What happens when you make poor kids do manual labor to pay their way in a school environment.
Originally posted by cluegirl at What happens when you make poor kids do manual labor to pay their way in a school environment.
Herr Gingrich has offered a Modest Proposal. It goes something like this: Since poor kids have no adult role models who do any work at all, we need to fire school custodial staff, and make the poor kids do the maintenance in their schools at cut-rates, to teach them what a work ethic is.
Clearly Herr Gingrich has been spending time with the extremely wealthy 'poor', given that the role models that kids in poor neighborhoods have today are generally working at least two, usually three jobs, and still barely scraping by. He's thinking of the 'poor' who have trust funds, clearly. However, there is some merit to his questioning the efficacy of poor parents ability to instill their kids with a respect for work ethic, given that if kids grow up never seeing their parents except when they're exhausted, or on their way to work, fighting about money, or complaining that their bosses cheat and exploit them unfairly at every turn, and if with all that work they still can't afford to live anything like well, or even securely, that really isn't much of a good sales pitch for getting a job and joining the retail zombie hordes. Not when clever kids can't see any advantage to doing as The Man wants them to do, but plenty of advantage to breaking the rules and making good money on their own terms.
I'm not saying that every poor kid will choose to steal over choosing to work in a soul killing series of jobs, but I am saying that the example those poor parents have to set is not a good one for The Man's cause. Not at all.
filkertom posted on this issue here, and I made a reply in the thread. However I felt it worthwhile, since I am one of the few Americans who can actually speak with personal experience about a child being made to labor in their school to gain rights to services her peers got without any effort of their own, to speak of what I know.
The text below, is an expansion of what I posted there.
Then I was ten, through a series of fucked up events, I had to do EXACTLY what Herr Gingritch suggests; in order to get fed lunch at school (and bringing it from home was a non-option, seriously, as my mother was an invalid, and my father, after financially ruining her with his coke habit, was divorcing her,) I had to work half my lunch hour in the school kitchen.
It was thoroughly illegal in every way, but the kitchen ladies offered it as a way for them to still feed me lunch without giving me a free ride. (Don't ask me why it was less morally reprehensible to put a ten year old to work in the kitchen than to give her some food on a regular basis, but there you have Arizona in the early 80's.)
I can speak with absolute certainty on what this does to kids. It 'Others' them. Plain and simple, it takes them out of the company of their peers at a time when children are building critical social skills, and it paints a huge blot on them that their peers see, and target. Poor kids already have a hard time making their way with their wealthier peers in school. The wrong shoes, shabby clothes, ugly welfare glasses, all these target kids for some pretty merciless teasing, but to take those poor kids and literally remove them from the company of their peers, and make them be seen in a servitor role fully and thoroughly alienates them. Kids who could-be friends now don't dare be seen lowering themselves to associate, because the role shoves the poor kid into a place where they are seen as bizarrely different, and worthy of, and in fact deserving of any scorn and abuse their wealthier peers might choose to dish.
Kids, please remember, are psychos until around the age of 16, when they begin to learn empathy and courage. But by 16, the social heirarchies of a school class are well established, and it takes a disaster, a move to a new school district, or graduation to blast any slack into them. When I had to suddenly take half my lunch time and go work in the kitchens, the friends I had went from supporters, to joining ranks with the bullies in about a week, and they stayed there for the rest of the time I knew them.
Turning students into part time Skivvies also encourages poor kids, whose time for homework and socialization with their peers -- arguably half the reason to even GO to school, -- is now taken up with drudgery, to drop out at ever earlier ages, and to turn their hands to things they might be not only better at, but which would 'pay' better as well. There are thousands of pimps on America's streets that are happy to take a 12 year old and 'teach her a trade;' all they need is one single opportunity, a moment of doubt, a kid who's tired of being insulted and debased, and looking for someone to offer some shred of promise. Pimps have been doing this for centuries. They're good at it. Just like gangs are amazingly well versed at putting hungry young kids to work in dangerous, illegal, and lucrative positions, trading on the kids youth to send him to juvie for a crime any adult would do hard time for. Pimps and gangs are fantastic manipulators. Feeding poor kids a social diet even richer in dehumanizing scorn and ridicule just makes them that much more vulnerable.
And what it also does, this idea of making kids clean their schools for the right to attend, is expose kids to the more sadistic tendencies of teachers as well. At present, it's actually illegal to give a kid a Snape kind of detention, and for good goddamned reason -- I've known many, many teachers who would have very much abused such authority over their least favorite students, and told themselves they were just handling a little 'discipline problem' by grinding the kid's self-respect into a paste. If they'll do it in class, you good goddamned bet they'll do it afterward. Snape's fun to read about, but you damn betcha any student would hate him to the point of self harm if they really had to cope with that kind of abuse. Of such scenarios are school shooting sprees born.
And shall we now get into sexual abusers on the child-cleaning-crew-management staff, and how much easier it is to get the privacy to commit rape when the kids are there, and their classmates either aren't, or are kept busy elsewhere? Because really, half or more of the rapes that adult offenders commit in schools are done in exactly that 'after hours' scenario.
Oh yeah, and as Filkertom mentioned, shall we also address the adults who will be put OUT OF WORK by this notion? Or shall we just leap straight to calling them shiftless, lazy, and pampered instead?
Tt;Dr? I did just that when I was ten. I survived it. I believe Herr. Gingrich is a loathsome individual for suggesting such a practice as an institutional measure. Actually, I think he's a loathsome individual altogether, and one whom I'd actually like much better if he would just stop breathing please, because every time he breathes, he speaks, and that's really getting to be a problem.
