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High School Students Forced To Declare A Major
i_like_spam writes "As reported in the NYTimes, high school freshmen at many high schools across the nation are now being forced to pick a major. Starting this Fall, 9th graders in Florida will have to choose to major from among a set of state-approved subjects, while some students in Mississippi will have to follow one of nine designated career paths. High school administrators hope that having students declare majors will lead to greater student interest in school until graduation. College administrators think otherwise: 'youngsters should instead concentrate on developing a broad range of critical thinking and communication skills,' says Debra Humphreys from the Association of American Colleges and Universities."
To expect a child to choose a career at that age is ridiculous
You can make everyone go in the wrong direction all at once. For decades.
Deleted
On one hand, I hate the idea of anything that "pigeon holes" students.
On the other hand, I hate the concept that all students must be prepared for college. A lot of people just aren't cut out for it. Some are looking for blue collar careers, and would be better served by programs that prepare them for this vocation.
Combine this with kids who are at risk of dropping out of school. I see a lot of this. Some areas have a higher than 50% drop out rates. If you can take these kids and show them that when they are done with high school, they will be ready for a job as an electrician, a plumber or a mechanic, they'd be more likely to stay in. Tell them that they need to have 4 semesters of English, two of history, and they will be required to take some arts classes, and their reward will be two years of post-secondary trade school, and then they might get a job... well, some back grounds just don't value the education enough.
I see downsides to the "track" approach, but I see upsides as well.
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When I was in college, I had no difficulties picking a major: Computer Science. I wanted Computer Science since I played video games at the age of 3.
I had a roommate who couldn't decide on a major, and in fact didn't have one until around his Junior Year
Some people know what they want to do when they turn 14, some people don't. I do not see the value of making the people who don't pick one anyway.
You are awash in a sea of fiercely stated opinions. Obvious exits are: 'File->Quit', 'Reply', and 'Page Down'.
College students changes majors like they change their socks, what makes them think high school students can stick their guns?
This is not only useless, but potentially damaging to the children's careers.
As Paul Graham says,
[blockquote]If I were back in high school and someone asked about my plans, I'd say that my first priority was to learn what the options were... there are other jobs you can't learn about, because no one is doing them yet. Most of the work I've done in the last ten years didn't exist when I was in high school... In such a world it's not a good idea to have fixed plans.[/blockquote]
You said you wanted to be a marine biologist! Now go up to your room and dissect that shark! What else are you going to do with your life? Sales?
Yeah? Well I think you're overrated too.
Even asking a child what they want to be is stupid. Hell, most of the adults I know are only just deciding what they really would like to do for the rest of their lives.
Really people generally decide what they don't want to do and that takes time, experience and trial and error... So young people should be encouraged to move between jobs and educational opportunities.
In reality this is a cost cutting measure.
Deleted
I highly agree with the college administrators on this one. Grade 9 is way to early to decide a career. High school is what exposes students wide range of subjects so that they can go from there. Honestly, how much does one learn about physics, chemistry, computer science, law, etc. in middle school? Certainly not enough to make a decision that will bind them to a particular field of study for the rest of their lives.
First of all, I believe you really don't know what you want to do until you get (at least) a couple of years of college under your belt. Sometimes you get lucky and guess correctly before then, but most folks just aren't mature enough or have enough life experience to be able to tell what you will enjoy doing. Yes, I understand there are exceptions to this on both ends of the spectrum; I'm talking averages here.
Second, the college folks are right on about needing a broader focus. As it is, students are too quick to dismiss fields of learning that they don't see as relevant to their interests. Sadly, most folks realize only after they leave school that the purpose of school at nearly all levels is not so much to teach you certain subjects, but to teach you how to learn.
I've been out of college for nearly 4 yrs now and I STILL don't know what I want to major in. How can they expect a 9th grader to just choose what he might want to do with the rest of his life? I think I went through 3 or 4 completely different ideas in that 4 yr span of high school.
How dumb...
Nice, give them 9 choices you pre-define on what you want them to be and hope they don't become miserable drones. That's a nice method of control wouldn't you say? Your choices are Doctor, Policeman, Teacher, Politician, Lawyer, Fireman, Veterinarian, Astronaut, Homemaker... Pick now or you'll fall behind Timmy. What happened to freedom of choice. What happens when a student - typical 14 years old at the time is being handed some career and having those studies shoved down his throat only to find out later... "Gee I don't want to be a fireman... I should have studied something else!". Off to the welfare office for little Timmy thanks to his teachers shoving their shit down his throat and making up his mind for him. I say, teach the core studies you've taught and offer an array of information a child can choose from. Not what you dictate. Is this the US or pre Cold War Russia?
Infiltrated dot Net
I'm concerned about the narrowm view of the world IT people and engineers
have these days. I think the problem starts at college -
There's a culture that somehow science is more rational and usefull
then the humanitities. Lecturers encourage students to joke about arts
students, and humilaite them whenever possible. This encourages
eliteism, and I for one am sick of it.
Let's tell it like it is. 'science' is just as much about opinion as
the humanities. Research simply follows the fad of the day. Take
dieticians for example. These men and woman believe that just because
they have degree in medical science that they are all knowing. Why,
what they recommend one day may kill you the next! (see the DDT story
for more information.) Science is 95% opinion then facts, lets face
it. What about astrology, the most rediculious of the sciences! But I
degress...
