INTIATION to the work world has become increasingly difficult. Apprenticeship to work is the natural experience of childhood in primary-group societies where people of all ages mingle in the common activities of life. Thus the child comes to a realistic understanding of what adult life holds for him and also learns the work folkways of his elders. Some vestiges of this kind of social experience carry over in contemporary farm life in spite of the encroaching influence of outside agencies, especially the school with its daily routine of study and its many extracurricular activities. The transfer to maturity comes more slowly even on the farm than it once did, although farm youths as compared to urban youths become habituated to work at a relatively early age.
Since urban-industrial society has developed to the point where there is no natural bridge between the play activities of childhood and the work activities of adulthood, any apprenticeship that is to be obtained must come through the school curriculum or after the young person is on the job. Town and city youth ordinarily have no contact with the parent's work and no way of acquiring intimate knowledge of it. This undoubtedly has created problems of far-reaching consequence to youth in town and city, but an even more serious problem is inherent in the situation of the farm-reared youth who would enter an urban vocation, for not only does he lack contact and experience with the urban vocation, but ordinarily he must enter a strange environment and undergo possible culture shock while becoming accommodated to the new life.
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