Uggh! Government Intervention...

[Seeker]

http://www.torontostar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1057961413192&call_pageid=968256290204&col=968350116795

Just when I thought I was "left-wing" I come across this while browsing classifieds...

The guy oozes patronizing nanny-knows best.

Kids have be driving tractors and doing chores for a LONG LONG time.

I did it. Yes, it's a little more challenging than getting a suburban slug off his ass for 5 minutes to 'mow the lawn', but it also fosters the sense of self-reliance that is vital to survive.

It's no more dangerous than any rural child's play.

Go back to Ottawa and raise your own kids.

[SpencerH]

Dont worry, you're still a 'leftie'

Its unlikely that anyone would think that I support government intervention, but I do question whether small children driving tractors is appropriate. I dont let my children use the lawn mower or my power tools since it's beyond their abilities to use them safely.

[connorkimbro]

But if they had grown up on a farm, spencer? Kids can learn how to use things like that. I was mowing the lawn myself at a pretty young age, and my brother and i used to ride around on riding lawnmowers at a young age.

Not the same as a tractor, granted, but i wouldn't doubt that kids that grow up around that can use it at a much younger age than one might think.

[SpencerH]

There are valid reasons why we dont allow children to operate cars that have nothing to do with whether or not they can drive one.

Kids do lots of dangerous things, not because they're stupid or even inexperienced, but because they dont always think things through before they do them. For example, when I was 12 or 13 a kid cut off the top of his fingers with a jointer in woodshop. He had one more pass to make, but the sawdust collector was full and kept spitting out dust onto the table so he couldnt make a clean cut. He knew it was dangerous, but rather than stopping and cleaning the tool he tried to brush away the sawdust near the blades. One second later his fingertips were gone.

I'm sure you've seen similarly dumb things done by young soldiers. I used to get drunk with some other troopers and go repelling off of an 100 ft overhang cliff face using a single line where the object was to break as little as possible before hiting the ground.

[Makeo]

its an evolutionary thing. farm kids are just naturally more mature and able to do stuff like drive tractors, shoot sick animals build fences etc. All the stupid city kid genes have been bred out of the farmers gene centuries ago.

[connorkimbro]

i will concede that younger people tend to do more stupid things than older, more experienced people.

the article didn't load for me, so i don't know, but were the kids unsupervised? a kid is much less likely to act foolishly if they're being supervised . . .

[SpencerH]

Editorial: Farms need to be safer for children



Pity the children who live and work on family farms.

They may not face big city threats, like heavy traffic and youth gangs, but farm kids exist in a world of risk where tragedy is no stranger.

A 4-year-old Mount Forest girl is crushed to death after slipping from a tractor driven by her elder sister — just 9 years old.

A 14-year-old Lambton County girl suffocates in corn while working in a grain bin.

A Thunder Bay youth, 15, dies when the tractor he is driving tumbles down an embankment.

They are only three on a list of 235 children killed in Canadian farm accidents from 1990 to 2000. Another 3,000 were hospitalized over the same period. Others were injured slightly or barely escaped serious harm.

The farm community has failed its own. Society, at large, should intervene with standards to protect rural youngsters.

"We're tired of counting dead kids," says William Pickett, a child safety expert at Queen's University in Kingston. He is the head of a new study that found many farm parents routinely put kids at risk by giving them jobs beyond their abilities.

In the agriculture industry, children actually live on the job site, as well as work there. And it's a job site notably lacking in safety rules and regulations, even on farms with more machinery than some factories. Ontario's Occupational Health and Safety Act doesn't apply. Environmental rules are relaxed. And it's up to farm families to decide when kids are ready to operate heavy machinery, tend large animals, and other chores.

The death toll indicates clearly that they are choosing poorly. And so does the latest research.

Pickett surveyed about 500 farm families, including 220 in Ontario, to see how well they understood children's limitations. He found a disturbing number of youngsters were operating tractors at too young an age, including tractors without proper safety features, such as rollover protection. About 20 per cent of even safety-conscious parents, well aware of the issue, let their kids perform risky tractor work. That climbed to 40 per cent for parents deemed less aware.

