When I was little, my mother and I lived with my grandparents. My grandfather was a welder, and my grandmother was a housewife. But she hadn't always been.
That's me, at ten, which means my grandmother was 58. She looks old, and worn out, and she was developing the first symptoms of Parkinson's disease.
Newt would have loved her life story. She dropped out of school after eighth grade. She had a big family to help support. Her first job? School janitor. She spent the first summer of her working life scrubbing out the local Catholic school - walls, floors, desks. She thought it was very kind that the nuns brought her lemonade and cookies every day. Who knows what they thought of the skinny thirteen-year-old starting her working life?
I know what she thought. Shame, bitter shame. She never got over that. She knew her education was inadequate, and it was Bessie and my grandfather who pushed me to college past big obstacles. I bless them for it.
So, Newt. You didn't say you wanted kids to drop out of school, more of a work-study thing? Skip geography and scrub the lunchroom? There are only so many hours in the day. Maybe stay after school and paint in exchange for the privilege of a public education?
Newt, I wish you could feel one minute of what Bessie felt. Just one minute.
UPDATED: Thank you all for your comments. I want to make one thing clear: she was never ashamed of working. She fought with my grandfather about it: he wanted his wife at home, and she wanted to make some money, her own money. She was ashamed of things being wrong, and of knowing how wrong they were, the shame of the poor.