Part-Time Work Ethic: Should Teens Go For It?

The five teenagers that I interviewed do not currently work. Their main focus is school, as it should be. However, they stated that if given the opportunity, they would like to take up a job so that they could start saving money for themselves and to help out their families with their expenses. They do not seem to have too many responsibilities given to them by their parents, aside from doing household chores and maintaining decent grades in school. Even though their parents allowed them with some autonomy, they do not take this for granted. They still obtain permission

Young adults have not learned how to go about finding a job, which is an issue (Brooks 2). Previous adults who have had to learn on their own have had a rough start to the rest of their lives. Adulthood has changed in the recent years, making the transition to adulthood more drawn-out and problematic, pushing back important milestones of adulthood such as marriage, childbirth, and the beginning of a life-long job (“UT professor looks at challenges adults face” 1). True adulthood may be described by some as “a patchy and protracted route with many pitfalls and delays to be contended with along the way” (Wells 1). Young adults often question themselves if they’ve become an adult yet. Jonathan Wells states “Yes, I’m legally being able to buy a box of fireworks, but I’m still not above shooting them into other people’s yards” (2). However, if this class became available for high school students, it would allow them to learn how to get a job, apply for college, and other related

Kelley commences her speech by providing a shocking statistic that “two million children under the age of sixteen years” strenuously work to support themselves and their families in order to create a forceful sense of emotion within her audience. By doing this she illuminates the rate of child labor to stress the severity of the problem. The author repeats “increase” to emphasize and describe that the American workforce is increasingly composed of girls/women in order to highlight their role and the growth of their participation in the workforce. Juxtaposing how girls spend their time with how

Many teens work to help their family. For example, teens such as Eddie work to help their parents even though they do not get paid for what he has earned. “Eddie Ramirez, 16, recalls summers when he worked in the tobacco fields. Contractors often take advantage of young workers, he says, recounting times when he wasn't paid what he earned. Yet for four years, he kept going back to help his mother pay the rent” (Potenza 1). They work in many dangerous places just to get some money to help their families out. “Although families may rely on this

Having a part-time job at a young age, helps teens get ready for their careers as they get older. Jobs will also give adolescents more responsibility and respect, which they will use and depend on a great deal as adults. That sounds great, doesn’t it? Teens having more -respect for themselves as well as others would keep them out of trouble. Hey, that’s another point! If adolescents spent more time focusing on benefiting their future, fewer teens will be getting into trouble. Think of it, if you had homework to complete and a job to go to, would you be thinking about going out of your way just to get in trouble with the risk of getting caught?

The author has a goal of letting young people know what the benefits are of being employed, especially before entering the real world. Most college students are fresh out of high school and have never really experienced the realities of having to work in order to support themselves. Andrew chooses to work as a temp in a factory located in his hometown for the overtime pay, and because living at home during the summer months rather than residing on the college campus is exceptionally

Parents who encourage their kids to work are giving their kids an advantage. Research shows that kids who never worked for privileges, money , were more likely to be unsuccessful later on. Parents work extremely hard to put food on the table for their children, If they are

The change tearing through America in the 1950’s persists to this day. 2010 has brought a busier, more materialistic, culture than ever before. The trends of women working outside of the home and increasing teenage autonomy persists. American teenagers are given more discretionary time than ever before in history. Reed Larson studied this continuing trend and explains, “If we look back over the past 200 years, the most striking historic change in young people’s use of time is that youths spend much less time on labor activities today than they did in America’s agrarian past” (160). Some teenagers use

Etzioni uses 3-4 statistics all showing reasoning that working does more bad than good when its comes to developing into a conscientious and abounding adult. From proving it distracts from school, impedes social development and creates an unhealthy consumeristic mindset that drops kids into a mindset of instant gratification which is hazardous to their internal locus of control.

In Amitai Etzioni’s essay “Working at McDonald’s”, he argues that the jobs teens take up at popular fast food restaurants are detrimental to their education. His proposal was that working at these fast food restaurants negatively affects their education by encouraging teens to be more concerned about earning money than being successful in their studies. He claims that teens are getting these jobs to spend on petty items. Etzioni states that the routine and lack of creativity of the jobs are harmful and the hours in which teens work are long and interfere with students’ abilities to further their studies and complete assignments. He states that teens that have dropped out and are working at these restaurants have fallen into a stagnant condition

She starts by telling the story of a boy who mowed the White House lawn in order to attract people to read the rest of her article about teenagers and jobs. With this news, she links it to her article by saying,”Using surveys of 8.3 million 13- to 19-year-olds between 1976 and 2016, a new study published in Child Development reports that in addition to significant delays in “adult” activities… only 55.88 percent of America’s high school seniors have ever worked for pay.” In this text, she used evidence from a study published in Child Development to further back up her claim about how teens should be able to get a job earlier in their lives.

In “The Abolition of Work” by Bob Black, work is depicted as the cause of all problems of the world today. Bob argues that the only way the world’s problems will end is when people realize that they need to stop working. He proposes the adoption of playful ways of doing things in life rather than having to work. While “Summertime Dues” Walter Kirn uses his experience in a summer job to question the integrity and usefulness of such jobs to the youth. While summer jobs are supposed to instill responsibility and character in youths, both Bob Black have a similar voice on why working and can cause misery and not really teach anyone, anything.

With prom, school sports and other fun trips high school has to offer, paying for all these actives may not be ideal for the parent of these high school students. Getting a job can be an option for high school students to help the student also to the parent with these experiences that are coming. Amitai Etzioni the author of “Working at McDonalds” makes it clear, high school students with part-time jobs does not do anything for the high school student. Amitai Eztioni believes these part-time jobs does not teach true skills a high school student will need in the future. Even though Amitai Etzioni strongly consider part-time jobs have no long life value, part-time jobs do prepare high school students to develop job skills for their future because learn to maintain priorities , the student learns the value of money , and develop life skills.

  Nowadays, students love to have part-time jobs. Their parents approve it easily as they are said to gain experience from working. However, having a job is a big responsibility for a student. Before, teenagers at their age were working to help their family because of poverty. Nevertheless, they were actually eager to study and learn at school for their future. It was not the same as the teenagers nowadays where they are more likely competing to each other to have a job. Most of the

     We spend four years of our lives attending high school. Going through high school is supposed to prepare us for college and “the real world.” Throughout these four years we begin to better understand our choices for college majors, but we don’t get presented with the financial and time struggle that we will face. College costs money, along with everyday living. When attending college we become more independent and are faced with the problem of coming up with money and finding a balance between time for work and school. Though it may seem like working through high school is a bad idea, it could better prepare students for “the real world.”