"He's got a pleasant smile and looks well presented but there's nothing behind it. He just sits there and smiles at you!"
The Meaning of Authority
In watching the students taking instruction in various work situations (video
interviews), it was striking how explanations of even simple, mundane tasks were followed with intense interest by the students. An army officer's ponderous description of a compass was received with passive though concentrated attention. Using the same technique in a classroom, a geography teacher would be less successful. Basic instruction in a number of routine tasks like making a bed, setting a table, screwing a nut and potting a plant were followed with an interest rarely seen by classroom teachers. It is interesting to speculate why classroom instruction rarely achieves tiiis kind of interest. One of the video students
suggested a reason for this:
"I think school is slacker than work experience because at school if you don't want to do the work you just sit there, you muck up but on work experience you can't really muck up .... they'll just tell you to go home .... The whole idea of work experience is to learn something, to see what the job's like so if you really want to learn you must concentrate; but at school even if you (don't) want to learn, the teachers make you learn and do the work they give you" (Valery, Year 10).
Or as another student succinctiy stated:
"Work experience is a job. Once you're in the workforce you have to do the job right, otherwise you get the sack" (James, video interviews).
Bosses have more control over students than school teachers. Paid work, unlike school work, iinposes a different kind of social control:
"Since I've been working I've really had to listen for the first time in my life. If the boss tells me to do something, then I have to get it right the first time. It really makes you concentrate on what people are saying to you" (Kim, shop assistant).
For some students, the difference between school and work was not the authority of bosses and teachers, but rather the level of trust and responsibility:
"The main differences are the responsibilities given to you; they give you important documents.... you can't lose them or anything - whereas at college .... they still treat you as a child in most cases" (Sue, Year 12, legal firm, video interview).
To James, the casual, unstructured atmosphere of the cycle wreckers was preferable to school work at college:
"There's not as much authority. People aren't breathing down your neck to get something finished .... In work experience I was praised for doing something well; I was given encouragement while I was doing it. At school you're sorta left on your own and if you really need help you really
have to ask for it and ask for it many times. Here you'd just have to ask one question and the answer's given straight to you" (James, Year 12, video interviews).
These views taken from the video interviews were not representative of the 21 interviewees. College students generally prefer college to high school, again because it is perceived as 'slacker', which some students translate as a more relaxed and some as responsibility:
"College is slacker than high school but I think that's good, because if you want to work you can work and if you don't, you just don't. It's like my maths teacher or someone said - 'you're masters of your own destiny' - so you sort of learn how to be responsible" (Mandy, Year 11).
Relationships at School and Work
It ought not to be concluded from these few examples, that college teachers are perceived as 'slack' by students. At least one girl referred to both the power and
powerlessness of teachers. Like many serious college students, Jane is fearful of failure and especially of tests and assignments:
Do kids ever think they get a rough deal in assessment?
"Oh yes, for sure! But you're not meant to think that way. It's the teacher who's always right!"
Do students expect their work to be assessed?
"Oh, yeah.... they often won't do the work if it's not going to be assessed."
Here she implies the power of teachers whose authority students believe they are not supposed to question; at the same time she identifies the limitations of their power without the social control of assessment. Assessment is one of the few weapons available to teachers. Grades function like wages for work, as an incentive for effort. "Grades are the major institutionalized variable of the college campus. As the institutionaUzed scarce variable of the community, grades come to be a measure of personal worth, both to others and to one's self, just as money does in the larger society" (Becker et al.,., 1968:55).
As grades function as a kind of currency, they affect the relationship between students and teachers just as wages dictate employer - worker relationships. In a survey conducted amongst the college's staff and students (Munro, 1983), teachers consistentiy played down the importance of assessment and grades; they placed much more emphasis on personal counselling and individual welfare matters. Student views were in stark contrast to the staff perspective, with students rating assessment and grades high in importance, and
counselling/welfare matters low. Students are realistic about teacher expectations. While teachers try to soften the concept of assessment with the language of - 'negotiation',
'learning contracts' and so on - students know they have to meet deadlines, attend class, be 143
punctual and perform according to the 'contract':"...To do well in college, one must have the qualities students attribute to adults: the ability to manage time and effort efficientiy and wisely, to meet responsibilities to other people and to the organizations one belongs to, and to cope successfully with the work one is assigned" (Becker et al, 1968: 31).
At this level, students see litde difference between work at school and in the workplace:
Is school work like real work?
(After a long pause) - "Yeah, you're expected to be there" (Sally, Year 12).
What does it take to be successful on work experience?
"Willing to take orders and listening to what they ask you to do" (Sue, Year 12).
Isn't that just like school?
