Should laws permit private businesses to operate in the schools and hire students to work during school time on school property?

Pro: Students would learn valuable skills early in their lives—skills that would make them likely to succeed when they become full-time employees after graduation. They will acquire a 'work ethic.' Students will gain more appreciation for education as they confront their shortcomings on the job. Students will be near teachers even as they work at their jobs, so when lessons are needed, the students can get them quickly and easily, and the results of training will have an immediate positive impact on job performance.

Pro: Students would be highly motivated by the monetary rewards that businesses offer. The motive to make a profit by working is important to cultivate, for it is associated with hope for a bright future and a concern for the well-being of society.

Pro: Schools can raise much needed revenue by allowing businesses to participate in the educational enterprise.

Pro: Businesses would benefit if they made a substantial addition to their workforce at low cost. All the governmental machinery is in place for preventing the abuses of the past. Children need never work for long hours in deplorable environments, as they did during the dawn of the Industrial Age. Americans are very protective of their children and very sensitive to the need for guarding them against exploitation.

Con: Few businesses would find it practical to operate on school property. Operations that require specialized, expensive equipment would see little benefit in moving into educational facilities. Some hand-made goods could be assembled at schools, but the training which would result would be preparation for the assembly-line. The training would be for jobs that require little intelligence and minimal personal initiative. The best way to forge links between the commercial and educational worlds is by allowing students to participate in work-study programs. Many of these already exist.

Con: Students, being low-paid, would take work away from better skilled, more highly-paid workers who need their incomes to support themselves and their families. Trading a higher-paid worker who supports a family for a lower paid worker who does the same job as well but who does not have anyone else to support makes good economic sense for a business. But it does not make sense for society as a whole. If the displaced breadwinner cannot find work, society may have more than one extra mouth to feed after a business has reaped its reward for cutting labor costs. Students are typically dependents who are not desperately in need of opportunities to support themselves. Even if students only displace unskilled or minimally skilled workers, they would be hurting people who need their meager incomes more than the students do.