Sweat it out
The best thing you can do for your children is let them sweat. As the head of a small education company, I have interviewed, hired, trained, worked with, and let go of, more than my fair share of interns, teachers, office managers and secretaries. We hire locally and from abroad; some of the people have been amazing, hard-working individuals, others complete flops.
The staff who thrive have one thing in common - as children, they took on physically demanding jobs for at least a summer. They painted houses, pumped gas, worked as a cashier at a hardware store, manned the front desk of a motel, and helped out in an old folks' home. These jobs are invaluable; they transform individuals because they require perseverance without the reward of prestige.
To an employer, that's gold. These days, when I'm looking at resumes, I skim past all the fancy schools and Ivy League degrees. Instead, I look for past experiences involving hardship for long periods. When I read that someone taught prisoners for four years in college, I practically drooled.
Menial jobs teach children three crucial lessons. First, that life is not that easy. So you should not take anything for granted. Second, that nobody, no matter how smart, rich, or famous, is beneath doing physical labour. As such, you should never be arrogant. And, most important of all, when things get tough, you have to keep going. Quitting isn't an option.
These days, too many children seek summer internships for the wrong reasons. They or their parents want the coveted internship at a prestigious firm, so they can put it on their resumes. They want to work in an office and have cool name cards.
And while they sit in their cubicle under that nice cool air-con breeze updating their Facebook account all day, what are they actually learning? How to stay strong in the face of adversity? How to think long-term about what's in the best interests for the company? How to put one's individual needs behind the team's needs? Not surprisingly, these overpampered kids flounder in the real world.
But it's very 'un-Hong Kong' to let our children sweat. Even when they do community service, it's only for a week and usually strategic - for the sole purpose of impressing college admissions officials. Getting a summer job at the wet market is unheard of.
'It's simply inefficient,' one of my students says. He argues that, because he is intelligent, he should not have to do any kind of physical labour. Children should study. And when they're not studying, they should be thinking about what they want to study in the future. Summer jobs are a big part of this process. Why waste a summer or a year pumping gas? So you can grow up to be a petrol station attendant?
I disagree with this reasoning. The point of taking on tough, non-office jobs is not to prepare a child to be a carpenter, contractor or courier one day. It's so that they learn to have a positive attitude, endurance and teamwork. These traits are essential for success in every job, especially in the highly coveted executive positions too many children these days think they can automatically get.
