... If You Can Find It

Many educators would agree with Coleman that school perpetuates adolescence by shielding the student from real work experience. But how does a youngster acquire experience when there are not that many paying jobs available to him?

For the past three years the government of Canada has funded an innovative program called Opportunities for Youth, which pays students to dream up and work at jobs they want to do--such as bike patrols for cyclists in distress or day camps for children of low-income families.

In the U.S., youngsters have no say in the definition of jobs provided through federal programs, most of which are aimed at poor and minority youths. Traditionally, middle-class students have been left to their own devices, and this summer's job search has proved a hard test of their ingenuity.

Officially, the nation's job situation is not all that bad. The seasonal rate of unemployment for youngsters between the ages of 16 and 19 is now 14.8%, compared with 16% a year ago; but the statistics do not tell the difficulties of finding a job, particularly for students seeking summer work.

Terry Kintop, a counselor for the Minnesota Department of Manpower Services, says that summer jobs for middle-class youths have been "nearly nil" in his area. "They don't qualify for special programs for poor kids, and they don't have the contacts the rich kids have." Last spring, his advice to job seekers was: "Go out and pound the pavements and show you are really interested." Many have been doing just that--all summer long.

It took Natherlene Bolden, a Bronx Community College scholarship student, almost four months to find a temporary job answering a telephone in a carpet showroom for $2 an hour.

"When I first started tin April], the New York State Employment Office told me it was too soon," she says, "but when I went back in May, they told me that all the summer jobs had been taken."

She answered a Sunday newspaper ad for college students placed by a chain of stationery stores and found that by 10 a.m. on Monday there were no further openings. She went to an employment agency that offered a $95-a-week switchboard job (for which she would have had to pay a $133 finder's fee), but that job never opened up. "I went to Morrisania Hospital because I heard they were hiring, but they told me there was nobody to interview me and they would contact me," she says. "I went back two weeks later, but nothing was available." Next she went to United Parcel "because I was told there were jobs. At least they let me fill out an application," she says. "Then they told me to keep calling--every other week."

Ruth Geyer is a biology major at Oberlin, but three days a week (for $3 an hour) she dons an apron to wax furniture, wash windows and mop the floors of a ten-room house in the wealthy Philadelphia suburb of Rosemont, Pa. "I haven't had any other experience, so maybe I'm just lucky to have found it," she says.

Nineteen-year-old Kathie Young took a temporary job at a lemonade stand run by a Chicago bank until she was able to land a job as a service clerk in a grocery store near her home in Elmhurst, Ill. "The pay stinks," says the College of DuPage sophomore, "but I hope to work my way up to being a checker.

They get paid $2.57 an hour."

Chris Bernbrock, 21, a senior at Santa Clara University, was turned down as a waiter at more than 50 New York restaurants before landing a job as a hotel night guard. He had hoped to make as much as $1,500 this summer for tuition and books, but now expects to save only about $500.

For others who persevered, there were odd jobs to be found--some of them very odd:

> Under the auspices of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a Berkeley architecture major, Christopher Yip, is recording a neglected part of Americana by sketching outhouses in northern Virginia. His pay: $132 a week plus housing in a stable.

> A Stanford coed is inspecting the cleanliness of Union Oil filling stations for $26 a day. Her job description: Sparkle Girl.

> A Harvard senior, Lewis Jones, got $25 a day to wear a gorilla costume and hand out leaflets in a shopping center in Peabody, Mass.

> At Boston University's employment service, Dr. Robert Jeanne had no trouble locating Martha Francis for $2 an hour to mothproof his collection of bugs.

But for other students, the search for a job in the summer of '73 has been frustrating. With only a few weeks left before schools reopen, many have simply given up the work ethic and gone to the beach for the last days of vacation.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.