Labor Day

By Jim Thompson
HCP columnist

When I was young, it seemed as though a majority of adults were proud of their work. If they weren’t proud, at least they were accepting of the situation.

Schools need to go back to praising good work, not just showing up. There are 7 million job vacancies right now, according to the Wall Street Journal. Employers are telling journalists that candidates do not show up on time for interviews. They do not have the basic skills needed to do entry level jobs. It is not about education; it is about attitude.

Where did this start? I think we can partially blame television. Not the television of the 1950s or 1960s, but starting in the 1970s. Television in the '70s started getting cheap laughs by making men look stupid. Television started making the set be about the home, not the workplace. If it was the workplace, the set was a lawyer’s office.

Compare this to “The Life of Riley” from the 1950s where the star of the show worked in the airplane factory in Long Beach, California.

There is a place where you can get insights into real work today or in the past – YouTube. YouTube is not mainstream media, but it has a very large audience.

When I was younger, kids my age were proud to do a task alongside their dads or moms. In the kitchen, I was always the one to make pudding out of a box for Mother. I was proud of that job. For Dad, I was beside him working and very proud of pulling my weight.

Our subdivision started about 1990. It is now experiencing turnover and people are moving in with kids between 6 and 12. Their parents hire grass mowing, shrub training and other tasks. I have watched the house next door. They have two sons, now brilliant students at Georgia Tech. They have lived here for about 10 years.  I have never seen the sons take out the trash. Their dad does it. Their dad mows the grass; he doesn’t hire it done.  

I have hired the kids to do a couple of things for me over the years, and they have done them reluctantly. It was all about the money.

There are other cultural changes that have affected society for the worse, but they would fill a book. The foolproof cure is raising kids on a farm, but we cannot make this work in the modern, industrial world.

Jim Thompson, formerly of Marshall, is a graduate of Hillsboro High School and the University of Cincinnati. He resides in Duluth, Ga. and is a columnist for The Highland County Press.