1. Should Children Work a 30 hour Week? You spend 30 hours a week at school. Should you be working?

2. Today’s Task You are going to design and make a leaflet showing your manifesto to EITHER support and promote a ‘yes’ vote for children to work 30 hours a week OR argue against the children working and try to persuade people to stop the practise.

3. Look at some leaflets: What information have you found out? Was it from the writing or pictures? Which parts tell you facts? Which parts tell you opinion? Do you agree with one of the leaflets? Is it a hard choice, who can’t decide? How important are the pictures? What kind of writing is this?

4. This is Charlie

5. This is his mum

6. This is his teacher

7. This is his boss

8. This is his sister

9. In the 1800's, children, aged ten or even younger, were forced to work in dreadful conditions. Their jobs were often in coalmines and mills. The jobs were very tiring and extremely dangerous. The children had to move large amounts of coal through tunnels and small shafts. This work crippled many growing children. Working in the mills was just as tiring and many women and children got caught in heavy machines. Another danger in coalmines was that the only source of lightning was candles. The candles burned down and could set the whole mine on fire. The only way to get in and out was down the narrow holes. It would mean that sometimes there was not enough time for everyone to get out so people would get stuck in the huge blaze. Children often worked 12 hours a day and the family wouldn't be able to support itself if the children were not employed. On 16th March 1832 a Bill in Parliament was proposed that tried to limit the hours of all persons under the age of 18 to 10 hours a day. Children who were late for work were severely punished. If children arrived late for work they would also have money deducted from their wages. In some factories workers were not allowed to carry a watch. The children suspected that this rule was an attempt to trick them out of some of their wages. In 1833 a royal commission recommended that children aged 11-18 be permitted to work a maximum of twelve hours per day, children from 9-11 were allowed to work 8 hours/day and the children under 9 were no longer permitted to work at all. This act applied only to the textile industry, were children were put to work at the age of 5. Look at some pictures of working children.

10. Children at work in a mine, carrying coal through a tunnel.

11. Children at work in a mine, showing a child sat opening a trap door in the dark, while another pushes coal through a tunnel.

13. Showing a child working with a printer, printing pattern onto fabric or wall paper.

14. Children at work in a cotton mill, showing a child whose job it was to collect fallen thread and fabric from beneath the working machine.

15. In 1842, influential people around Britain were putting pressure on the government to do research into how children were working in the mills and factories at the time. The factories were quite new, and even though people knew that children were working in them, nobody knew whether they were being treated well when they were working. So the government commissioned some research to be done, which means they ordered and paid some men to go into the factories and visit the local communities, to see what was actually happening. These men then wrote down everything they had found in a report, and wrote down who they had spoken to.

16. WHO IS SPEAKING? WHOSE SIDE ARE THEY ON? Out of the characters: TeacherParent BossChild

17. Whose side are they on?

21. . When children are employed, they behave themselves, but if they didn’t go to work, they would be lazy and cause trouble

24. Mr. Rowley’s Earthenware Factory, Tunstall. No. 266. Edney Hancock, aged 12. I am a paper-cutter for John Stanley. I can read, cannot write. I went to day-school before I came to work. I have been to work about three years. I have no father; he has been dead better than 12 months; he was a turner, and died of a cough; he was asthmatic. My mother lives at home and looks after the children. I have three sisters and one brother; only two of us go to work. Mother is too old to work. I and my sister carry home about 8 shillings a week; we have nothing else to live upon. I come to work at six o’clock in the morning. Master (that is, the printer) comes about seven in the morning. I go home at six.

27. III. The law will make British products more expensive than foreign products, because adult labour is more expensive. A restriction on child labour is like a gift given to the rival mills abroad, because there are no restrictions on child labour there. Products made here will become more expensive, and people will stop buying them.

29. burthen = burden

30. Was it right? Role play: I think it was wrong/right because…

31. Would you ? Then? Think about the people in the situations at the time we have been talking about. Would you want to go to work? Now? If you were told you had to go to work to help support your family would you want to? What would you gain? What would you lose?

32. Write a sentence stating your opinion- say WHO you are and WHY you feel this way. I am a rich man with a big house, I think children should clean chimneys, they are really small and can do a better job than a brush. I am a teacher, I think children should come to school because if they never learn to read and write what can they do when they grow too big to go up a chimney?

33. We agreed the leaflet was persuasive writing. What are the features of persuasive writing? Please give me an example of each:  Write in the present tense  Use good reasons and evidence to convince your readers  Use questions to plant a thought or idea  Use facts not just persuasive comments to make the reader empathise with the cause  Use strong positive language – don’t be wooly, be bossy  Try to use a rhetorical question  Make the reader think they will benefit in some way or feel it’s too good to miss  Make it personal :- your, you, we, name, friend.

34. Is this any kind of a life? Should Children Work a 30 hour Week? VOTE YES Send your children to work- buy more food with their wages! 41 Boys attending school before the factory opened September 1832 9 years pass 24 Boys attending school now January 1841