Working At McDonald S

Working at McDonald’s is an article that emphasizes how irrelevant working in high school is on the scale of importance in life. Amitai Etzioni points out that teenagers are distracted by repetitive jobs when they should be focusing on their education. Etzioni makes his argument about teenage jobs undermining school attendance and involvement, imparting few skills that will be useful later on in life, and skewing the values of teenagers especially their ideas about the worth of a dollar. McDonald’s, in this case, provides “no room for initiative, creativity, or even elementary rearrangements” says Etzioni. Etzioni introduces logos into the story right from the very beginning in paragraph two. “As many as two-thirds of America’s high school juniors and seniors now hold down part-time jobs”. This refers to the vast majority of teenagers who maintain a job while still going to school. In paragraph thirteen, logos is also relevant. The author states that “24 percent of the seniors at one high school in 1985 worked as much as five to seven days a week; 27 percent, three to five.” Although these percentages aren’t relatively high, the author claims that there is no way a teenager’s work won’t interfere with schoolwork. In addition to this factual information, the author is simply stating that there is no room for personal development if teenagers are only doing repetitive tasks. As well as logos, ethos can be applied to Working at McDonald’s. Ethos is the strongest appeal in this story because Etzioni backs up all his claims with credible sources. In paragraph ten, the author states that “A 1980 study by A. V. Harrell and P. W. Wirtz found that, among those students who worked at least 25 hours per week while in school, their unemployment rate four years later was half of that of seniors who did not work”. Despite the work experience, Etzioni makes a point that these part time jobs “provide no career ladders, few marketable skills, and undermine school attendance