When Profit Designs the Classroom: The Forgotten Humanity Behind “Efficiency”

Op-ed by,  Mexus

In New York, a teacher has barely 30 to 40 minutes to eat lunch — a limit rooted in New York Labor Law § 162, enacted in 1921, when the statute was written for factory workers who ate beside conveyor belts.

Back then, the “noonday meal period” made sense: people brought tin lunch boxes from home, sat at their stations, and ate without ever leaving the premises, so it was assumed that 30 minutes to eat was plenty of time. But a century later, that same law governs teachers who might need to cross campus, heat a meal, or grab something from a nearby store — ten minutes to drive, ten to wait, ten to return, and no time left to actually eat.

It’s something that has frustrated New York educators and labor advocates for decades: the meal-break law is a relic from the industrial era, and it simply doesn’t match the real rhythm of a modern school day. What was once a reasonable break for industrial labor has become an impossible schedule for intellectual work.

It’s hard to imagine anything more absurd. Teaching is one of the most intellectually and emotionally demanding jobs in society, yet the people we entrust with our children’s education are given less time to rest and eat than most office workers. You can’t drive to a store, prepare a sandwich, and sit down for an actual meal in 30 minutes — but the law insists that you should. It’s the same logic that once timed breaks for textile laborers: keep the machine running.

This is what happens when efficiency replaces humanity. Administrators and lawmakers justify the system by saying schools must protect “instructional time,” as if an extra ten minutes of math will matter more than a teacher’s ability to think clearly, eat calmly, or simply breathe. The message is unmistakable: productivity first, well-being later — if ever.

Current debate shows some awareness of the problem, though little action. Education unions and advocacy groups have occasionally proposed updating § 3029 of the New York Education Law to require a full 45- or 60-minute duty-free period, or allowing schools to stagger schedules so that teachers can have a proper lunch without cutting instructional time. Yet these ideas rarely move past discussion. Lawmakers treat the issue as logistical, not human — another scheduling puzzle, instead of a question of dignity.

The same blindness drives labor policy across much of the world. Spain once offered tax cuts to corporations that hired workers under 35. The result? A generation of experienced employees over 35 became unemployable overnight. Mexico and other countries copied the model, praising it as innovation. In reality, it created a cycle of disposability — rewarding companies for short-term hiring and punishing experience, maturity, and stability.

What connects these stories is a single idea: that money measures success. Governments chase statistics that look good on paper — more “classroom hours,” more “youth employment,” higher “efficiency.” But the deeper costs are invisible in spreadsheets: exhausted teachers, anxious workers, discarded experience, and broken trust.

A society that counts hours instead of value will always end up starving its own best people — sometimes literally. If we want education that inspires and economies that last, we have to rewrite the logic that built them. Teachers don’t need charity; they need time. Workers don’t need incentives; they need respect. The true reform begins not in legislation, but in the recognition that humans are not production units.

Extra: Mexico copied the 30 min lunch break from the U, S, to atracked foreigh investment 

Historically, Mexico borrowed much of its labor model from the United States. The 30-minute meal break rule, originally designed for industrial workers in the U.S. during the 1920s and 1930s, was adopted almost verbatim in Mexico’s first Federal Labor Law of 1931 and maintained in the 1970 version still in force today. It was never a pedagogical measure—it came from factory routines where workers ate beside their machines and efficiency was prioritized over well-being. Teachers were later absorbed into this same industrial framework, treated like shift workers rather than professionals who need real time to rest and eat.

The neoliberal reforms of the 1980s and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in the 1990s reinforced that legacy. In the name of “competitiveness” and productivity, Mexico aligned its labor rules even more closely with U.S. standards, limiting breaks and stretching work hours. What began as a practical rule for factory floors became a permanent fixture of the education system, leaving teachers with barely enough time to breathe between classes—an echo of a century-old industrial mentality that still shapes their workday.