In the real world of average farm families, Pickett says, the number of kids at risk is probably higher than even 40 per cent, since the parents in his study were all highly motivated volunteers. He concludes that educating farm families about the danger of child labour simply hasn't worked.

The main barrier to safety is the farm community itself. For reasons of tradition — and economic need — this group is more willing to put kids at risk than is society at large. Many farm parents can recall driving a tractor at 9 or 8, or even younger, and so are willing to let their children do the same.

What is urgently needed are set standards, perhaps even legislation and punishments, to protect rural children. The federal and provincial governments, along with major farm organizations, should convene a national meeting as soon as possible to flesh out details. Enough research has been conducted. Now is the time for action.

Farm children live in a very real, very dangerous workplace, not some idyllic Little House On The Prairie. They cannot set the standards for themselves; adults must do it for them.

[connorkimbro]

It certainly seems like a problem, from that article.

Are accidents like this happening to children morethan adults? Or does these types of accidents happen to adults just as often?

If i lived on a farm and knew how to use equipment like that, i certainly wouldn't let my children use it unless i was confident they knew how to use it safely, and i was there to supervise

[Makeo]

The farm is a dangerous environment. I bet there have been the same if not more adult fatalities for the same time period.
I think the safety of a child is up to the parent. Only the parent knows how mature a child is and if they are capable of performing a task safely.

[connorkimbro]

I dislike government intervention all around, but at the same time, i wouldn't think to suggest that just anyone of any age be allowed to drive on public roads. That being said, the main REASON for that is the public saftey, not any one individual's saftey. I don't think laws prohibit a 14 year old from driving a car on his own (his parents) property, and i don't know that the laws should prohibit that. I tend to agree with what Makeo just said.

[gunkulator]

Most farmers are barely making it these days. They have large numbers of children partly for the free labor. Farm children grow up much faster than other children because farms always have a sense of urgency about them. If the plowing/harrowing/planting/repairing/feeding/weather/chopping/harvesting doesn't happen at the right time, it usually means a hard winter.

Like the author says, this isn't Little House on the Prairie where the biggest problem was who Laura was going to go with to the Harvest Ball. Farmers and their families have real hardships facing them. It's a tough life and I'm not sure the gov't can invent a bunch of rules and expect that this will make somehow things easier.

[Seeker]

1. In South Western Ontario it may not be 'Little House on the Prairie' but it's also not the Russian steppe. The old family farm doesn't exist. The modern family farms are businesses, businesses dealing in assets, losses, and profits in the millions. They are not some bunch of uneducated peasants from Nebraska!

2. In a modern family farm, just like the old ones, everyone in the family must work and struggle and sacrifice to stay solvent. Everyone.

3. In rural Canada, kids routinely drive tractors on rural roads. In fact, it's a great way to learn how to drive.

4. The author took some tragic accidents from a 10 year period for the whole province and made it into some kind of new emergency or media event thing. Yes, there were accidents, but where is the comparison to, say, a kid who lives downtown around heavy traffic and construction sites?

5. Comments like this 'the community is the problem'...'education is not working'...'society (i.e. government agencies) needs to intervene'

Does he not believe that rural families don't love their kids and, with the exception of the odd wacko/idiots, try to do all in their power to protect them, just like families anywhere else??

Does he really think that some bureaucrats know how to run a farm and raise a family better than the actual farmers? The arrogance!

Rural children are raised to be more self-sufficient and disciplined. Thus, they are entrusted with more and at earlier ages.

I would not trust a suburban kid to milk a cow, shoe a horse, or even feed the geese, but rural kids are and should be trusted with that.

I'm all for rollbars and safety, and obviously some people are being idiots with really young kids, but that's no reason to come in and regulate everything to death.

What's next, CAS coming to take sons away because they helped break the new horse? Huge fines because it was Little Bobbies first time bringing in the hay?

Tragedies happen, farming is dangerous, but that's life. There is no need for some suits to drive up from their gated communities and tell people how to run a farm. **** that ****.

[Makeo]

good post. thats what i wanted to say.

[Sava]

I'm not a fan of safety-Nazi government rules.

[st_swithin]

Just say NO!

Stay in school!

Buckle your safety belt!

Slip slap slop!