From: Jasper
Date: 10/20/03
Time: 1:52:12 AM
Remote Name: 68.77.160.230
Charlie,
I was trying to respond to what you said about role models for kids who see no relationship between work and reward. I was trying to point out that some of these kids will never get a decent job and hold it because they are too sensitive to their environment to fall for lies and half-truths about their chances of making it. They don’t know what we know about their real chances if they work hard in school and learn what they are there to learn. They know only what they see around them and they don’t see much to make them believe that there is a relationship between work and rewards – for them.
When somebody like me shows up at their school who has apparently “made it,” do they see someone they believe they can emulate or someone they want to emulate? I don’t think so. That’s why I think I got those questions about where I stood in my company.
These questions didn’t spring full grown for their heads. Before I get there the teacher gave them “the speech” about the importance of speaking properly and learning other basic skills. The teacher then drilled them on questions they should ask.
I could tell the “good” kids because they sat respectfully and said nothing or asked questions that sounded like the ones the teacher would ask. The “bad” kids mostly talked to their friends or made rude cracks or gestures when they though my attention was on someone else. Whenever a good kid asked me what I did to qualify myself for my job the bad kid moved in for the kill. What happened to me might not be typical because of the rare nature of my occupation but I think it gave me special insights into what was going on
It happed the first time in a 5th grade class where the good kids led me to tell them about the four rungs on the clay modeler’s ladder of success and how long it took to reach the top if I did all the thing I told them they had to do to get the job. I told them that most modelers never made it that far, but they had no hope of getting anywhere if they didn’t learn the basics. The bad kid asked me how long I had been in the business. I told him, “Twelve years.” That was longer than any of the kids had been alive – an eternity. Then he asked me which rung of he ladder I was on. I was on step two. I didn’t tell him that I had been on step one for almost eleven years.
To these kids I walked in as an exception to the rule – which I was. I walked out a failure. What kind of role model is that? The neighborhood pimps and pushers had me beaten by a mile. They had Mr. Johnson – the man the bad kid saw going to work every day for less money than his mother gets on welfare – beaten by a hundred miles. Why should a kid like that prepare to get and hold a job like Mr. Johnson’s? Because he will end up in prison or the morgue before he’s twenty-five if he doesn’t? He expects that to happen no matter what he does or doesn’t do. And he’s got a good point. –Jasper