He’s correct. Most of the poor neighborhoods are black neighborhoods and unemployment among black youth is the highest it has ever been as long as those records have been kept. And when you have neighborhoods in which the main businesses are liquor stores and currency exchanges, the opportunities for kids to work are pretty much non-existent.
Blacks in this country despite the most freedom in the world are screwing themselves because they won't move to get work, have been abusing substances more and have had use of the great society programs too long to require little from them, so they do little.
But it isn't a black issue, blacks from Africa come here and kick butt like the Asians do my friend.
To get back to The Newt’s idea one would agree that a work ethic is precious. Whose job is that to teach? Absent parents, it falls to the school in his scenario, who are already presently teaching *character building*, manners and other social skills, [that should rightfully be taught at home, in an ideal world].
As a practical matter, a school of 550 students has one custodian [days 6AM-3PM]; b/c of shortage of funds, there are only 2 night custodians. With the enormous amount of work to be done in the night time frame, for a fairly large 2-story building, a custodian would have to monitor the child. During the summer, kids do get summer jobs, helping with custodial work. They are paid a fair wage through some federally funded inner city jobs program. The custodians complain, they can’t trust the kids, or let them out of their sight [b/c of rampant stealing, or they just *dog* it]. Last summer, the summer job-core kids stole 24 new computers from the computer lab. Before it was noticed, it was too late.
While noble, in practicality, I wonder aloud how this type of program would work. It would be great if it did, but this becomes just another instance where the school takes over for what the family should be doing [teaching a work ethic]. I can see the need for *supervisors* of these kids, yet another expense, school systems can ill afford.