Dear Sir,

I was surprised to read your recent editorial on the question os student's part-time jobs. You appear to be making a los of generalisations on the basis of just one unfortunate incident (I assure you that not all young people who deliver newspapers are as foolish and dishonest as the two youths mentioned in your article).

The first point I would like to make is that there are many jobs teenagers can do which gave them useful experience of the working world. They are brought into contact with a variety of people, often older, and are given experience of expressing themselves clearly and coherently. I am thinking here of jobs such as travel guides and shop assistants.

Another argument for schoolchildren and college students having holiday or weekend jobs is that many parents need the finantial assistance. If we take, for example, a family in which the father is unemployed or perhaps a single-parent family on a low income, it seems logical and fair that a son or daughter should try to bring money into the household.

One futher thing I want to say is that a lot of jobs fot the young can be fun for the people who do them and also useful to the community. Youngsters who help in schools, hospitals and with the elderly often derive a great deal of pleasure ans satisfaction as well as contributing something valuable to local society.

In conclusion, I would add that when I was a girl, my father said my teens were a time for books, hobbies and academic studies. Thinking back, I feel I would have learnt much more -about myself, other people and life in general- if he had allowed me to do a limited amount of real work. Certainly, when she is old enough, I shall encourage my own daughter to do so, rather than waste her time with soap operas, computer games and discotheques, like so many people today.

Yours faithfully,

Margaret Williams (Mrs)

 

QUESTIONS

1. Answer according to the text:

a) Give two the advantages of working while still at school.

b) Give two cases in which financial assistance would be helpful.

 

2. Are the statements True or False. Write the evidence from the text.

a) This letter was written to a newspaper.

b) All young people that work are intelligent and honmest .

c) Children in one-parent families should not work.

d) The authoress worked when she was at school.

 

3. Rewrite in the passive the sentences or clauses containing a verb in italics.