It might have been lampooned on sitcoms and passed off as bra-burning malarkey, but Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day—scheduled this year for Thursday, April 23—sends a relevant message regarding one of Louisiana’s most pressing problems.
The state’s drastic workforce shortage ultimately will affect all of us regardless of income level—and one of the ways to address it is to show young people how to connect the dots between school and career.
The event was first organized in 1993 as a means to build self-esteem among young women by showing them options in the working world through their mothers, fathers, family members or others in the community. Young men were recently added—and rightfully so—as the focus was not only on what people do but also how they balance the demands of career and home.
Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day always occurs on the last Thursday of April, and it relies on coordinators, like willing nonprofits, schools and businesses.
It’s a face-to-face, dynamic spin on the traditional static career day because young people witness what occurs in the workplace—a seemingly mundane world to the adults who live it and breathe it daily, but fresh terrain for young people. [Remember your summer jobs? I worked as a bank teller, retail clerk, secretary and waitress, and all of those positions taught me something about money and people.] Most important, the event gives participants of all backgrounds a chance to see how the pieces fit together in a community—and in an economy.
Why does this matter? For one thing, Louisiana’s work force shortage is so severe that Gov. Bobby Jindal has made it one of his central planks. Only 61.6% of the state’s population age 16 and older actively works, and the issue stymies our ability to recruit new businesses and retain the ones we have. Through major initiatives at the Louisiana Workforce Commission, Department of Education and Louisiana Economic Development, Jindal and his department heads hope to wrestle the problem into submission.
Long-term success depends on the ability to keep our young people in school. During the 2006-07 academic year, nearly 66% of students who had started ninth grade four years earlier actually graduated. The scary result was that 190,000 students dropped out, earned a GED or failed to graduate on time, according to the Louisiana Department of Education. The majority—13,541 students—just plain dropped out. That’s a lot of people and a lot of lost potential.
Why do they fail to finish? “Dislike of school experience” is one reason. Another—ironically—is the need to get a job. Silent Epidemic, a 2006 national survey of high school dropouts, reported that 47% attributed the reason for leaving to classes not being interesting.
I can hear the collective groan about how that sounds lot a lot of whining. Maybe, but I can’t give up and accept that 190,000 young people don’t have the potential to learn something relevant that will help them participate in the state’s productivity as well as keep them off the public dole. Showing students literally how classroom study can be applied to a career is one of the most effective ways of making school relevant and interesting.
That’s where projects such as Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day, and other similar emerging programs, matter. Even if the young people in your orbit are well situated and on the fast track to college, they will never function in an upper-middle class bubble. Entrepreneurs will care about work force development. So will anyone who needs a nurse, carpenter, dental hygienist, child-care worker or mechanic.
However informal, illuminate the economy for someone between the ages of 8 and 18 on April 23. For more information, go to daughtersandsonstowork.org.
