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14 DECEMBER 2009

NO 1526

Work

As in other activities, work also has an intrinsic and a developmental purpose. Certainly the intrinsic purpose of a sidewalk is that people eventually can walk on it. The developmental purposes for the youngsters installing it, however, are clear: First, that they learn how to do that particular job and, more broadly, learn how to do a job and get it done. The doing of that job creates pride on the part of the doers as they see others actually making use of and deriving enjoyment from the product.

One residential center developed its day program for each student with half the day being spent in an academic group and half in a production-oriented vocational training workshop. Earlier, these shops had been largely devoid of production value, being seen only as activities for hands-on learning — basically hobby shops. In the small engine shop, successive waves of students had been taking apart and reassembling the same power lawn mower. The instructor felt that the boys were capable of much more than this empty task and that more important work would be more challenging and provide better instruction, but this step had never been taken because of the bugaboo of work as exploitation.

This repetitive work that was safe from the criticism of exploitation (because it was so lacking in value) was a key incentive for the staff to rethink the role and nature of work in the program. The shop was converted to an auto and engine repair shop, and students began taking in real vehicles to be fixed and returned to the road. This shop gradually took on the maintenance of all the agency's vehicles, and, at one point, rebuilt a diesel farm tractor, saving the agency considerable money that could then be used to buy more advanced shop equipment. The day the tractor drove out of the workshop pulling a wagon carrying the instructor and the mechanics who had worked on the project was a great moment of pride for every student.

Was this exploitation? Applying the test of whether the institution derived benefit from the work, it certainly was. Knowing the students who worked on the project and knowing the feeling of pride they experienced as their product rolled out the door, the primary benefit clearly was the value of work as an identity-building, competence-promoting activity. Rather than concentrating on the end result, whether the work has benefit to the institution, perhaps the way to ensure the proper place for work in the residential curriculum of growing adolescents is to concentrate instead on the process approach. Here, the key questions are whether the work would be developmentally appropriate for youths in general, programmatically valid for these particular youths, and an activity about which they are enthusiastic. Then it is important that the agency think through all aspects of the work experience: purpose, time, who is involved, who supervises it, what are the individual's credentials and role, whether there will be a cash return from the work, and what safeguards are necessary to assure that the profits accrue to the students. It is equally important that the protocols be written and available to students, staff members, parents, purchasers of service, and licensing and regulating authorities.

Dewey (1916: 241-242) offered a clear definition of the relationship of play and work in the curriculum:

It is important not to confuse the psychological distinction between play and work with the economic distinction. Psychologically, the defining characteristic of play is not amusement or aimlessness. It is the fact that the aim is thought of as more activitv in the same line, without defining continuity of action in reference to results producted. Activities as they grow more complicated gain added meaning by greater attention to specific results achieved. Thus, they pass gradually into work. Both are equally free and intrinsically motivated, apart from false economic conditions which tend to make play into idle excitement for the well-to-do and work into uncongenial labor for the poor. Work is psychologically simply an activity which consciously includes regard for consequences as a part of itself; it becomes constrained labor when the consequences are outside of the activity as an end to which activity is merely a means. Work which remains permeated with the play attitude is art — in quality if not in conventional designation.

One other aspect of work in residential centers that is usually identified as exploitation and, to the author's mind, is exactly that, is work as punishment. It is exploitative in that it exacts services as retribution from people because of behavior unwanted by other people. (This definition is significantly different from work as restitution for acts of vandalism, theft, or carelessness.) Work as punishment (retribution), rather than teaching positive attitudes about work, teaches the youths about unilateral use of power; it generates resentment more than learning. There are other, more direct, more educational, and more appropriate ways of dealing with unapproved behavior than meting out work as a punishment, which destroys work as the valid confidence-building enterprise it can and should be. It also damages the relationship between the direct care worker and the young people; although this recognition may not be expressed, it is well known and resented that this game is one the worker is playing to win and that he or she has the power to do so, but often only at the cost of sacrificing larger and more fundamental goals.

F. HERBERT BARNES

Barnes, F.H. (1991). From warehouse to greenhouse: Play, work and the routines of daily living in groups as the core of milieu treatment. In Beker, J. and Eisikovits, Z. (Eds.) Knowledge uitilization in residential Child and Youth Care practice. Washington D.C. Child Welfare League of America. pp. 140-142.

REFERENCE

Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and Education. New York. Macmillan.

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