The youth labor workforce always shifts a bit once school starts. According to Teenage Research Unlimited, 11 percent of kids 12-15 are working at some sort of regular paid job, 35 percent of 16-17 year olds and 53 percent of 18-19 year olds are working.

Rather than contributing to their “family income,” today’s typical student is likely to find that most or all of his/her earnings are available for discretionary spending. The National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data showed that youth in lower income households tend to work less than do those in households with higher income. Given that some are earning $200 a month, some kids today experience what Jerald Bachman calls “premature affluence.”

Dr. Buchman is a Research Professor and Distinguished Research Scientist at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research and has served as a principal investigator on the Monitoring the Future study ever since its inception in 1975. He suggests it’s affluence because “$200 or more per month represents a lot of ‘spending money’ for a high school student, and premature because many of these individuals will not be able to sustain that level of discretionary spending once they have to take on the burdens of paying for their own necessities.” It’s a development of spending style that teens can’t maintain as they move into emerging adulthood. Once they’re on their own, away from the financial base of mom and/or dad, emerging adults have to unlearn the bad spending habits they acquired as teens. Plus, working too many hours after school can endanger their academic performance as well as school- and community-based extracurricular activities.

Permissible and suggested work hours for kids...

Under 14 years old =
Forget working and concentrate on school, family, and other activities

14 to 15 years old =
3 hours maximum on any school day
18 hours maximum in any school week
8 hours maximum on any non-school day (by law, 6 hours maximum by smart parents)
40 hours maximum (by law, 30 hours by smart parents) in any non-sch

What if computer and video games are in fact preparing our kids for 21st century success? Mark Prensky would say yes. Sure, he’s the founder and CEO of Games2Train, yet his take on students today being “digital natives” and the rest of us being “digital immigrants” might be more than just a postmodern perspective.

Now, before you jump to any conclusions please realize Mark’s an MBA graduate from Harvard and has a Masters in Teaching from Yale. He knows how important learning is. Mark has concluded that today “engagement is more important than content.” After all, kids have to get into it before they will get it.

If you’re a “digital immigrant” you might be thinking “WHAT! Next you’ll be telling me that there’s a good side to junk food and that everything bad is good for you!” Well..., what if today’s pop culture actually makes kids smarter? Even all of us smarter? Perhaps if we keep our mind wide open, we’ll consider this postmodern prescription so that the “virtual world” actually improves the “real world.”

Engaging students in the classroom vs. engaging students in video games? I know, “how about engaging them more in the real world vs. the virtual world” you say? Well, what if we did both? Teachers always talk about preparing students for the future, while many times teaching students today like they themselves were taught in the past. Given the “real world” becomes more and more “virtual” every day, perhaps it's time to make peace with our own nostalgic longing for the past, be more attentive to the present, and come together on how we can engage students in more real-world educational situations and simulations. The kind that they are destined to deal with such as world peace, environmental issues, and balancing governmental budgets.

To be honest it’s the kids who might make better peacemakers in this process than adults given many of the experiences they have in the virtual world. More and more games are incorporating the fundamental characteristics of public diplomacy, environmental issues, and political challenges with higher-level thinking skills, decision-making challenges, and just-in-time problem solving strategies.

Take Hydro Hijinks for example, MassBalance, Second Life from the Global Kids' Online Leadership Program and hundreds of other serious games as well as Posted by Fran Kick at 12:18:17 PM in Kids @ School (11)