These 3rd-Graders Have Their Futures All Figured Out

A nation’s values can be inferred from the occupations its children aspire to.

Thus, some insight into our present values may be inferred from a list of occupations favored by 21 pupils in the third-grade classes of teachers Ginnie Fox and Vivian Levy at Sinai-Akiba Academy on Wilshire Boulevard.

Steve Mullen of Culver City, whose son is in the school, said the list is derived from essays the class wrote on “Jobs of the Future” as a handwriting exercise.

“Perhaps you will be as heartened as I,” Mullen says, “to learn that today’s children are thinking about becoming something other than a Ninja Turtle or a Bat-person.”

This is the list:

Actress (2), artist (2), art teacher, car salesman, computer scientist, deep-sea diver, doctor (2), fireman, football player, guitarist, lawyer, masseuse, pediatrician (3), policeman, teacher (2).

As Mullen says, it is encouraging to find that so many of our children are interested in careers that we consider humane. Five want to be doctors, including three pediatricians, accounting for 23.8%. (Perhaps more of these children have seen pediatricians than those of the general population.) Three (14%) want to be teachers.

One looks forward to being a fireman and one a policeman, which, of course, are now known as firefighters and police officers. Evidently the pupils who made those choices were boys.

Whether a child will become an actress or an artist may depend more on her genes or luck than on ambition. Fate being the fickle witch it is, perhaps the child who wanted to be a firefighter will become an actress.

I am rather surprised to find car salesman on the list. From the other choices, one would have thought that these children aspired to higher goals than car salesmanship.

But we need car salesmen, too--even used-car salesmen, an occupation whose practitioners were once maligned as only a notch above felons. But there are no used cars today. What used to be called used cars are now called “previously owned,” which gives them a sort of cachet. Besides, some car salesmen sell Mercedes-Benzes, thus acquiring a special status.

Not surprisingly, the class produced one would-be adventurer--the child who picked deep-sea diving, and one athlete--the would-be football player. Both fields are small--there are surely fewer deep-sea divers and professional football players than actresses, so we wish these pupils luck.

That one member of the class chose the law seems inevitable. We will always need lawyers, although sometimes it seems as if we have too many. But certainly, when a freeway accident victim sues the two men who risked their lives to save her, we need lawyers to defend them.

A sign of the times is that one child said he or she wanted to be a computer scientist. We will need computer scientists to sort out data in this Age of Information we are said to be entering. No doubt there will soon be more computer scientists than doctors and lawyers, if there aren’t already.

It is curious that only one wanted to be a guitarist. Mastery of the guitar, I would have thought, is the key to fame and riches in rock ‘n’ roll. But a particular child has about as much chance of achieving fame in rock as he has of playing quarterback for the 49ers.

Of course, third-graders haven’t really had enough time to know what they want to do with their lives, or what they might be good at. The way things are, one or two of them will probably end up in military service, though they can hardly foresee that now. One might end up a felon and spend his life either in prison or on parole.

I’m surprised that none chose to be a journalist. But again, maybe it’s too soon. I can’t imagine having done anything else with my life, but I didn’t know I wanted to be a journalist until I was 13 years old. That was the year I saw Pat O’Brien as the fast-talking, hard-drinking, cynical, duplicitous Chicago newspaper reporter in “The Front Page” and decided that I wanted to be just like him. Which I became.

It is curious that none of the pupils seemed interested in being a politician. Perhaps that is because of the scandals of recent years, and the increasing public awareness, through the media, of the kind of scoundrels who hold office in our country.

Perhaps it is also obvious why none of them wanted to be an investment banker or a stock and bond salesman. Car salesmen have better reputations.

The more I think about the state of the nation, the better deep-sea diving seems as an occupation. It’s one way to get away from crime, pollution and politics.

I forgot to mention masseuse. Since masseuse is feminine for masseur, I assume that this pupil was a girl. Now why would a little girl want to grow up to work in a massage parlor?

It takes all kinds.