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ATLANTIC HIGHLANDS HERALD |
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TEACH CHILDREN TO WORK My near neighbor is a young man in his late 30s. We moved into our homes within days of each other. We have enjoyed knowing him and his wife during our sojourn in Virginia. Recently, my wife and I were chatting with him about yard-work. He has little time for it. We have time, but have trouble bending over to pull weeds, etc. Since our neighbor’s son is 13 or 14, we asked if the lad would like to earn a little money weeding our flower beds. A little sheepishly my neighbor said they couldn’t even get him to do yard-work at their place, and that he didn’t need money – the clear implication being that they gave him all he wanted. We were troubled by this report, but said nothing. Later, my wife and I wondered about the boy’s preparation for adulthood. We live in an affluent neighborhood, but none of its children – so far as we know – will live a life of financial independence. All will have to work, as adults, but our neighbor’s son will have no experience with that reality. Both my wife and I grew up in families of very modest means – hers more constrained than mine, but not by much. From young ages we both learned to work hard and earn our own money. I distinctly recall deciding, at age twelve, that I wanted to be a person of means – to have dollars in my pocket and pay my own way. I had no parental teaching on this, but simply decided to make it a life’s goal. (Perhaps it was a genetic inclination.) In my teens I worked hard to earn money for things I considered important. A college education was my first big objective. By college time I had saved enough for my first year in school. This is not remotely possible today, but it was in 1960. My private college cost $1300 a year – a lot of money, but doable. (Today that school costs $25,000 a year!) My buddies thought I was nuts. They attended state teachers college where tuition cost $150 a year. My family could provide no college funds, but I found summer jobs to earn most of my expenses. During the school year I worked on campus. I borrowed the rest of what I needed. At graduation, my school debt was $1000, which I easily repaid in later years. I never thought of my growing-up years as harsh or difficult, but considered them a bracing part of my education. Hard work, proper regard for supervisors, completing tasks, and commitment to quality – all were attitudes I learned during those formative years of shoveling snow, delivering papers, and cutting grass. (There was still plenty of time left to study, play ball and chase girls.) I also learned that not everything was dollars and cents. When I was fifteen my mother found me a grass-cutting job through a reference from our church. It was a small yard of a city row-house. The owners were an old couple who had been paying a boy from the church to cut the lawn, but he was now grown and had moved on. I took the job. The old folks were very fussy about their yard. They required trimming along the sidewalks with manual clippers. (I developed a strong forearm and back because of it.) Between mowing with an old, push-model mower and the hand-trimming, the job took about two hours. The pay was $1. Even in 1958 that was a lot of work for a buck. Probably they had been paying that since the ‘40s. Nevertheless, I did that job for the entire summer because I had agreed to do it and because I felt sorry for the old couple who obviously had very limited means. A summer job after high school taught me about trust. On a crew of new graduates employed by the school district’s maintenance shop, my buddy, Otis, and I became known as trustworthy workers. We would always carry out an assignment without supervision. Consequently, the boss gave us assignments all over town. We drove to them with the shop’s jeep. This did not endear us to the rest of the crew who were still chopping weeds in the hot sun, but Otis and I had a great summer of freedom. I never forgot how good it felt to be trusted. I doubt if he did, either. (Today, Otis is a Ph. Doctor of Chemistry at a mid-west university.) Being a person of (modest) means enabled me to get married while still a college student, have a family, and purchase a home. Friends lent us money for the down-payment, but we paid it back. We did all this when we were young. I was 26 when we bought our second home. Because my formative work experiences were positive, I raised my children in much the same way. We always paid an allowance – a weekly stipend not contingent on “good behavior” or chores – but this was never enough for a growing teen. Each one ambitiously took baby-sitting, lawn-mowing, snow-shoveling, and newspaper delivery jobs – as I had done. They became people of substance, too. Our family established the “Fifty-fifty” plan for capital purchases. The child raised half of the funds for significant acquisitions. We put up the other half. (Of course, all purchases required parental approval beforehand.) Thus, new bicycles, old jalopies and even college educations were procured. For college, the kids raised their half by earnings, loans, and gifts from family members. All graduated from excellent private schools. I believed then – and still believe – that each child should have a real, motivational stake in his own education. The experiences of many families who neglected this important factor showed we were right to include it. Today, our children are all independent, gainfully employed homeowners – married and raising their own families. Much of this success is attributable to my wife’s considerable influence. They also grew up in the church and saw the Life of Faith lived out. But I’m sure that the values of hard work, thrift, responsibility, honesty, and paying your own way were non-trivial factors. Our neighbor’s neglect of the valuable dimension of work in his son’s education is not a new twist. I have seen it before. When our kids were in the scramble to earn their college costs, I met an old friend at a social gathering. Knowing that his daughter was in college, I asked what kind of job she was doing during the summer. His answer surprised me. He said they expected her to have a “high level” career. As they didn’t consider menial jobs a good preparation for this, she was spending her summers interning with companies and agencies in the kind of work she hoped to do when she graduated. This reminded me that the rich are different from you and me – they have more money. (Except that my friend wasn’t rich – and wasn’t likely ever to be, at that rate.) I have always wondered if that young woman started at the level her parents planned and expected, and whether she knew how to work hard, wherever she started working. There is much emphasis, today, on bringing “skills” to the workplace. This is not a bad thing. Skills are valuable. Certainly it is better to have them than not. But skills are only part of what is important for success in work. Skills can be gained, as needed. Sound attitudes toward work are more important and are much harder to acquire in adulthood if you missed them in childhood. In 1943 a young man interviewed for a new job in the repair department at a Pennsylvania car dealership. He was a new father, but he and his family were going broke because the large manufacturing company he worked for was being struck by its work-force every few months. His pay was good, when he was working, but he wasn’t working enough. He brought no particular skills to car repair except mechanical adeptness, good hands, and knowing how to work hard. When the owner asked how much pay his prospective new employee needed, the young man said they could make it on $22.50 a week. Even then, it wasn’t much. But out of that very modest start – far from the top, not even in sight of it – he became one of the most skilled, productive and highest paid men in the dealership. By 1955 – despite an interruption for wartime service in Europe – he and his colleague had formed their own business. That young man was my father. His bootstrapping story became part of the lore of our family. Pop gained the skills he needed along the way and made the most of every opportunity. But he started with fully formed attitudes toward work that helped him succeed. Those attitudes influenced my own life and career significantly. The hard work of Pop’s youth prepared him. His starting point was incidental. Education made a big difference in my life. I believe in it and know its value. I believe in preparation. I believe in acquiring skills. All of these are important. But most of all I believe in teaching children how to work. This is the paramount skill – the fundamental preparation. It is why poor immigrants still arrive here with nothing except knowing how to work hard – and become millionaires. Our young people need this same knowledge. They won’t get it from a childhood of all play and no work.
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