Comments on: Detroit’s Schools Offer New Class: Working at Walmart

By: Detroit Public Schools Partner with Walmart « PigeonPropaganda

Detroit Public Schools Partner with Walmart « PigeonPropaganda — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 02:51:35 +0000

[...] Do kids leave high school feeling motivated to invent the next Google? Or, do they just want a job. [...]

By: heybaby

heybaby — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 05:06:06 +0000

I am strongly against this. As a teenager in the suburbs of Detroit and a strong advocate for the improvement of education in the Detroit public Schools, this is truly dissapointing. These kids should be in school and learning.. not bagging groceries. Wal-Mart and the public schools are giving these students the option to settle. Settling is not good enough if these kids want to get out of the inner-cities. This is absolutely ridicualous and is sending a wrong message to those kids. By giving them this program, Society is basically telling these kids that they will never be anything more than a Wal-Mart employee for the rest of their lives.

By: heybaby

heybaby — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 21:06:06 +0000

By: Mark Lewis

Mark Lewis — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 18:46:52 +0000

So now we've sunk to believing that “education” for black school kids means training them to sack groceries and check out the “culture” from all the red necks, hillbillies and white trash shopping at freaking WalMart? Wow…that's about the most offensive thing I've heard in ages. What genius thought this up? It's freaking WAL-MART you morons…if you want to expose these kids to “culture” let them go France, Japan or Brazil as exchange students like middle class suburban kids get to do. This is a free training program for WalMart, nothing more. I'm sure the parents are thrilled that their kids are considered worthy of nothing better by the Detroit school system. No doubt this gem will show up in WalMart's 2010 sustainability report under “community” or listed as some other such crock of horse manure.

By: Becca

Becca — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 07:18:33 +0000

Those of us who actually work at WalMart actually joke that they could train a monkey to do our jobs. I knew a guy that could do it with out being able to read english cause he just matched numbers. This job takes a week to train for not a semester.
Another thing is WalMart doesn't want long term employees. If you have been there more than a couple of years they start to make it clear head office wants you gone so the can pay some kid $7-$8 an hour with them at part time and no benefits.

By: Audrey

Audrey — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 04:06:41 +0000

Good catch, Josh. That should have read 1 out of 100, sorry!

By: Pangolin

Pangolin — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 05:08:10 +0000

Please tell me what job at a WalMart store demands more than the skills learned by a smart eighth grader? Why doesn't the school board just admit that it's warehousing all but the tiny percentage who will get four-year technical or medical degrees after high school.

There are millions of unemployed people in the US with college degrees or work towards college degrees. Blaming unemployment on lack of education is a scam.

By: josh

josh — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 18:54:13 +0000

I have a hard time believing that “1 out of every 10 working Americans works at Wal-Mart.” Wal-mart employs 2 million people worldwide, and the total American workforce is around 150 million people.

Sorry, but that math just doesn't add up.

By: Pete da Silva

Pete da Silva — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 18:28:02 +0000

Rob is right on target. For every 2 jobs WalMart creates, 3 are lost in the community.
These other guys are drinking the Kool Aid, as is the Detroit School Board.

By: mike allen

mike allen — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 18:09:29 +0000

Sad, but true. Keeping the kids off the streets and lowering the bar for them in terms of goals might be seen as giving up on encouraging them to shoot for the stars. But it does offer a practical alternative to receive a paycheck in a regional economy in shambles. They should also teach them to save their money for some kind of turnaround and maybe sometime in the future they can again focus on perhaps a more challenging career.

By: Rob Bryan

Rob Bryan — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 12:52:40 +0000

Dear “anonymous in Louisiana”,
What's that sucking sound I hear? Oh, it's the sound of Wal-Mart sucking the cash out of your community and sending it around the world to its absentee shareholders. How many stores and jobs would be needed to replace the Wal-Mart? Stores whose profits would go back into your community not someone somewhere who doesn't actually need it. Without Wal-Mart, you would have a higher paying job with benefits and wouldn't have to shop there.

On the blog question- why do we as a society tolerate unemployment? Is it because the “rational” economists have business and government convinced that some level of unemployment (3%, 6% or whatever) is “efficient”? Not as a slight on our armed forces, high unemployment is also mechanism that drives people with few options to enlist. Nickaster, this is not better than nothing, that's a false dichotomy. It replaces something, not nothing.

By: nickaster

nickaster — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 10:31:55 +0000

Given how messed up Detroit is, I'm leaning to think this is way better than nothing.