Get them working young I say.

[sime42]

This is largely based on personal experience, and of those around me, but I think 14 is a good age to start part-time work. Even better if it's manual/constructive/skilled work. I guess retail or service work is better than nothing but still.

 

I had a couple of part-time jobs, in holidays and on Saturdays, from 14 - 18. I believe the work and renumeration taught me a lot. The values of hard physical work, of learning manual skills, of financial saving rather than borrowing, of diligence.... 

 

One job was making wooden jigsaws, the other was general building work, mainly masonry and landscaping. My brother worked on a local farm, I joined him at haymaking time. We, and some other local lads, also did pheasant beating for a few years during the season. (Fond memories of being given a pint of shandy with lunch at the pub, and then driven round country lanes and across fields at speed in the back of an open back Hilux! Exhilarating stuff.)

 

I'll be encouraging my son to follow a similar course.

 

 

 

 

[PeteB]

Should something like volunteering or work experience be part of the national curriculum?

[Mick Dempsey]

The flip side is it can put you off.

As an adolescent 12/13/14 I was press ganged into bale carting on the farm every summer.

I hated it, and thought that doing any hard manual work would be the very worst way you could make a living.

[Mark Bolam]

You weren’t wrong though, were you?

[Mick Dempsey]

2 minutes ago, Mark Bolam said:

You weren’t wrong though, were you?

No I wasn’t, but it turned out I was fecking useless at everything else anyway, so had to go back to it.

[Mesterh]

13 hours ago, PeteB said:

Should something like volunteering or work experience be part of the national curriculum?

Work experience was part of the curriculum when I was in school, have they stopped that now?  It was only two weeks but at least it gave you a taster of work. I did work some of  the summer holidays for a couple of years grafting on a farm for a few quid a day. Hard work like but earning your own money to spunk on pepsi and fizzy sweets was ace.

 

[peds]

Two weeks at GCSE, two weeks at A-level, when I was at school. I did two weeks in the kitchens of a local hotel in the first block, and they gave me a job off the back of it.

Since I already had a job when the second block came around, two friends and I went and volunteered on the Dorset steam railway for two weeks and had a little holiday instead.

Edited August 8 by peds

[sime42]

I only got one week, sometime around GCSEs. 🤨

I did get to do it in the drawing office of a well known band saw manufacturer though. Stenner bandsaws. That was cool.

 

 

[Squaredy]

11 hours ago, Mesterh said:

Work experience was part of the curriculum when I was in school, have they stopped that now?  It was only two weeks but at least it gave you a taster of work. I did work some of  the summer holidays for a couple of years grafting on a farm for a few quid a day. Hard work like but earning your own money to spunk on pepsi and fizzy sweets was ace.

 

I did work experience when I was 15, and although only a week I think it was an invaluable experience.  The sense of belief it gave me was huge.

 

 My boys will get to do this at their school in the next few years.  I assume most schools still offer it.

Edited August 9 by Squaredy

[peds]

31 minutes ago, sime42 said:

I only got one week, sometime around GCSEs. 🤨

I did get to do it in the drawing office of a well known band saw manufacturer though. Stenner bandsaws. That was cool.

 

Could you do another week now?