by Christopher Unterkofler

Created on: October 29, 2008   Last Updated: September 10, 2009

Teens + After School Jobs = Low Academic Performance

"I want, I want, I want...," cried the teenager.

Just fill-in the blank. A five dollar gel pen? An Ipod? A wireless phone? $75.00 sneakers? A car? Contemporary teenagers are illprepared to face Madison Avenue's targeted onslaught of advertising and the accompanying peer pressures. Parents have not properly educated and trained their children to resist the temptation of keeping up with the teenage Jones', and as such, have allowed their academically underperforming high school aged sons and daughters to take part-time jobs in order to have the money for the unnecessities which distract them from their academic studies.

High school is the period in a youth's life where academic achievement is of paramount importance. It is not the time, as Helium authoress TRACY HECK purports, when high school students "should be taking this time to enjoy life and find out who they are as a person..."

Students who follow this philosophy may very easily wake up at age 30 only to find themselves gainfully part-time employed at a prestigious retail store, such as Bed, Bath and Beyond.

Grade school underperformance can be corrected and turned-around during the high school years. An individual can attend college anytime in their life, but poor performance by students during high school will negatively affect, for many years hence, the life options available to these young people. High school is the time when a student absolutely must learn as much as they possibly can and hone their academic skills to as fine a level as possible. After-school jobs have a detrimental effect on these goals.

High school students, today, are the unwitting recipients of a diluted education system designed to pass as many teenagers as possible with the least common denominator in order to conform to the federal mandates of producing graduates. The academic curricilum has been pared to the bare minimum and students still have extreme difficulty scoring high grades. High school students must be made to realize that this is the most important time of their lives, and that a part-time job only allocates valuable time away from their studies.

Upon graduation from high school, a student should be able to read and write at a high school level. This includes the ability to calmly organize their thoughts and compose a brief, logically paced essay based on a reading assignment - free from spelling errors and grammatical mistakes, and without the use of a computer's spell/grammar check program. Few high school seniors, today, are capable of this Herculenian feat: a feat which was a commonplace, everyday classroom assignment only one generation ago. Contemporary high school students simply have not buckled down and acquired the most basic of skills and good study habits necessary for life. Time spent at after-school jobs only serves to undermine what little progress thay are achieving.

References
http://www.helium.com/items/1218245-arguments-agains t-after-school-jobs

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