Oh, for sure. The exception to family businesses is probably both in Germany and the US rooted in the time the laws were made, where it would’ve been devastating to not allow families to include their children in the family business. And ultimately, there are probably plenty of laws in both countries that would check in on abuse.
In Germany children are obligated to help their parents in the household as long as they live with them. This extends to family business. By law the children have no right to be compensated, since they are already compensated by the parents feeding and housing them. Of course, this doesn’t mean parents can just slave their children, there are plenty of health and security laws and what’s generally reasonable for a child of varous ages to do.
So no family sweat shop. but the bottom line is: in Germany kids are obligated to help out the household they live with.
And I mean, I would argue that household chores can be viewed as education. After all, at some point the children have to care for their own household and as such are good to learn routine cleaning, how to do dishes, how to shop and cook, how to crawl into a tiny tunnel to mine for gold and how to keep the garden tidy.
There are some people who are adults who are kinda clueless about some basic things and I think it would’ve been a good part of education to have them make household chores from childhood onwards.
Of course, this needs to be reasonable and age appropriate. So, I agree with the commercial aspect of it.
It actually helped me from learning the 5 Ws in kindergarten.
Where? What? How many (“Wie viele” in German)? What? Wait.
I don’t have to make a call often, but all the more important is that I have that in the back of my head. I go through the first four points and then I shut up to for further questions, instructions or just a “okay, got that, sending someone”.
I think that is something that everybody should learn early everywhere. Everyone can only benefit from people making short, focused emergency calls.
I am a really quick reader compared to most people. Doesn’t sound that amazing and it’s certainly not unique, but it comes really handy. Always helped me with exams, as I got some precious minutes more to actually work instead of reading. I can go through books and articles really fast. Retention is not amazing, I’d say it’s about the same as when most people read in their normal speed.
I really envy the people that can read quickly and retain everything. But I am also content with being relatively quick.
There is literally tens of millions of people dying every year, so it’s not unlikely that over the years thousands of comments gather with stories where a song meant something to one of the millions of dead. It just feels a lot compared to YouTube videos.