I just found out that the school my daughter goes to, (a public school in (very wealthy) Palo Alto) does require 5th grade students to help distribute & serve school lunches. This is done on a rotating schedule, so all students do it, but the net result is that each kid does this 1 or 2 times a month.

Outcry from parents:
Well I only found out about this because I brought up this thread when I had a bunch of freinds over, and my wife pointed this out. Now I don’t socialize with other 5th-grade parents much, but it seems to be a non-issue.

(on the other hand it is only half an hour once or twice a month.)

Sorry, I’m late to this discussion but I wanted to tell you that some of them will pay for a school that makes their students work.

I went to a private high school where we were required to work every day, for all four years, in order to graduate. The jobs varied from the cafeteria to the farm (yes, the school had a farm) to the library. Jobs were mostly assigned at random, though seniority often meant better jobs. I started out as a freshman doing food prep and washing dishes and ended as a senior assisting the archivist at the library.

Having the work requirement served several purposes. It helped keep the tuition costs down and the financial aid amounts up. It taught the students a solid work ethic. It added to a sense of community and pride in our surroundings.

I went to college with several alumni from that HS and worked at the same restaurant as a few of them. I noticed right away that we had a much stronger work ethic than most the other students who worked there. I think the work requirement has served us all well through the years.

I remember we had a discussion a while back regarding “legacy” admissions. I forget how much influcence such a thing has these days. And, of course, it varies from school to school. Actually, the best way to get a free ride at a college these days (at least at one of the 260+ NCAA Division I schools) regardless of your family income is whether or not you have high skills at a revenue generating sport.

Given how much homework and busywork those upper-middle-class neighborhood schools dish out, they have a point. I am quite sure that if my kids’ elementary school had them work in the cafeteria (not just at lunch, but in a way that cut into classroom time), they’d be given even more after-school homework to make up for the ‘lost time’. Whee.

but there are a lot of other predictors of success in college that are given more weight now

Like whether your dad went there. *snark*

The suburban school did not require the students to work in the cafeteria, although the 5th graders took turns being the monitors, escorts, and runners. The monitors sat at each table and reported rule infractions to the lunch ladies; the escorts walked each class to the cafeteria and put the milk on the trays; and the runners went to each classroom to tell the teacher it was time to go to lunch. So they never did “food service” jobs, and it was rotated evenly, regardless of your payment status.

The rural school did require the 5th grade students to work in the cafeteria, but not putting food on the trays (I think the health department had rules about that). The work was rotated evenly, regardless of whether or not your parents paid for your lunch. I think we had government cheese, but it was always mixed in somehow, not served separately. I *know* we had government peanut butter, because we had celery sticks with peanut butter at least twice a week.

The suburban school was primarily populated by the children of business owners and factory workers (at various levels). The rural school’s students were either farm children or trailer park kids (the district’s only trailer park was a mile from the school). So I guess you’re right, Rachel, that there was a definite class element to the whole thing. But I think the school administrators were somewhat sensitive to the issue, because nobody was supposed to know who had subsidized lunches - all that paperwork was done separately in the school office, so nobody ever had to handle any money in the cafeteria.

I didn’t meet anybody whose parents were truly well-to-do until I went to college. I was truly shocked that somebody didn’t have to think about work-study or Pell grants or spend New Year’s Eve babysitting to earn money for textbooks. And the whole trust fund phenomenon was eye-opening, too.

The older students at my kids’ school not only work in the cafeteria (but not putting food on trays - again a health department issue), they also perform many other tasks. They are required to earn 25 service hours a year by helping around the school, such as photocopying, stapling, messenger service, safety patrol, weeding the flowerbeds, and so on. I think this is a good thing. AFAIK no parents object to this, but then maybe the ones who do send their children elsewhere.

that difference is true for me too, more students I teach work and work more than my peers in college. For me this is explained by the differences between my undergrad college and the one I teach at now. public/private, high cost/lowish cost.

The majority said they would not want their child working in the cafeteria - some said because it was inappropriate to have children working for the school - there are “workers” hired to do that, some were concerned for germ/food safety reasons (they don’t trust kids), some simply said it was not an appropriate use of educational time.

The select few who said they wouldn’t have a problem with it were the same ones who did it themselves in elementary school - which was a tiny portion of the posters that responded.

It’s of course totally unscientific and annecdotal, so no meaningful conclusions can be drawn, but I do wonder about a shift in the idea of work and work ethic for middle class focus based on a generational difference.

Now, you have a lot of middle class and upper middle class folks who grew up that way - they’ve always been “comfortable”, many of them had their educations paid for, had lots of luxuries as children, and if their parents did struggle, they probably didn’t see much of it themselves, they are further removed from the generations of people who started out more working class, or having parents who lived through the depression and were much more frugal… I’ve definitely seen that kind of environment in my peers and particularly now that they are parents. It’s not even a question that they should be saving for their children’s education - OF COURSE they will pay for it, no, they don’t want their kid to work in high school or college, they want them to focus on school. They are spending $40 on BABY CLOTHES on a regular basis because they want their kids and toddlers to look cute… etc.

Even though by the time I was in high school and paying attention to such matters my parents had safely arrived at middle class/upper middle class and remained there, there was a time when they struggled. They once had 4 mouths to feed and worked multiple jobs to make it happen. I grew up in a do it yourself household, where the exotic vacation we took once a year was “up north” in MN to a cabin on a lake for a week. Frugality, work ethic and knowing that my education was primarily my responsibility - even though they did help out considerably was part of my frame of reference. I was the odd kid out a lot of the time compared to a lot of my peers.

Even the top schools are dropping the weights they give the standardized tests. They certainly are useful, but there are a lot of other predictors of success in college that are given more weight now.

Tuition at my school is over $30,000 dollars a year–it’s a private school…

They’re not actually paying that, are they? Don’t schools just jack up the sticker price and discount heavily for lower- and middle-class students?

Did you have to do this as a paid job during high school? Or was it a school requirement?

But I’d be concerned about the socially-disapproved getting the crap jobs, which seems from your anecdotes to be a real problem. Maybe they should randomize it.

Yeah they do, and don’t forget gender.

One year, when my teacher really liked me. I got to be the ice cream girl, which I was really proud of, but the other year they kept putting me on dishwashing. I was humiliated to be down graded to dishes.

I teach students that a probably about 1/3 working class, 1/3 lower middle class, and 1/3 upper middle class. (With a smattering maybe 5% upper class and 5% lower class.

Tuition at my school is over $30,000 dollars a year–it’s a private school

It is really only the upper middle who don’t have to work. I have frequently been surprised at how many worked. But when I was a University of Connecticut, very few students worked. They were mostly middle and upper middle class kids (very few working class), and their loans and family incomes could more easily cover tuition.

At Bowling Green State, the population was overwhleimingly working class and lower middle class, with maybe 10% upper middle class and 10% lower class. The tuition was really low, but I had the distinct impression that fewer of them worked than my current school but more than UCONN.

At my undergrad school in Detroit, I think most people worked. It was a relatively cheap private school with a large population of people from Detroit. I think most people worked, but they also gave tons of scholarships, which is why I went there.