Ridecamp: [RC] Children riding endurance

    You both make my point for me.  Mandatory school attendance law means
that students must be educated.  They don't have to attend a public school
to do so.  I believe even in CA this is true.  Child labor laws don't mean
kids can't work just that they can't be forced to do jobs that might tend to
prevent them from benefiting from youth and predictably harm their future.
One does not have to work 9 - 5 and bring home a pay check to learn
responsibility.  Mucking stalls is just fine (unless taken to abusive
extremes).  I still believe both are good governance.
    Now I am not pro age restriction here.  I am pro protecting kids,
because of their limited choice in the matter, to anything that can
predictibally harm them physically or mentally.  Does someone have to ride
100 miles at any age to reap the benefits of our sport?  Can we predict that
at a certain physical stage harm will come to a child later in life because
of their activity now?  I hope we can look at the issue through a
professionals eyes as in other sports like Little League Baseball and make
some determinations that will give kids the right to reap the benefits of
endurance riding and not jeapordize their future.

Randy Winter
Colorado


I dunno....when my kids muck, they are working pretty damn hard - and no one
complains (besides them, I mean.)  And school attendance laws, at least here
in CA are NOT mandatory - I can home school 'em if I want to!  Children are
the responsibility of the parents...unless one is Hillary Clinton, then it
takes a village.
Scott

Oh, I dunno.  It used to be that kids learned responsibility and a work
ethic by working part-time, and could reference work experience when it came
time to support themselves.  Yes, it is good that children are no longer in
sweat shops, but we are now to an equally damaging opposite extreme with
regard to child labor.  Sad, sad indeed.  As to mandatory school
attendance--more and more people are reverting to home schooling because of
various issues with the public school system.  And from what I've seen, the
majority of home-schooled children are more polite, more responsible, more
capable, and better educated than most of their public-school peers.  So
can't say mandatory school attendance is necessarily wonderful either.
Since kids can't work, at least they can still participate in sports like
endurance, where they learn responsibility for their horse, they learn to
stick with something until it is finished, and they learn lots of relevant
skills.  Unless, of course, the powers that be choose to remove that
opportunity for the younger ones as well....

Heidi




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