OUR CHILDREN
Patri, Angele
Our Children By Angelo Patri MANY young adolescents, and not a few still younger children, are working and drawing high wages. We all feel that work is good for children, for everybody, and we all...
...We all feel that work is good for children, for everybody, and we all know that during this war we need all the help we can get to keep up with the tasks that must be done...
...They are likely to believe that their earning power is measured by what they get now...
...Their mental growth will be dwarfed and their wage earning power limited...
...They are going to think they have been cheated, discriminated against, abused, and so will form a sore spot in our social being...
...They think that money comes easily and can go out just as easily for the pleasures they like to enjoy...
...But if that is not done, if these young people do not save their money, do not plan to get more education and more training, do not plan for a fuller, richer future, they will suffer for a lifetime...
...It is the duty of fathers and mothers of young wage earners to see that their wages are saved, and that the young people plan for future growth and education...
...By learning now how to save and how to spend wisely, their work experience will be helpful...
...That lets the children into the work field and into problems that we shall have to settle before long...
...It is very difficult to get them to understand the peculiar situation in which they are placed and harder still to get them to see that this money will stop suddenly, that they will be left jobless, that they must go back to school and fit themselves for real earning...
...If we can get these boys and girls to save money and spend it for education after the emergency has passed, they will not have been harmed much by their experiences...
...These young people should be checked up by the schools and especially by their parents...
...Inasmuch as we can do little about their working and earning, it becomes doubly important that we attend anxiously to the results...
...We must not let this happen...
...They are likely to think that the service they give is worth the money they get for it...
...Children do not understand the value of money nor its relation to labor performed...
...If this group of young people are not trained and educated further but are turned out of their jobs to drift, we shall have a big group of ignorant, misguided, wrongheaded people...
Vol. 8 • September 1944 • No. 36
