Work Hurts
Head aching, heart wrenching stress. These feelings result when teens face the pressure of balancing school with many other activities, especially part time jobs. “Part time” understates the amount of time a job consumes nor does it accurately represent the responsibility of having a job.
When placed in this situation, students spread themselves too thin by attempting to juggle school and work. Teens should not have part time jobs because jobs interfere with the educational process. Teenagers learn better and devote themselves more to learning when they do not have part time jobs. When students do not have a job, they focus more in school. Jobs serve as a distractor to teens, causing their thoughts to stray from learning to their after school responsibility.
Students may not be mentally present in the classroom if they must think about working, on top of their heaps of homework waiting for them. John Gartner describes how students may complete homework only to finish an assignment “but don’t actually learn anything from it”(Gartner). Not allowing teenagers to have part time jobs would allow them to pay better attention while learning. Also, part time jobs take time used to learn away from students. Returning home after school only to rush off to a job does not leave much time to study or expand on the lessons from class. An article from The Economist, discusses the concept of heavy workloads on students stating, “.
..schoolchildren spend hours on homework each night. Pressure from an early age is the cause of constant hand-wringing in the press”(Must). Students may face the decision of deciding to complete all assignments or to go to their job, which could lead to empty gaps in the learning process; work equals less time for learning. Furthermore, when teenagers have jobs, they do not have time to expand their knowledge beyond the classroom.
Along with the average school day, comes many opportunities to participate in beneficial extracurricular activities, which students with jobs do not have as much time for.Without the pressure of work on top of school, students “would have time to visit their grandparents, perform community service, do chores, study the Bible, and develop their artistic talents”(Gartner). If teens must go to work and school, and school and work, they can not spend time expanding their knowledge in creative ways. A higher devotion to education comes when teenagers do not have the added responsibility of a job to think about. With that being said, many still believe that teenagers gain a better sense of time management and responsibility when they work an after school job. Certainly, a student will learn how to balance work with school and other social activities; however, the increased stress from the job will negatively influence the life of the teenager.
Any time you give a teenager more work, they are bound to be less productive due to the heavy workload. An article in The Princeton Review describes the stress put on teenagers by school by stating, “…on average teens are spending one-third of their study time feeling stressed, anxious, or stuck”(Homework).
A sense of frustration occurs from the overwork, and this will become apparent in the teen’s attitude and outlook on life. Altogether, learning time management and responsibility is not worth causing a teen enormous amounts of stress that will affect their demeanor. As a result of not having a part time job, teenagers devote more time to learning and learn better in and out of class. Teenagers will focus more in class, teenagers will spend time out of school learning, and teenagers will have time to participate in activities that expand their knowledge, when not subjected to working. No student should miss out on the opportunity to learn, meaning no student should be forced to work a part time job.
