"Dirty Work"

The subtitle of the article by legal columnist and professor Adam Cohen is "The Creeping Rollback of Child-Labor Laws." Work on this list to learn some dirty words the writer uses to make his case.

Here are all the word lists to support the reading of Grade 12 Unit 1's texts from SpringBoard's Common Core ELA series: My Papa's Waltz, in just-, The Last Word, Mushrooms, I Remember, Invisible Man, Four Skinny Trees, Dirty Work, On Seeing England for the First Time, Speaking with Hands, The White Man's Burden, The Poor Man's Burden, Shooting an Elephant, Lindo Jong: Double Face, Stranger in the Village
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. anemic
    lacking vigor or energy
    The government has not had a lot of ideas for what to do about the nation's anemic job market, but there are troubling signs that one old idea is starting to re-emerge: child labor.
  2. scourge
    something causing misery or death
    In the first part of the 20th century, there was a concerted effort to end the scourge of children working in factories and textile mills.
  3. dilute
    lessen the strength or flavor of a solution or mixture
    The law diluted protections that had been put in place in 1991, when teachers were complaining about working students falling asleep in class.
  4. eliminate
    end, take out, or do away with
    It would also have eliminated the limit on how many hours a minor over 16 can work on a school night.
  5. exception
    an instance that does not conform to a rule
    The federal law also has exceptions for agricultural work, in which child labor remains all too common.
  6. drudgery
    hard, monotonous, routine work
    The case for anti-child-labor laws is not complicated: it is based on the belief that children's primary focus should be education, so they can reach their full potential, not paid drudgery.
  7. interfere
    come between so as to be a hindrance or obstacle
    Not surprisingly, research shows that working interferes with children's ability to get an education.
  8. malleable
    easily influenced
    In many cases they are also more malleable workers, less eager to challenge working conditions or join unions.
  9. abusive
    characterized by physical or psychological maltreatment
    World Day Against Child Labor, which was created to call attention to abusive child-labor practices around the globe, will be observed on June 12.
  10. concerted
    involving the joint activity of two or more
    But Americans should use the occasion to think about where child-labor laws are headed at home--and plan for what appears to be a concerted campaign to turn back the clock.
Created on Wed Mar 04 11:50:24 EST 2015 (updated Wed Mar 04 20:24:12 EST 2015)

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