trained by master teachers. Finally, awards and E. Pre-Vocational Training Enrollees are taught what it means to work--the responsibility of the individual to the job and the responsibility of the job to the individual. He is taught how to find a job and how to get the job having found it, as well as some of the more subtle social aspects related to job performance. These facts may be taught to the enrollee by group instruction in a classroom or counseling session, or through actual work experience, or a combination of all of these. F. Skill Training The acquisition of occupational skills is valuable for all enrollees who would compete in the labor market. It is essential that enrollees be trained broadly for work as well as for a job. The individual must acquire a base of vocational understanding as well as a particular skill related to a particular job, if he is to be capable of adapting to changes in job description, if he is applying his acquired skills to other jobs should he lose the job he has, etc. The individual must be trained to work at his highest level of vocational ability in order to make him optimally competitive in the labor force as well as to maximize his earning power. G. Supportive Services A large number of enrollees will require a variety of supportive services if they are to be able to participate in the program and/or obtain and sustain themselves in employment. The NYC should make sure that the concept of training is at the center of supportive services. Some of these supportive services are: There may well be considerable argument as to whether these services are supportive or, in fact, essential and hence integral to the basic program. H. Job Placement For those ready for employment, it is I. Job Development Even in areas of high employment, job development is essential to a meaningful youth employment program. Without specific effort the disadvantaged will not be included in the opportunities for training and jobs that become available in the community. Jobs that do become available tend to be those of marginal character not designed to provide an opportunity for upward mobility. Job development will address itself to the involvement of the community, specifically industry, labor, and civil service, in re-examining those policies that have an inhibiting effect on providing opportunities for employment of the disadvantaged. Efforts should be made to restructure professional, technical, and skilled jobs through task analysis; to provide new job classifications. and revised job contents; to remove unskilled and semi-skilled job functions from the more skilled and technical occupations, thereby providing more jobs at lesser skills for which those in poverty can be more readily trained. The increased utilization of the training capacity of employers should be a major goal. J. Follow-up Follow-up services after placement on the job is an indispensable component of any youth employment program. No matter how good the program, it cannot fully duplicate the conditions which the individual will experience in an actual job situation. The greatest challenge to the enrollee will come when he has to compete on his own to maintain himself in the labor market. Support to the enrollee must be available for a minimum of six months. The variety of vocational training programs which are Out of the many different conditions and things provided by every culture for the satisfaction of human needs people learn to strive for those which they have had--in general--their earliest and their most successful experiences. The earliest experiences are usually resistant to change. Strange as it may seem, whether one learns good or bad What is most important to the individual is that these form "his" way of life- for better or worse. People tend to construct the kind of life they have been used to and seem to perpetuate it with whatever means at their disposal. Like the protagonist in the The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, they strive to preserve their autonomy against the encroachment of a world they perceive as hostile and absurd. There is growing evidence which suggests that people expend as much energy defending a way of life ill-adapted to meeting their needs as would be required to change their habits for a more livable life. It follows from what has been said to this point that young people with serious unemployment problems are found most frequency among the youth who have suffered the most serious deficiencies. If deficiencies are in fact most serious, then they are the most difficult to remedy; and the people who have chosen to assist these young people to cope with their problems have accepted a difficult responsibility indeed. The enormity of the task should not be under-estimated. But neither should the enormity of the task be permitted to forestall action. However, action can be pursued with greater purpose if one understands what he is about. 12-13 1 The problems that the Neighborhood Youth Corps was designed to solve still exist in massive proportions. There are still hundreds of thousands of teenagers at the bottom of the economic ladder with little hope for moving up. Every year thousands of new candidates for unemployment and frustration turn 16 and find themselves out-of-school and outMost of this group will still need well-structured programs of job training, remedial education, work experience, counseling and of-work. skill. Although the Out-of-School Program has scored only a few breakthroughs in school technology to date, its original concept still has great potential for advancing our understanding of the complexities of teenage poverty and for developing more effective solutions. As a program, it is not tied to any particular professionalism; therefore, it is free to blend different systems and approaches. If the Neighborhood Youth Corps is to achieve its potential for developing new, more effective techniques for solving the most complex teenage poverty problems, it must receive greater support from the federal government. There is much to be gained from putting far greater effort into finding out what it takes to help the enrollees in the program and what makes a successful graduate. National efforts to land a man on the moon involved a great deal more than the building of a spaceship. The cost of our involvement in Vietnam involves a great deal more than the prices of weapons and ammunition. Likewise, if we are to successfully eliminate the problem of widespread unemployment among disadvantaged youth we must treat the problem as a priority. This has not been the case in the past. The Department of Labor has required that all Delegate Agencies provide supportive services in the areas of counseling and remediation, however, federal funds for these purposes have always been at a minimum. The quota reduction has affected even further the administrative monies available for adequate counseling staff and remedial education materials and instructors. In the past, most projects receive no assistance from regional manpower administration relative to how youth work program should be set-up. Also, even after projects become operative there has been no systematic and regular monitoring by district and regional offices of the Department of Labor. Surely feed-back from such visits by Department of Labor staff would have been a useful tool for project directors. It can be clearly demonstrated that in work experience programs for disadvantaged the traditional emphasis on psychological traits, attitudes, feelings, perceptions, and motivations is most inappropriate. It presupposes a psychotherapeutic model which, when enlarged to include more counselors and more teenage clients, still fails to meet current requirements. ་ The Counselors' help consists most of all in encouraging young people to cope successfully with problems that arise on the job. Το that end, the work-station supervisor may even become a counselor surrogate. The Department of Labor has been remiss in its responsibility to provide technical assists to Neighborhood Youth Corps Projects. Many of the Neighborhood Youth Corps Project Directors around the country |