Problems of Work-world Adjustments

Modern society, as we have seen, offers a wide choice of vocations. Fortunate is the youth who can experiment with more than one vocation before eventually settling down to the one which he finds most compatible. Much of this kind of experimentation does go on in our society. Some of it is no doubt due to the temporary nature of many jobs available to the young person, some due to a desire of youth for change and experience. It begins with school experience which often reveals to a youth his interest or lack of interest in a vocational field.

RURAL and urban life represent still, in spite of their approaching similarity, vast differences in value systems and life goals. These patterns of life each create their unique problems of adjustment for youth.

Three basic values predominate in the farm community: work, land ownership, and family. Rather than being workmotivated, for many classes in urban society, life is pleasuremotivated. Work is but a means to an end. The labor union has tended in many instances not only to reduce hours and raise wages but to reduce production. Rather than the family being the goal, marriage is considered a means to personal happiness rather to the begetting of children. Land and property ownership as major goals are much less important than the lavish consumption of goods. To use Veblen's famous phrase, conspicuous consumption rather than the acquisition of real property seems to be the objective of urban life.

There are good reasons for these differences. The farm person takes pride in the output of his land, his manual accomplishments; his land and crops are there for all neighbors to see. They know they are his. This sort of pride is not possible in an urban culture. A person's neighbor cannot see the fruits of his labor. -In his desire for group approval and to gain the attention of others, he resorts to "conspicuous consumption."

foremost, and other such traits are more likely to get one ahead than ability to accomplish a particular task.

The difference in urban and rural economic values has become an important factor in the relationships between farm parents and their children. Duty and responsibility may bear heavily, too heavily, on the farm youth, until he sees no escape except through revolt. Work and more work may come to make up the daily ritual of life until it becomes almost a religion to the older generation and a plague to the new one.

There has been a sharp clash between the modern urban pleasure philosophy and the semipuritanic, work-duty philosophy of the farm community. Farm youth in high school invariably develop some interest in the recreation-pleasure activities fostered for town and city school systems and the informal associations that accompany them, thus incurring neighborhood condemnation for spending time and money on "foolishness."