There was a study a while ago that looked into a curious phenomenon in teen academic scores in America. In common American mythology, being gainfully employed as a teenager helps a child understand responsibility, gives her an understanding of what work involves, how to be punctual, how to value money, and learn a work ethic. America is one of the most productive countries on earth, and scientists think that the work ethic children learn early on is a great reason for it. Adolescents learn how to present themselves and cut back on the attitude to please a potential employer. They learn to work with other people, to defer to supervisor, and learn to take a certain amount of compromise and swallow their pride in certain situations. But still, young people do always hold down another kind of job, and kind of an important one at that - learning at school. And psychologists believe that anything that young people gain at student jobs they certainly offset losing ground to school.
American children start out at school doing pretty well, staying shoulder to shoulder with children in any other developed country. However, once they are past the elementary student school stage, students seem to falter. Through middle school and high school, academic performance really seems to suffer. And educational reform studies over the past 10 years that have squarely blamed the way schools are run, are now holding themselves back to wonder if it is the enforced work culture in America that might be to blame. School performance seems to suffer the most among students who take on about 15 hours of paid work every week. Children who work that much, usually have lower grades, less than optimal choices of course, and behavioral trouble.
But even if it is accepted without argument that working takes something away from a teen's academic potential, it isn't just possible to put an end to this. Working a casual part-time job may be pocket money on the side to teenagers, but the source of cheap labor they represent supports the economy big-time; and the money they make, in excess of $200 billion a year, supports the economy in other ways when they spend it on entertainment and clothes. Congress has actually tried to impose restrictions on how long student jobs can last; fast food and supermarket chains though have gone up in arms against them. If they had to employ full-time workers to man the registers, it would certainly hit their bottom lines.
So schools, unable to battle fast food, tries to shape things so that students find good learning work experiences - in hospitals computer companies and such. School representatives tour company offices on weekends and holidays, to try to find the best work programs that could absorb student jobs. Some companies even make it mandatory for students to sign up for extra credit courses if they want to be eligible for job. Rochester in New York is one district that does this. Student jobs like those are not easy to drum up. Only about one in 10 high school student jobs have been found through these productive business school liaisons. There was even a federal school-to-work office at one time; but there was such fierce opposition to it by the Republicans, that it had to be shut down. Now, schools do the best they can working on their own. But there is hope yet, if parents come together in support.