Why Teach Children To Work? - Society

2023 Author: Oswald Adamson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-11-27 12:13

As summer approaches, this topic is gaining relevance. At all family forums, wherever you look: “Where would a child work in the summer? Nobody knows from what age you can get a child to work? " And the apotheosis: “People! Does anyone pay the kids for their homework?"

Or here's an interesting plot twist: "Do you think it is necessary to teach a child to physical labor?" And a long-and-different thread of discussion.

We recall our Pioneer-Komsomol labor past (who had it) - some with nostalgia, some with disgust, the younger generation of parents shares their experience of survival in the hungry 90s: “We were helped by the vegetable garden. Nobody even wondered if we wanted or didn't want to dig it up. It was food. Food at any cost."

And now, when the children have almost everything, why should they work?

WHY PEOPLE WORK

A strange question, you might say. Firstly, for earning money, and secondly, for socialization, so that people are respected, that the status is acceptable, to be proud of oneself. Thirdly, you have to kill some time, all the time it is boring to drive the bald.

I conducted a small survey among first-year university students: out of 50 people, two work, one girl earns a living, the other - for

travel and entertainment. And that's all. I began to ask how the rest of them live, do all parents have oligarchs?

No, oligarchs in this particular university cannot be found in the afternoon with fire, ordinary families, more or less prosperous. But children sincerely do not want to strain, it is easier for them to give up some dream than to take a steam bath. That is, there is where to live, breakfast and dinner are given out, a fancy phone for a birthday is given once a year - and thank you for that. Their eyes do not burn.

When you talk to these young people about the future, it is just the complete absence of a dream that is striking. They do not want anything, they are such quasi-Buddhists: be content with little, don’t be hungry for more - and you will be happy. Career? Somehow it will work out, we will settle in, my mother's and father's friends will help, there are many relatives in Moscow …

My peers, who are now mostly leaders and bosses, constantly complain about this phenomenon: such a graduate comes to be hired, in the eyes of melancholy, from under my mother’s stick he dragged himself to the office, my father made an appointment for an interview. "What do you want?" - "I don't know …" - "What can you do?" - "Yes, nothing in general …" - "What do you want to do?" - "I do not care…"

Here you can twist our microscope, into which we look at the younger generation, and try to highlight the types and characters. And then it will come to the causes of the phenomenon and generalizations.

LOCAL

I mean Muscovites in the second-and-so-on generation, whose parents either made their way to the capital in the early 90s, or already lived here, but during perestroika were forced to build life practically from scratch. They worked three jobs, changed their specialties, maybe they went broke and got rich again. We created businesses and grew professionally.

At that time, their children went to private kindergartens (municipal ones were "re-profiled" into offices of firms), then to private schools (from municipal schools, children come in after lunch, and there is no one at home until nightfall), then they entered private universities (in a state competition, and it is difficult to enter). Candy kids. Parents have mixed feelings for them. On the one hand - blood, heir, everything for him. "I work so that you have everything!" - the cry of a desperate mother. On the other hand, he’s a freeloader, he won’t hit a finger, you won’t wait for help from him, he sits in his pants at a computer or walks around boutiques all day. Sheer disappointment and shame.

Parents are nagging between guilt and resentment. They are completely confused and angry at the same time. After all, they, in fact, arranged all this for the sake of the children, you don't endure a 14-hour working day with two weeks of vacation a year for your own sake. But why such a strange (albeit quite predictable) result?

Those families are in a completely different position where parents have failed to protect their children from the hardships of a young independent life. As practice shows, where the children were dragged along on business trips for their father, they were given feasible tasks at their summer cottages, they were attached to work from the age of 14 (instead of being sent to language camps), and the relationship is simpler and closer, and the children look more cheerful, and parents do not suffer from all sorts of guilt complexes about the "taken away childhood."

Because children don't need a trouble-free childhood like in a commercial. They are people too. At first, it is much more interesting for them to drill and repair with dad, bake pies with mom, or vice versa - build a gazebo with mom, and cook pilaf with dad. During the Renaissance in Europe, children did not have toys in the current sense - something for fun. And there were reduced copies of tools for children to learn to live in their modern society.

WHAT DO OUR CHILDREN DO?

Study, study and study again. English, Chinese, logic, rhetoric, mathematics. Ballroom dancing, taekwondo, piano and flute. In between, they kill monsters or create VKontakte farms. And this endless and to a fairly large extent absolutely useless and fruitless study is presented as the main work and duty of the child.

