This is not a historical issue, something gone with the past. Today, right here and now, in 2022…

• Ten-year-old children can work seven days a week outside of school hours picking fruits and vegetables.

• The federal government and 10 states set NO maximum on the number of hours per day or week a young person can work on farms.

• Age, hour, overtime and minimum wage provisions of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act do NOT apply to children picking crops.

• Generally, farm workers under 20 receive a lower federal minimum wage of $4.25 an hour for the first 90 days of employment.

All those strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, salads, lettuces, radishes, etc. you eat were picked by people – including children - bent over, or on their knees, all day long. All the wine you drink, came from grapes picked by farmworkers – including children.

When you were 10 yo how many pounds of coffee beans or grapes could you haul across a field – all day long?

Have you ever worked in the sun 12 hours a day without shade or water? Have you even spent a summer in a southern or western state outside, without air conditioning?

Have you ever seen the hands of a farmworker?

Picking crops is such hard, back breaking work farmers can't find white people willing to do the work. Most white Americans would rather be on welfare, than work in the fields. Heck, we have to import sheepherders from Peru to tend flocks of sheep.

Teachers need to start educating themselves, cause they sure aren’t getting educated in college.