Less School, More Work. Less Work, More School

[NobleSavage]

This is my idea, tell me what's wrong with it.

From first grade on, work or "real work" was something you did when you finished your education. Yeah, I had part time jobs and summer jobs but the main goal was to get a college degree and then focus on work. I don't like this setup. Why not starting in first grade, have less school and more work? Give kids more work responsibilities early on. Then we replace college with a societal standard of lifetime education in exchange for less work.

There is no need to point out that I was fortunate that my part time shitty jobs were just temporary. I know I was fortunate and I think everyone should have the same opportunities.

 

[ideologyhunter]

What are the six-year-olds going to do, in the work world? I don't want the little fuckers making my latte -- the tenth graders that do that already mess up my order.

 

[NobleSavage]

I think this is from a website that is against child labor. So if these kids are starved, abused, or work 14 hour shifts -- that's not what I have in mind.

 

[gmbteach]

I think you are right on some level.

'Work' could take on the form of a newspaper route, lemonade stand, 'bob-a-job' around the neighbourhood, or simply doing chores at home. These are things 6 year olds could do quite comfortably. It could instil a sense of monetary value being attached to outlay of energy, skills etc.

I don't think 'child labour' comes into it unless you are looking at employing youngsters to work in mills etc.

 

[NobleSavage]

I think you are right on some level.

'Work' could take on the form of a newspaper route, lemonade stand, 'bob-a-job' around the neighbourhood, or simply doing chores at home. These are things 6 year olds could do quite comfortably. It could instil a sense of monetary value being attached to outlay of energy, skills etc.

I don't think 'child labour' comes into it unless you are looking at employing youngsters to work in mills etc.

Yeah, my parents never game me money. I always had to do something to get a few bucks. My father always let me know that he never got any money growing up on a farm. As soon as I could, I got a paper route. I remember thinking, "$30 a week! I'll be RICH." That probably took 1-2hrs a day. At that age I would have loved to trade time off from school to work more. Now, I'd like to work less and take classes at a local college.

 

[Underseer]

This is my idea, tell me what's wrong with it.

From first grade on, work or "real work" was something you did when you finished your education. Yeah, I had part time jobs and summer jobs but the main goal was to get a college degree and then focus on work. I don't like this setup. Why not starting in first grade, have less school and more work? Give kids more work responsibilities early on. Then we replace college with a societal standard of lifetime education in exchange for less work.

There is no need to point out that I was fortunate that my part time shitty jobs were just temporary. I know I was fortunate and I think everyone should have the same opportunities.

That's a great idea if your goal is to produce lots of worker peasants. As adults, they'll be less intelligent because critical early years were spent learning how to obey instead of learning stuff that peasants don't need to know anyway.

If your goal is to avoid the kind of feudal society most of our ancestors fled from, then this is a terrible idea.

 

[NobleSavage]

This is my idea, tell me what's wrong with it.

From first grade on, work or "real work" was something you did when you finished your education. Yeah, I had part time jobs and summer jobs but the main goal was to get a college degree and then focus on work. I don't like this setup. Why not starting in first grade, have less school and more work? Give kids more work responsibilities early on. Then we replace college with a societal standard of lifetime education in exchange for less work.

There is no need to point out that I was fortunate that my part time shitty jobs were just temporary. I know I was fortunate and I think everyone should have the same opportunities.

That's a great idea if your goal is to produce lots of worker peasants. As adults, they'll be less intelligent because critical early years were spent learning how to obey instead of learning stuff that peasants don't need to know anyway.

If your goal is to avoid the kind of feudal society most of our ancestors fled from, then this is a terrible idea.

I'd say feudal society has a lot more to do with economics and wealth redistribution than tons of education at an early age. 4 hrs a day of school ought to be enough. You are also assuming kids wouldn't learn anything while working and their only function would be to take orders. It doesn't have to be that way. I'm sick of too many adults that quit learning once they got their piece of paper.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

:mod:

 

[NobleSavage]

I'd probably get rid of summers off of school as well. That is a stupid holdover from the days when kids worked on the farm.

 

[krypton iodine sulfur]

Can it be done without displacing members of the current workforce? I get, hypothetically, it would distribute the amount of work a person does throughout their life differently rather than necessarily increasing the overall amount of work done, but it seems as if shifting from the current way of doing things to your proposal would cause a lot of distribution issues where income, skilled labour and unskilled labour are concerned.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

How much work is there going to be for them, though? We can't even employ all the adults.

