5000 Social Workers
A severe disconnect: France has declared a state of emergency...and promised 5000 new social workers for the "problem neighborhoods".
The article goes on to explain that as of January 2006, and additional 5000 jobs for youth counselors in schools in the "problem neighborhoods" will be created. In addition 100 million Euros will be approved for social work in the neighborhoods.
A while back, I worked at a PR company. I was pretty satisfied with the job, but the company was suffering from poor morale amongst its employees. The complaints were the usual: poor leadership being the biggest: our boss was a perfect example of the Dilbert Principle.
So one day, upper-management decided to do something, and an email was sent out to all the employees. To improve morale, the company had...(drumroll please...)...created a new logo! The new logo should inspire us all. It was a pyramid, made up of many smaller triangles, representing us all. My colleague turned to me and said...”well, I guess we know where we are," and pointed to the triangles on the bottom line. Let's just say the new logo didn't do much for morale. We all kind of laughed about it, but it just showed how disconnected management was from us.
And that is somewhat my reaction to the problems in France right now. It seems like the government has absolutely no idea what to do.
The kids need jobs, something to give them more to do than burn cars and steal (idle hands do the devil's work), and listen to demogogues preaching hate. And what does the French government suggest? Creating 5000 new social worker jobs to talk to these kids.
That's a bandaid on a bullet wound.
*Sigh*
The article goes on to explain that as of January 2006, and additional 5000 jobs for youth counselors in schools in the "problem neighborhoods" will be created. In addition 100 million Euros will be approved for social work in the neighborhoods.
A while back, I worked at a PR company. I was pretty satisfied with the job, but the company was suffering from poor morale amongst its employees. The complaints were the usual: poor leadership being the biggest: our boss was a perfect example of the Dilbert Principle.
So one day, upper-management decided to do something, and an email was sent out to all the employees. To improve morale, the company had...(drumroll please...)...created a new logo! The new logo should inspire us all. It was a pyramid, made up of many smaller triangles, representing us all. My colleague turned to me and said...”well, I guess we know where we are," and pointed to the triangles on the bottom line. Let's just say the new logo didn't do much for morale. We all kind of laughed about it, but it just showed how disconnected management was from us.
And that is somewhat my reaction to the problems in France right now. It seems like the government has absolutely no idea what to do.
The kids need jobs, something to give them more to do than burn cars and steal (idle hands do the devil's work), and listen to demogogues preaching hate. And what does the French government suggest? Creating 5000 new social worker jobs to talk to these kids.
That's a bandaid on a bullet wound.
*Sigh*
posted by CaliValleyGirl at 11:51 AM
3 Comments:
The government can only do so much unless the kids motivate themselves.
And the morale improvement? Gee, sounds an awful lot like why the Army moved to berets! :)
There is a really great reason why the old adage "idle hands are the devil's playground" is still well known.
You're right about the kids needing jobs... but the only way that France could possibly turn things around is if they opened up the market, cut welfare benefits, chucked a bunch of anti-business laws and basically adopted an American system... it'll never happen. And without those things - there will be no jobs for these people - thus no change.
One wonders what the social workers plan on saying to these kids... "we let you subsist, learn to be happy with it, living in the projects is a good life."
France has a real problem on their hands and without a fundamental change - this isn't even a bandaid patch - it's worse than useless. It's too bad for those trapped in the ghettos of France - how frightening it must be...
Such a silly proposal. I do not believe the French government is particularly serious about responding to the problem or open to changing their approach. I mean, you're right - more social workers? Not that it's surprising. It took Chirac, like what? A week and half to even talk about the goings on? That's just ridiculous.
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