Unit 3: Compelling Evidence: "The decline of the American teenager's summer job" by Lexington (full text)

The decline of the American teenager's summer job
It is striking how often self-made Americans have stories to tell about boring summer jobs

The decline of the American teenager's summer job
It is striking how often self-made Americans have stories to tell about boring summer jobs

THE first time that Ronald Reagan appeared on a newspaper front page was as a teenage lifeguard, hailed for saving a drowning man from a fast-flowing river.

He was still “Dutch”, to use his childhood nickname: a slim, bespectacled youth, serious to the point of priggishness.

A biographer, Garry Wills, unearthed a high school yearbook in which Reagan scolded swimmers he pulled from the cool, treacherous Rock River, near his boyhood home of Dixon, Illinois.

The post offered responsibility, money for college and stability in a childhood blighted by frequent moves, brushes with financial ruin and his father’s drinking.

The post offered responsibility, money for college and stability in a childhood blighted by frequent moves, brushes with financial ruin and his father’s drinking.

The post offered responsibility, money for college and stability in a childhood blighted by frequent moves, brushes with financial ruin and his father’s drinking.

Strikingly often, self-made Americans have stories to share about teenage jobs, involving alarm clocks clanging before dawn, aching muscles, stern bosses and soul-fortifying hours of boredom.

In 1978, a record year in the annals of the Bureau of Labour Statistics, 72% of all teenagers were employed in July, the peak month for youthful ice-cream scooping, shelf-stacking and burger-flipping.

This being an anxious and litigious age, Reagan’s river beach is closed now.

“When I get up early they bash on it,” Miss Nelson reports, “but most of the time they’re jealous of the money.”

The story of the vanishing job is not a simple one.

Reagan’s stirring example is still taught in Dixon, a trim, conservative town, with an equestrian statue of the president on its riverfront and loudspeakers on lamp-posts that play the Carpenters and other easy-listening classics.

Patrick Gorman, director of the Ronald Reagan Boyhood Home, a museum that preserves a house rented by the president’s family in Dixon, is confident that anyone who wants a job can find one, even if it might be “detasseling” corn—picking pollen tassels from growing corn cobs, an arduous summer task traditionally reserved for the young, involving cold mornings, baking middays and scratches from corn leaves.

Patrick Gorman, director of the Ronald Reagan Boyhood Home, a museum that preserves a house rented by the president’s family in Dixon, is confident that anyone who wants a job can find one, even if it might be “detasseling” corn—picking pollen tassels from growing corn cobs, an arduous summer task traditionally reserved for the young, involving cold mornings, baking middays and scratches from corn leaves.

Mr Gorman easily found six teenagers to volunteer as museum guides: “Good kids migrate to good kids,” he beams.

Larger economic forces have buffeted Dixon, too.

With unemployment rates now below 5% in Dixon, applicants for entry-level jobs are getting younger again.

Nationwide, affluent white teenagers have historically been much more likely to take summer jobs than lower-income, non-white youths.

Family connections help, and it is easier to find work at a golf course or tennis club than amid inner-city blight.

Though big cities like Chicago, 100 miles from Dixon, have government-run schemes that prod employers to offer summer work, demand exceeds supply: last year 77,000 Chicago youths applied for 31,000 summer jobs or internships.

Some parents may question the value of manual work in an age of high-tech change.

But an elite education counts for little without self-discipline and resilience.

Drudgery can teach humility: when hauling boxes, a brain full of algebra matters less than a teen’s muscles.

Drudgery can teach humility: when hauling boxes, a brain full of algebra matters less than a teen’s muscles.

At best, it can breach the social barriers that harm democracy.

At best, it can breach the social barriers that harm democracy.

At best, it can breach the social barriers that harm democracy.