Teens Need Sound Advice Economically Speaking

K L Marsala


Its official, your sweet sixteen birthday has been celebrated. Your driver’s license is now in hand, the entrance into your sophomore or junior year of high school will be this fall, and you have been given permission to date. Money has now become the answer to funding all your desired extracurricular activities, desires, and responsibilities. It is time to venture into the working world.

Let us look into the subject of working part-time and/or full-time. Does working during the school year impede our youth’s abilities to perform to standard or even excel? Should teens work beyond summer and continue their employment on into the school year? Does working help teens learn time and money management skills? Or does it just take away from studying, participating in sports and social activities? Are there implications to working during the teen years? How to working teens contribute to the economy? Overall, does working have a negative or positive effect on our teens?

According to various studies done on teen’s working- the negatives, if there were not parameters set and guidelines given by the parents, tended to outweigh the positives of working. Studies showed students who worked more than 20-hour workweeks had a lower grade point average than the students who worked 10 hours or less a week.
Due to fatigue and lack of preparation for the days school requirements students who worked more than 20 hours a week appeared to have a higher rate of absenteeism. Their jobs many times too, left the student without time to participate in extracurricular activities, such as sports, clubs, and volunteer opportunities.
Many researchers concluded that working students had less time to devote to homework and to complete assignments, which could possibly lead to cheating, and/or copying assignments. This also would have an effect on their testing scores.
Family relationships as well showed the impact. Between keeping up with school assignments and jobs teenagers who work have less family time. Employment has an impact on family relationships, due to the reduction in family together time.
Substance abuse statistics climbed higher for student workers who worked more than 20 hours a week. The incidences of alcohol and cigarette smoking increased dramatically.
Lastly, the studies indicated that early entry into the work force or into a harsh work environment might discourage teens about their overall perceptions of work, leading teens to develop a negative view about work itself.
It would seem most of the negative effects of employment had to do with hours per week, but a study conducted by an investigator from the University of Michigan , who surveyed 70,000 high school seniors and wondered if the same students who were getting into trouble after working long hours were the same students who would have troubles anyway. The researcher, Jerald Bachman, compared the teen’s grades, their plans for college, and if they had been retained. His conclusions established that students with low GPAs, no college plans, and a record of retention were more apt to choose a job with longer hours. So, it appeared in his research that it was not automatically long work hours causing the problems, but it was the common attitude of the student preceding their taking on the job of more than 20 hours per week.
Working though can give teens a sense of independence and self worth. Research has shown that teens who work less than 20 hours a week have the benefits of understanding time management and the upper hand on learning how to manage their money.

Punctuality seemed to be another aspect learned by students who kept a time clock of hours at work, leading them to be more responsible for setting goals and accomplishing them in a timely manner.

Becoming leaders, self-starters, managers of time/money and self all seemed to play a strong role of being positive benefits for teens who work within the prevue of parental guidelines.

Bachman, and other researchers are not willing to denounce that there are not any benefits to working part-time. Studies have shown though that the most successful job experiences are those that are closely linked to official school programs. Often referred to as School-to-Work or Work-Based Learning, these partnerships between schools and local industries provide students with invaluable learning experiences, enlightening the student into a real world experience, that in turn can strengthen their academic understanding.

Unfortunately, though many schools do not have the resources to implement such programs. Even if they do, they are not quite sure how to begin them, according to Carol Clymer, a senior program officer at Public/Private Ventures in Philadelphia. One of the vital components in Work-Based Learning programs, stated Clymer, is that it offers students the opportunity to talk about their on the job experiences with those who are involved with the Work-Based Learning programs. These programs are to be designed to give the teens time to think about what they are learning at work and to help them identify the positive aspects of work. Clymer had added, that even though her organization in particular had not carried out the necessary research on this subject, she still felt her observations clearly implied that many working students are learning responsibility, the value of working as a team, and work related communication skills.

To help our teenagers utilize all that academics and the work force has to offer- parental involvement is an absolute necessity. Schools being given the means to help build Work-Based Learning programs in conjunction with the industries in their locale would be of great advantage to our youth as well. Perhaps each individual school district could look into implementing a certain required GPA before students could enter the Work-Based Learning program.

One of the biggest influences though our society has witnessed as a whole has been the buying power of teens. On the average teens that hold down a part-time job, contribute a great deal to our economy. Marketing and research on how to entice the willing cash to be spent by our teens has become big business. There is even a marketing index set up (Teen Market Opportunity Index) which measures how certain products sales may change in the coming year. The teenager’s dollar motivation is to have fun, and they spend much of their income in this pursuit. Teens’ being able to spend freely is the key difference between their current obligations and those of their parents. Teens are not burdened down with mortgage payments, credit cards, and monthly bills. Researches know this and this influence can be seen, and heard across the TV and radio waves in daily barrages of hardcore advertising.

One of the downfalls though of teens having an uncontrollable wallet or purse is that teenagers in general are not big on saving… dollar per dollar most of their earned money is spent and very little- if any is saved. Freely spending without saving perhaps will set an undesirable trend for our future working adults. Not having a saving ethics can have adverse complications- monetarily speaking. Teens need to be taught early on that saving comes first, then responsibilities and lastly spending for entertainment and desired incidentals.


Without question more supervision and devoted guiding need to be given to our teens, adult involvement will help give them find the balanced insight needed to be first successful academically and then confident enough to step out and handle working. Then they will have been given the best of both worlds so that they may go on to college and perhaps obtain a work position in a job they will really love and enjoy each day.

With a coin in hand to spur on economic growth, a few pieces of paper in the savings account to grow tomorrows future and a sound investment in a complete education our teens of the future hold brightly colored rainbows of happiness, hope and contentment.

References:

http://ohioline.osu.edu/flm01/FS08.html
http://inside.bard.edu/academic/specialproj/darling/transition/group27
http://www.usda.gov/cnpp/FENR/FENRv13n2/fenrv13n2p64.pdf
http://www.edletter.org/past/issues/1998-ja/working.shtml
http://www.ecrm-epps.com/Expose/V3_3/V3_3_A8.asp