and physically challenging environments. Notwithstanding this shameless piece of casuistry, there are corresponding legal regulations that must be taken into consideration before moving forward. It is true that Mexico jurisprudence prohibits infants under the age of 14 to join the workforce, such regulatory injunction being enacted in order to prevent abuse by parents who send their unwilling kids out onto the streets to make a profit. However in this case, the article does not provide good reasons to believe that Vicente was being compulsorily instituted as a member of factory’s staff. Quite the contrary, it elaborates on how the 12 year old kid acknowledged the benefits of having dropped out of school and becoming one more pillar in his family’s economy incrementing significantly their revenue stream. Granted, a decent case can be made condemning the perils that await laborers working for extended periods of time in such insalubrious conditions, i.e., inhaling the allegedly poisonous effluvium which emanates from toxic glue, especially given the absence of adequate ventilation. The fact that Vicente came down with a respiratory illness presenting symptoms like: cough, burning eyes, nausea, etc., also casts our position in a dimmer light. Nonetheless, I have long been a strong advocate of personal autonomy, and although children at this age cannot be relied upon to make truly informed decisions, the reading makes it clear that “Economic necessity is stronger than theoretical prohibition” (Ibid).
It is apparent from the narrative as well that, given the meager financial freedoms Vincent’s family live in, being employed at the age of twelve by a shoe making company is not so much a matter of heedful decision making as much as it is a matter of finding a way to subsist. If their reality is as red in tooth and claw as it is being portrayed along the touching lines of Moffett’s impeaching article, then scouring the moral landscape for favorable alternatives in this context is, indeed, a fool’s errand.
I shall now proceed through the scant number of alternatives imaginable and the way in which these embody a frivolous disservice to this unprivileged class. One -and perhaps the most conspicuous, alternative path to follow is that of a continued education. The article emphasized the promising intellectual character of the child; doubtless a prosperous mathematician, possibly a future educator or engineer and maybe even a doctor. Nonetheless, the wages therein mentioned are, at the very least, dispiriting. Vicente’s dad is purported to make 180,000 Mexican pesos per week. The twelve year old is said to earn weekly the miserable amount of 100,000 Mexican pesos per week. Despite their joint income (and bearing in mind that two members of his household had been laid off) and after 3 decades of hard work, they are forced to live in the most destitute and marginal habitat, evinced in the article as:
“…a tumbledown brick shell about the size and shape of a baseball dugout. It is home to 25 people, maybe 26”, and it adds that: “Vicente, to get some privacy in the bedroom he shares with 8 other children occasionally rigs a crude tent from the laundry on the clothesline crisscrossing the hut” (Ibid 89).
Talk about human dignity. Their predicament is in no way encouraging. But there is one more salary that surfaced in the article: that of a teacher’s. A teacher reportedly makes the weekly sum of 120,000 Mexican pesos. That is 60 thousand less than dad and 20 thousand more than the kid. If these figures have any credibility, our intellectual and philosophical wherewithal to build a moral argument in favor of Vicente’s furtherance of academic education diminishes neatly to the point of nonexistence. One can only imagine the quality of life borne by a teacher in light of her lower-than-a-laborer’s income. What can we tell the kid in order to incentivize him and encourage him to stay in school and take additional training? How can we foment his academic aspirations, as noble as the might be, if the pursuit of a professional career will only make inroads at the cost of his and his family’s current interests and stability?
And as far as the ethical responsibility that lies in the hands of those who are in a position to hire underage children, I hope I have explicated to some discernible detail the extent to which the consequences in this context would accrue. If the contractor’s choice is 1) to hire or 2) not to hire, when hiring willful children (underage as they might be) whose parents are in the best disposition to comply, entails the betterment of their condition, then to withhold recruitment is not only wrong, but to a degree, even perverse. These children’s horizons are not as ample as most people imagine, and providing their families with work and a fixed income at least gives them the opportunity to survive. Considering that nobody’s interests are being unnecessarily thwarted, and that no viable option promises to ameliorate their situation, I submit that I see no reason in this context to favor further education over willful labor work.
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