There is a blurred line for kids in Uzbekistan between school and labour camp. Homework just might include paving roads under a scorching sun in a struggling ex-Soviet state run with a thumping fist by President Islam Karimov.
"We're allowed to conduct our classes only when local officials are satisfied at the state of the road - my school is responsible for one kilometer (about half a mile) of roadway, which has to be cleaned twice a week," the school director in Uzbekistan's eastern Namangan region said.
While the Central Asian state's economy stagnates in a nation that has the region's largest military but where poverty level figures are never published, rural children have the job of ensuring that their villages retain an air of well-being.
"The concrete curb-stones and trees along the road have to be painted white, the pavements must be clean and the flowers have to be watered daily or they'll shrivel," the school director said on condition of anonymity.
While some argue that such work cultivates a useful sense of pride, others say that it is just part of a year-round cycle of labour that eats into children's learning.
Many regional administrations routinely use kids to help meet central government-imposed quotas for annual cotton production - a key plank of the economy, though one that is declining due mainly to mismanagement.
Children as young as nine are deployed in the cotton fields for sowing in spring and harvesting in autumn - in total as many as 16 weeks taken out of the academic year.
Last year the then education minister Risbai Jurayev said he was working to ensure that children were not engaged in cotton picking for more than one month per year.
But Uzbekistan has not ratified the International Labour Organisation's conventions relating to child labour and to many observers Jurayev's assurances rang hollow.
At another school in Namangan - a conservative region that is among the top cotton producers - a teacher says that her class has repeatedly been made to cultivate more than 10 hectares (25 acres) of land belonging to a local prosecution official in addition to working in the cotton fields.
"The children are neither paid nor fed for their work," the teacher said.
The government's critics say that lack of education represents a threat to the future stability of this country, especially as it has regularly been buffeted by its war-torn neighbour Afghanistan and has a high proportion of youth among its 26 million population, with around 60 percent under 25.
They warn that Islamic radicalism may come to fill the gap left by a lack of leisure facilities and weakened educational provision at all levels.
While a relatively small elite supplements their children's schooling with private tuition, the United Nations children's agency UNICEF says that some 34,500 children are thought to be living and working on the nation's streets.
A Tashkent parent who runs the office of a well-known Western firm voices the fears of many among the Soviet-trained older generation.
"The situation in higher education is catastrophic - anyone with money can buy a diploma and become a doctor," she said. "I'm afraid to think about the future."
Her fears are echoed by the International Crisis Group (ICG), a security think-tank that has urged Uzbekistan to reform its Soviet style-economy.
"Increasing discontent is likely to lead to further radicalisation of young people," the ICG said recently. "More and more young people will seek emigration and social ills - drug abuse, criminal activity, prostitution and human trafficking - are likely to rise."
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