Summary/Critical Response - Assignment Example

Working at McDonald’s I believe that working at McDonald’s has both its positive and negative impacts on kids, as a parent, you should evaluate both sides of the coin before dismissing or allowing your son or daughter to work at McDonald’s. As much as we might want to criticize and dismiss the idea of allowing our kids to hold part time jobs in fast food joints such as McDonald’s, we should first critically consider the values that a work culture instills in our children. Working in a fast food retail outlet like McDonald’s gives our kids the chance to develop strong work ethics that might not be reflected on their academic certificates but they will be vital for their performance in the job market once they graduate.

The argument that these jobs impact negatively on school attendance should not arise as it should be the parents’ responsibility to ensure that their children attend school when required and only attend to their part time jobs at those times sanctioned by them (Schlosseric 20). Although some might say that the educational impact of working for a fast food retail outlet quite limited due to the high level of routinized activities that are performed in the course of working at these places, I still consider these activities necessary for the development of the kids.

Education is not only geared at developing the creative ability of the kids but also the kid’s ability to follow instructions which they develop by working in these highly routinized outlets. Therefore kids are offered the chance for creative development at school and while at work they learn how to produce something according to specifications. In a real world situation, there will always the people who came up with an idea and the implementers of the said idea therefore even among our kids, not all of them will be innovators, others will be tasked with the responsibility of implementing the ideas of others and the skills they acquired while working at places like McDonald’s will came in handy (Schlosseric 32).

It should be noted that in every country no matter how developed it is, there will always be high school drop outs. There are a myriad of factors that affect the level of drop outs and it would be unfair to conclude that most of the kids that drop out of high school are the ones who work or have worked in fast food joints or other part time jobs for that matter. As a matter of fact it is advantageous for the drop outs that have had the chance to work in an establishment like McDonald’s as they already have a skill that they can use to survive in the real world.

The assertion that theses jobs are only suited for lower class non college bound kids is also not true up as the skills imparted at theses jobs will be just as useful to that kid who is going to study medicine as it will to that who is going to end up as a teller in a fast food joint somewhere. As for the doctor, they will be required to strictly follow a procedure (say surgical) by the book in order to succeed in medical school and as for the teller; well he’s been through it all before (Schlosseric 56).

Work CitedSchlosseric, Eric. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. Mifflin Harcourt, 1998.