Parents on the forums are seriously discussing the problem: should study be considered physical labor? Have mercy, gentlemen, physical labor is to dig up the beds "from the fence to lunch", load the bags, wash the floors, in the end. All these mental activities are presented under the sauce "we prepare the child for future adult life, we teach him to work."

But evolutionarily a nine-year-old is already sufficiently adapted for physical and low-skilled labor, and a 12-year-old person is quite capable of replacing an adult at the machine, which was in the war. Most importantly, at this age, real work interests any child much more than abstract science.

And the labor camps? One hundred people of hormonal adolescents on huge apple trees, like monkeys, labor competition, volleyball in the evening after work, dancing with local guys … And where, pray tell, now to do with these hard workers in the summer? Again, spend exorbitant sums on their more or less meaningful leisure, instead of sending them to make money.

By the way, we gave all the money we earned to our parents, it didn't even occur to us that we could spend it on ourselves. Although, for some friends, the parents themselves later bought something very valuable with this money: a bicycle or a Japanese jacket.

Native

They have a mom and dad left in the provinces, a high school, a gray life without any prospects, because those who have prospects in their hometown do not go to Moscow. And at first they have a very hard time here, but they try very hard. Highly. Because the bridges are burned and there is no turning back.

I am always interested in what their parents said and did so that they would grow up so active and achieving goals. In almost 100% of cases, the story looks like this.

It was a small provincial town, the entire infrastructure was tied to one or two enterprises, there was no big wealth in the family, but the parents did not even think of the stars before their eyes. On weekends, we went skiing or visiting.

As an option - dad drank, or he was not there at all, then the mother worked to the point of exhaustion, and the son decided at all costs to relieve her of need. Sometimes parents go into debt to pay for the child's admission to the capital's institute, then his motivation for achievement grows to the sky: the credit of trust must be paid.

And from early childhood, the child was taught that he could achieve a lot if he worked hard. Compare with the mantra of Muscovites: "The main thing is to get into the right university and make the right acquaintances." Then, of course, these energetic and ambitious comrades will learn that not all work is rewarded, and sometimes the right acquaintances are more important than professional skills, but they still continue to knock down their butter with their paws.

NOT TRAINING, BUT FORCED TO WORK

I know several very sad stories about children, whom their parents literally forced to get a job: constant reproaches about the uselessness and burdensomeness of their existence in the family. Both boys and girls left home at too young age, hired for hard and humiliating work, just not to hear: “There is nothing of yours here at all! Not earned yet!"

Such an early start to work did not lead to anything good. This is akin to the very early separation of the baby from the mother. It does not begin to grow and develop faster and better, on the contrary, it pupils and falls into suspended animation, scientifically - fixation on the age of the injury. These little workers did not receive the necessary education, they often got into crime stories. Some were saved by the appearance of the "fairy godmother" in the person of the police officers of the children's room, the orphanage teachers. One of my acquaintances, a girl, was saved by literally a random fellow traveler, who had been brainwashing her all night on the train. And she went to Moscow to enter a brothel (an intelligent girl, she had read Dostoevsky).

So how to teach a child to work? And should we do this at all?

In my opinion, you can train your pet to the litter box. And a person can be taught something, you can show him the possibility of something, interest him, create motivation. But by forcing the child to wash the dishes, you teach him not to work, but to help his mother.

One of my many nephews has just given me a heartfelt speech about work. He is 12 years old, he is terribly handicraft, he is going to be a heart surgeon. “So,” Temiy said, “labor is not from the word“difficult”. When I'm interested, I can do one thing all day. Or even a whole week. And when I'm bored, I can't even sit for half an hour. And there are also stupid subjects at school that nobody needs, music, for example, or phonetic analysis of a word. " “In general,” the speaker summed up, “I believe that there is no need to teach children to work. They themselves perfectly learn when they want to eat. Or when they are very interested in something."

And I completely agreed with him.

Our young and very forward-looking class teacher took us to practice in a real bakery. And instead of the hated laundering of the walls in the school corridor, we sat for a month at the cash register, dispensed bread and sweets, counted on antediluvian accounts. It was just indescribably great! You have no idea what kind of thrill it was - to put on a clean white robe, sit down at the cash register, it is important to say: “You have thirteen rubles!”, And the cash desk rings a quiet bell when the cash drawer opens. And everyone looks at you and is moved. All two of your working hours.