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Notes -
American Compass has a new article complaining about the decline of the Summer job:
The article notes one reason why:
This might lead you to wonder if maybe you should learn something from the wealthiest racial group in America. But no, the author doesn't suggest that. Send your kid to work at McDonald's, good for them, builds character. Who cares if Asians take 25% of Ivy League seats and conservatives find themselves increasingly locked out of the American elite?
This is the same kind of error Leftists make when they see that kids whose parents took them to art museums have higher incomes than kids whose parents didn't and conclude that it means we need to subsidize art museums. In both cases, genetic confounding is ignored. But while the left fetishizes education and high-class culture, the right fetishizes hauling boxes and cleaning pools.
None of this is to say that summer jobs are necessarily bad. If your teen is rotting his brain with electronics 16 hours a day, kicking him out and telling him to get a McJob is probably gonna be good for him. But if he's well adjusted, does well in school, and has lots of friends, there's no reason to make him work manual labor because someone conservative writer who attended a third-rate university told you it's an "American folkway." It isn't, by the way. John Adams said, "I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain." It wasn't "I must study politics and way so my sons can work a cash register and be in touch with the working-class."
When I was in high school I spent a couple summers lifeguarding for my city's public pools. My parents suggested it but they didn't require it, and it was largely my mother's doing. I've always loved swimming, I never did it competitively but all the time recreationally, and my mom also loved swimming, and I think she recommended it because she had a sense about these things, obvious as it is, that her teenage son would enjoy getting paid to spend summers at the pool.
I did. I never thought of it as work, I still don't. It's very funny to me how it does not parse at all in my memories as a job. I was hanging out with people my age, or girls just a bit older than me who were all thin and attractive and in skintight lifeguard suits. It was also a nice pool and this was the 00s so most people going were thin, other than the classic fat dad or chubby mom. It's lifeguarding so it built responsibility, and I think I'm a better person for it, for all of it. As far as summer activity options for high schoolers, lifeguarding must be high on the stack for socialization and peer esteem. I'll fully recommend this to my kids, but as with my parents, not require it, and for the same reason as I suspect from my mom. Work ethic, get in touch with the working class? The pocket money is nice, but nah. Hang out at the pool, socialize, exercise, flirt with girls. That's just a good summer.
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