“teach your own”: children and work

children and work

“A job…was something that you did for money, something that someone else told you to do and paid you for doing, something you woul dnot hav edone otherwise, but did only to get the money. A career was a kind of ladder of jobs.
   ”By work I…mean something very different, what people used to call a ‘vocation’ or ‘calling’ — something which seemed so worth doing for its own sake and they would glady choose to do it even if they didn’t need the money and the work didn’t pay. …to find our work in this sense, is one of the most important and difficult tasks that we have in life, and indeed, that even if we find it once we may later have to look for it again, since work that is right for us at one stage of our life may not be right for us at the next. …the question ‘What do I really want to do? What do I think is most worth doing?’ is not one that the schools (or any other adults) will often urge us or help us to aks; on the whole, they feel it is their business only to prepare us for employement — jobs or careers, high or low. So we will have to find out for ourselves what work needs to be done and is being done out there in the world, and where and how we will take part in it.” p. 185

“…many of the people who are doing serious work in the world (as opposed to just making money) are very overworked and short of help. If a person, young or not so young, said to them, ‘I believe in the work you are doing and want to help you in any and every way I can, and I’d be glad to do any kind of work you ask me to do or that I can find to do, for very little pay, or even non at all if you can give me room and board,’ I suspect that many of them would say, ‘Sure, come right ahead.’ Working with them, the newcomer would gradually learn more an dmore aabout what they were doing, would find or be given more interesting and important things to do, might soon become so valuable that they would find a way to pay her or him. In any case, he or she would learn far more from working with them and being around them than in any school or college.” p. 188

“If you know what kind of work you want to do, move toward it in the most direct way possible. When you’ve learned all they now, or will tell you, move on. Before long…you may find you know as much as anyone, enough to do whatever you want to do.
     ”…if none of the people doing your chosen work will even let you in the door without some piece of school paper, you may have to pay time and money to some school to get it…But don’t assume that school is the best way or the only way to learn something without carefully checking first. There may be quicker, cheaper, and more interesting ways.” p. 194

“Children show me again and again that they love to be really useful, to feel that they make a difference.” p. 200

“The other day a young person wrote me saying, ‘I want to work with children.’ Such letters come often. They make me want to say,’What you really mean is, you want to work on children. You want to do things to them, or for them — wonderful things no doubt — which you think will help them. What’s more, you want to do these things whether the children want them done or not. What makes you think they need you so much? If you really want to work with children, then why not find some work worth doing, work you believe in for its own sake, and then find a way to make it possible for children — if they want to — to do that work with you.‘” p. 203