This week Gov. Paul LePage moved to remove barriers for youth labor, claiming that letting children as young as 12 work up to 10 hours a week would instill a healthful work ethic.

Twelve-year-olds can do many things. Very mature adolescents might be good babysitters, pet minders, yard workers and paper deliverers. If they wish to do these things, there should be absolutely nothing standing in their way. We agree with the governor: Such a job teaches responsibility and helps kids succeed in college and beyond.

But there’s a world of difference between looking after a neighbor’s cat or delivering a daily paper to a route of 30 people every afternoon, and having to be at the local burger joint three days a week from 3:30 until 6:30 p.m., when they should be participating in sports, music, theater or just getting some help with math or English.

Kids working at a fast-food restaurant are asked to deal with toxic chemicals, hot cooking elements (deep fryers can scar for life) and potentially dangerous conflicts with customers, co-workers and criminals who believe such establishments an easy mark.

A baby sitter might have a mother or older sister to call if she needs help with a cranky baby or a recalcitrant toddler. A lawn mower might have a homeowner’s help if things go wrong with a machine.

But while the best assistant managers and shift supervisors also see their role as mentor, all too frequently the pace of that kind of job keeps real learning from taking place.

The lawn isn’t going to care if it takes an extra 10 minutes to get mowed. The impatient drive-through driver won’t be as forgiving.

We also disagree that movie theaters and bowling alleys are good places for 12-year-olds to work. These are kids whose parents are warned against allowing them to see PG-13 films on their own; free movies as a job perk flies in the face of that. Even if a kid is only taking fees and handing out shoes, other parts of bowling alleys aren’t so innocent. Many bowling lanes have bars and boozy patrons.

Is there some problem we haven’t heard about with finding enough people to work in bowling alleys and cinemas that they have to look for sixthgraders for labor? Is there no one of retirement age or a job seeker languishing between full-time jobs? What about the long-term unemployed — of any age. Shouldn’t they look for and accept any work they can get?

We can agree that kids who work on their parents’ farms and in their small stores and restaurants should be exempt from the same regulations that exist for kids who work for other people. And perhaps it should be easier to get a work permit if a kid is 15 and doing just fine in school.

But at a time of stubbornly high employment among breadwinners and continued hand-wringing over school achievement — especially from Le- Page — we see no good reason to shove our 12-year-olds into the work force. Setting up employers with low-wage workers amid increasing protests against minimum-wage work isn’t a good reason.

Let the kid grow up a bit, get some experience working under a benevolent parent or neighbor, and then move him or her into the world of work.

Whether a child is 12 or 15, school, not work, should be the focus. Principals or superintendents should be making sure a child is attending school, not truant, passing classes and not in trouble before assenting to a work permit. Parents should also be in the loop, agreeing in writing to a youngster’s schedule.

If all this makes middle-school kids “unemployable,” so be it. If fast-food companies find it hard to fill slots, then perhaps it should pay a living wage.

As LePage knows, work ethic can carry one only so far. The other piece of the equation is a good, affordable education. The governor got one, with help from strangers who saw promise in him. Seeing promise in Maine students means helping them afford the same kind of quality higher education LePage had. That’s what will make it possible for success stories like the governor’s to fluorish across Maine.