"Probably, but there's less pressure at college, but on work experience you're trying to impress them for a job whereas at school it all seems so far away" (Sue, Year 12, in a hotel kitchen).
On a different level, as Sue remarks, there is no immediate pressure to perform at college. It is, as many students report, a 'relaxed atmosphere'.
Relationships are crucial in influencing a student's work performance. They typically prefer a 'relaxed atmosphere' whether at school or at work. Authoritarianism is rejected at college and unwillingly tolerated in the workplace. Friendly relationships are part of the college ethos and students are on first name terms with teachers:
How do bosses compare with teachers?
"Teachers are much easier to get along with because they're friendly and you're in a relaxed relationship" (Samantha, Year 11).
The friendly, informal use of first names was singled out by a home science teacher as a dilemma for students and employers in the food industry. She pointed out how college does not prepare students for the authoritarian atmosphere of the big kitchens. Ex-students have told her how head chefs prefer to recruit non-college students who are younger and more subservient:
"They now realize that people who have been through college don't work well in saying Mr whoever or Mrs whoever, and you have to be really subordinate when you go into it; it's really strict and disciplined."
College, on the other hand, is relaxed and informal. Teachers believe the most important objectives for the college are those concerned with caring and personal
development, rather than performance (Munro, 1983:14). The home science teacher points to the contradictions students encounter at work:
"We try to build them up at college, but they don't get much encouragement at work - they're slapped down there!"
The interviews suggest that most students are not work-shy either at school or in the workplace. Furthermore, they respond well to fair treatment. Several work experience students like Milly (French embassy), Jane (theatre), Nelly (public service), Murray (tourist bureau) and Max (secondary school) all mentioned working long hours or through lunch breaks because the work had to be done. These students, as well as others, cheerfully worked beyond the call of duty because they were treated with respect. In the context of a discussion on this point, one of the students told how a woman friend, a night cleaner arrives at work as late as possible and leaves as early as possible.
"As soon as 5.30 comes round, she gets this feeling of dread. All the cleaners feel the same way. They all get out of the building dead on 10 pm."
One of their complaints was being sexually harassed by the boss. The complaint was 'laughed off by the female employment officer.
Students are therefore aware of what relationships at work and school ought to be. As we have seen in Chapter 7, many have experienced the stigma and conflict associated with deadend jobs in the part-time labour market.
As a trolley boy, Milo was at the mercy of his boss's whims:
"I had a'bloke down at the (shop) - it's the only reason I quit - he was um - well - he wasn't much older than me but he was pretty high up - he's been working' there a long time and treating' me like rubbish. I just confronted him one day and quit" (Milo, in Munro, 1983).
No work experience student, either in the 21 interviews or in the video interviews complained of unreasonable treatment commonly experienced in part-time jobs. Nor did anyone report unsatisfactory relationships with teachers. There were two exceptions which applied to boys who had transferred from Catholic high schools to the college. They complained of the authoritarianism of dominant teachers in relation to homework and assignments. At his Catholic high school, Michael said he was always in trouble for not doing homework and assignments. After a poor performance in the first term tests at college, he realized that no one would make him do the work. As a result, he has turned over a new leaf:
"I've already completed an assignment that's not due in for another nine weeks!"
Theory versus Practice
While college is preferable to both government and non-government high schools for most students, the week on work experience was generally rated more enjoyable and more 'relevant' than college. Students typically define the difference as one between 'theory and practice.' Here are Michael's perceptions:
What was the best thing you did on work experience?
"Pulling apart altemators, really interesting work. The whole operation of the electrical work of a car is really interesting".
Do you do this at college in motor technology?
"You learn about it, but you don't actually do it on the car itself (Michael, Year 11). He explains how the class learns about batteries, the theory behind them, but not how to pull them apart, which he believes is the best way to leam about them. Michael's
emphasis on needing to know 'the whole operation' would be acknowledged by motor technology teachers; in the classroom, however, the instruction would come across as dry theory.
One of the video interviewees distinguished between theory (classroom, pen and paper) and practice (seeing places, explaining and fixing):
"The main difference was like on work experience you got to see places and you weren't stuck in like one classroom with a pen and paper and all you do is write theory .... someone will always be there to explain what computers do, what he's trying to fix or ...." (Valerie, Year 10, electronics workshop). This was a common perception of students, that school was theory and work was practice. It was described in different ways by Murray and Gary:
"You do something, it's not just sitting down. You don't get bored!" (Murray, travel agent).
Gary finds motor technology at college difficult and not like the work in the auto workshop:
"The theory side is pretty hard. In first term we just did all theory work, no practical work at all."
What do you mean by theory?
"Just writing, just listening."
Didn't that help when you were on work experience?