This entry was originally posted at http://cluegirl.dreamwidth.org/1295051.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Herr Gingrich has offered a Modest Proposal. It goes something like this: Since poor kids have no adult role models who do any work at all, we need to fire school custodial staff, and make the poor kids do the maintenance in their schools at cut-rates, to teach them what a work ethic is.
Clearly Herr Gingrich has been spending time with the extremely wealthy 'poor', given that the role models that kids in poor neighborhoods have today are generally working at least two, usually three jobs, and still barely scraping by. He's thinking of the 'poor' who have trust funds, clearly. However, there is some merit to his questioning the efficacy of poor parents ability to instill their kids with a respect for work ethic, given that if kids grow up never seeing their parents except when they're exhausted, or on their way to work, fighting about money, or complaining that their bosses cheat and exploit them unfairly at every turn, and if with all that work they still can't afford to live anything like well, or even securely, that really isn't much of a good sales pitch for getting a job and joining the retail zombie hordes. Not when clever kids can't see any advantage to doing as The Man wants them to do, but plenty of advantage to breaking the rules and making good money on their own terms.
I'm not saying that every poor kid will choose to steal over choosing to work in a soul killing series of jobs, but I am saying that the example those poor parents have to set is not a good one for The Man's cause. Not at all.
filkertom posted on this issue here, and I made a reply in the thread. However I felt it worthwhile, since I am one of the few Americans who can actually speak with personal experience about a child being made to labor in their school to gain rights to services her peers got without any effort of their own, to speak of what I know.
The text below, is an expansion of what I posted there.
Then I was ten, through a series of fucked up events, I had to do EXACTLY what Herr Gingritch suggests; in order to get fed lunch at school (and bringing it from home was a non-option, seriously, as my mother was an invalid, and my father, after financially ruining her with his coke habit, was divorcing her,) I had to work half my lunch hour in the school kitchen.
It was thoroughly illegal in every way, but the kitchen ladies offered it as a way for them to still feed me lunch without giving me a free ride. (Don't ask me why it was less morally reprehensible to put a ten year old to work in the kitchen than to give her some food on a regular basis, but there you have Arizona in the early 80's.)
I can speak with absolute certainty on what this does to kids. It 'Others' them. Plain and simple, it takes them out of the company of their peers at a time when children are building critical social skills, and it paints a huge blot on them that their peers see, and target. Poor kids already have a hard time making their way with their wealthier peers in school. The wrong shoes, shabby clothes, ugly welfare glasses, all these target kids for some pretty merciless teasing, but to take those poor kids and literally remove them from the company of their peers, and make them be seen in a servitor role fully and thoroughly alienates them. Kids who could-be friends now don't dare be seen lowering themselves to associate, because the role shoves the poor kid into a place where they are seen as bizarrely different, and worthy of, and in fact deserving of any scorn and abuse their wealthier peers might choose to dish.
Kids, please remember, are psychos until around the age of 16, when they begin to learn empathy and courage. But by 16, the social heirarchies of a school class are well established, and it takes a disaster, a move to a new school district, or graduation to blast any slack into them. When I had to suddenly take half my lunch time and go work in the kitchens, the friends I had went from supporters, to joining ranks with the bullies in about a week, and they stayed there for the rest of the time I knew them.
Turning students into part time Skivvies also encourages poor kids, whose time for homework and socialization with their peers -- arguably half the reason to even GO to school, -- is now taken up with drudgery, to drop out at ever earlier ages, and to turn their hands to things they might be not only better at, but which would 'pay' better as well. There are thousands of pimps on America's streets that are happy to take a 12 year old and 'teach her a trade;' all they need is one single opportunity, a moment of doubt, a kid who's tired of being insulted and debased, and looking for someone to offer some shred of promise. Pimps have been doing this for centuries. They're good at it. Just like gangs are amazingly well versed at putting hungry young kids to work in dangerous, illegal, and lucrative positions, trading on the kids youth to send him to juvie for a crime any adult would do hard time for. Pimps and gangs are fantastic manipulators. Feeding poor kids a social diet even richer in dehumanizing scorn and ridicule just makes them that much more vulnerable.
And what it also does, this idea of making kids clean their schools for the right to attend, is expose kids to the more sadistic tendencies of teachers as well. At present, it's actually illegal to give a kid a Snape kind of detention, and for good goddamned reason -- I've known many, many teachers who would have very much abused such authority over their least favorite students, and told themselves they were just handling a little 'discipline problem' by grinding the kid's self-respect into a paste. If they'll do it in class, you good goddamned bet they'll do it afterward. Snape's fun to read about, but you damn betcha any student would hate him to the point of self harm if they really had to cope with that kind of abuse. Of such scenarios are school shooting sprees born.
And shall we now get into sexual abusers on the child-cleaning-crew-management staff, and how much easier it is to get the privacy to commit rape when the kids are there, and their classmates either aren't, or are kept busy elsewhere? Because really, half or more of the rapes that adult offenders commit in schools are done in exactly that 'after hours' scenario.
Oh yeah, and as Filkertom mentioned, shall we also address the adults who will be put OUT OF WORK by this notion? Or shall we just leap straight to calling them shiftless, lazy, and pampered instead?
Tt;Dr? I did just that when I was ten. I survived it. I believe Herr. Gingrich is a loathsome individual for suggesting such a practice as an institutional measure. Actually, I think he's a loathsome individual altogether, and one whom I'd actually like much better if he would just stop breathing please, because every time he breathes, he speaks, and that's really getting to be a problem.
This entry was originally posted at http://cluegirl.dreamwidth.org/1295051.html. Please comment there using OpenID.