Schools Teach Working for Walmart 101

The new high school curriculum for students in Detroit is looking suspiciously similar to the path of high school dropouts: training for a crummy minimum wage (or less) job at Walmart.

Charlotte Hill reports on Poverty in America that four inner-city schools have teamed up with Walmart to run classes in how to be an ideal worker drone. I can only imagine the topics covered: Less is More: Loving Your Low Wages; The Evils of Unions; Why Women Should Accept Being Passed Over and Paid Less; The Threat of Mass Layoffs Add Spice to Life.

Oh wait: the program provides a cultural learning experience for the 30 students who will get jobs at Walmart from the in-school training. How so? The principal of one of the schools explains that, since all the stores are located in the suburbs, these low-income inner-city kids will get exposure to different cultures. As a former suburbia resident, let me tell you, you get a lot more exposure to a variety of cultures in the city than the largely homogeneous outer burbs. I get that he's trying to sell a ridiculous program, which Hill indicates is most likely tied into financial desperation for struggling schools, but patronizing "look the glass is really full!" rhetoric is not going to help students.

The real message goes more like: Your educational system has failed you. Because of mass class inequities, you will not be offered opportunities to succeed in life. In fact, we've so given up on you, that even though you still come to school, we're going to turn school into training on how to hold down the worst job possible and suffer all sorts of labor abuses. Just in case you've made it to your teenage years without realizing this, know the world doesn't care about you, and you might as well give up on your dreams now.

As Hill points out, this "curriculum" isn't even proper vocational training: it's simply turning a school into an extension of Walmart where it can recruit and train/indoctrinate new drones with ease. Undervalued youth told there's nothing else they can do with their lives no doubt make for the most malleable employees least likely to stand up for their rights. Why do we even insist that these kids attend school, if this is all we can offer them?

Photo credit: Brave New Films