For the most part, it would be minimum wage joe jobs or pointless make-work projects that don't teach them anything. Corporations would find a way to get it classified as "training", so they could hire them on as interns and not even pay them, thus taking away minimum wage and low skilled jobs from adults who might actually need them.

Given that the unemployment rate for youths who actually want to find work runs at about 25% in some places, what do we do with all the kids who can't find jobs during one of their work terms or in the afternoons while they're not at school?

 

[Bronzeage]

This is my idea, tell me what's wrong with it.

From first grade on, work or "real work" was something you did when you finished your education. Yeah, I had part time jobs and summer jobs but the main goal was to get a college degree and then focus on work. I don't like this setup. Why not starting in first grade, have less school and more work? Give kids more work responsibilities early on. Then we replace college with a societal standard of lifetime education in exchange for less work.

There is no need to point out that I was fortunate that my part time shitty jobs were just temporary. I know I was fortunate and I think everyone should have the same opportunities.

What's wrong with it? Nothing substantial.

The problem is an industrial society offers little productive work for a child. This is greatly different from an agrarian society.

We long ago realized child labor was a poor investment. We're all better off when children grow to be healthy educated adults. I grew up in a home with two parents who were born on a farm. Our suburban household was operated as if it were a farmhouse. When my brother and I were old enough to follow instructions without someone standing over us(about 5 years old), we were given specific tasks and a deadline to finish them. Every Saturday morning, I took a brush and scrubbed the toilet, inside and out, and then the bathtub and sink. As I grew taller, mowing the yard, window washing and the like were added to the list.

There was never a shortage of things not on the list. We always had a garden, so hoeing weeds was a pleasant summer evening. We did our own appliance and car repairs. There was nothing strange about pulling the washing machine out into the carport, turning it over and fixing whatever was broke. My father once fabricated a bearing for the dryer drum from a piece of scrap pipe, which served for more than a year. Thirty years later, I faced the same problem and discovered the replacement part cost about $12. I don't know if he even checked. There was no one else in our white collar neighborhood who did things like that. I thought we were hardly self reliant pioneer stock, but later I realized, we were just poor.

Putting kids to work in an academic setting is a great idea, but there is little they can do, except "busy" work. In a class room setting, there will be at least 15 to 20 students. If an hour of the school day is dedicated to labor, that is 100 student hours a week. What could consume that time?

 

[TV and credit cards]

How much work is there going to be for them, though? We can't even employ all the adults.

The number of hours the adults are going to school would have to be in excess of the hours the children work.

For the most part, it would be minimum wage joe jobs or pointless make-work projects that don't teach them anything.

Not necessarily. They're blank slates. It's all learning experiences.

Corporations would find a way to get it classified as "training", so they could hire them on as interns and not even pay them, thus taking away minimum wage and low skilled jobs from adults who might actually need them.

They'll do anything we let them get away with.

Given that the unemployment rate for youths who actually want to find work runs at about 25% in some places, what do we do with all the kids who can't find jobs during one of their work terms or in the afternoons while they're not at school?

Art.

 

[Underseer]

That's a great idea if your goal is to produce lots of worker peasants. As adults, they'll be less intelligent because critical early years were spent learning how to obey instead of learning stuff that peasants don't need to know anyway.

If your goal is to avoid the kind of feudal society most of our ancestors fled from, then this is a terrible idea.

I'd say feudal society has a lot more to do with economics and wealth redistribution than tons of education at an early age. 4 hrs a day of school ought to be enough. You are also assuming kids wouldn't learn anything while working and their only function would be to take orders. It doesn't have to be that way. I'm sick of too many adults that quit learning once they got their piece of paper.

If the goal is to have a small number of people with all the wealth and a very large number of poor people to serve them, then reducing the education of peasants during those critical early learning years will go a long way towards achieving that goal. Teaching them to be obedient workers at an early age is just an additional bonus.

You can argue all you want that the goal is not to create a feudalist or neofeudalist society, but your objections will necessarily ring hollow given the inevitable results of what you propose.

After all, what's the point of establishing an aristocracy to rule over us if you don't provide them with lots of peasants?