Another example is music. We know what sounds good. Everyone aggreed
that Valves for instance sound great. But knowitall engineers use
trensastors with inferious sound quality just to save a few bucks.
They argue with numbers. Hey, I don't want to do maths just to listen
to music. I know what I like. You cannot apply objective reasoning to
a subject which is intristically subjective. But try telling those
recent grads with their useless piece of paper that and they go all
mightier--then-thou.
The problem with you technical guys are that you are all so eliteist.
Whilst you want to trun collage into a trade school with yore narrow
minded views that collage should be a job training centre, humanities
are focused on making you a well rounded person who is auctually
interesting to be with, not a boring focuesed geek. Really, it makes
me so mad when people say "oh, he's doing a humanities degree, that's
easy". I have to read *3* *books* *a* *week* on average. Not picture
books either I assue you. It is a lot of work, but the upshot is
improved grammer and spelling skills that are lacking in the
technical. As for those that say "you will be working at mcdonalds" ,
I'm going on to so a PhD in socialolgy where I'll be line for tenure
where I have a much more rewarding job then beeing a science freak or
an engineer. Anyways, all I have to do to be a engineer wold be to get
my MSCE and how hard couyld that be? techincal stuff is simply
whatever fad the market thinks is hot at the moment, but all great
things were done by humanities.
You technical types are far to narrow minded and cynsical. You should
learn to enjoy life.
Peace be to god, he transcends all.
My (Finnish equivalent to) high school focused all-round education. It was the best decision I ever made to study there. I've studied languages (Swedish, Finnish, English, French, German), the arts, philosophy, history, psychology, biology, math, physics, chemistry... The works.
And guess what? After learning the basics of pretty much everything (much at least) I'm damn sure I have a good base of general knowledge for the rest of my career, and life for that matter. When I need to pick something up I always have a place to start.
Had I been forced to focus on just a few subjects I would probably be a lot worse of in today's ever-evolving business world.
.: Max Romantschuk
The obsession with the FCATs is insane. Everything in the schools revolves around them. Some administrators in one school even "anointed" kids' desks before the test with holy oil, hoping for higher scores.
I see this as just another attempt to do that - all of the "majors" will certainly be things the FCATs focus on. This is just another way to raise artificial indicators of the success of the schools at the expense of a real education.
This space available.
I can't believe they actually expect 9th grade students to be able to decide what they want to do later in life..... It's completely absurd! I mean, when I was in 9th grade I knew that I was going to go to college, but I had really no idea what I wanted to do.
As to giving them a greater interest in school...that's a load of hogwash. Students who don't like school anyways are not going to enjoy it anymore if you force them to pick a career path, and make them stick to it through school. The way to get more students interested is to get them more involved in the classes they already have. If they're still not interested, the school and the parents need to work together to help the student....giving them work in a "specific field" isn't going to make it more interesting for them.
Of course, there would be a few students that this would help, but there'll be a lot more that it wouldn't...
Isn't it the case that other countries force their students to pick a career path beginning in high school? I thought this was how other countries, especially the Indian and Chinese government, were able to turn out so many engineers/scientists...by narrowing the focus of education early on.
I agree with the idea that students shouldn't be all lumped into the same category. If you're destined to be a scientist, why spend half your high school career studying unrelated subjects? Cram all the knowledge in now, while your brain still has a huge memory capacity. That way, college is reserved for deeper study of a subject, not review of stuff you should have learned in high school.
Also, high school curricula are pretty much aimed at the lowest common denominator. It makes sense to separate those who are interested in learning from those who are interested in using up oxygen. Ever wonder why college degrees are almost required for any corporate job? Because high school doesn't give you enough preparation to do a "real world" job. This would also prevent people from being forced through college who otherwise don't need it. There are very few non-menial jobs you can get anymore without a degree, and some people, while qualified for a job, are not suited for advanced study.
"Congratulations Mr and Mrs Jones, your 6-month foetal scans have been analysed. Your daughter is doing just fine, good health, no abnormalities. Her brain scans indicate she would be well suited for a career in law, so you might want to get your application in to the Legal Eagles Day Care Center. They have good play programs there, and their reference will help your daughter get the best chance for acceptance at Juris Elementary School. Don't delay, competition is fierce!"
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
Nice job. That post took a lot of work.
My favorite part:
Really, it makes me so mad when people say "oh, he's doing a humanities degree, that's easy". I have to read *3* *books* *a* *week* on average. Not picture books either I assue you. It is a lot of work, but the upshot is improved grammer and spelling skills that are lacking in the technical. As for those that say "you will be working at mcdonalds" , I'm going on to so a PhD in socialolgy where I'll be line for tenure where I have a much more rewarding job then beeing a science freak or an engineer.Again, congratulations.
What?
You've got to be kidding me! Is this an ad for the Sally Struther's college degree commercials? If a ninth grader is considered too young for sexual activity, which affects them for the rest of their lives, how in gods name can they be expected to know what major is right for them. Most students don't really find their way until they've gone through high school and teachers help inspire them to look towards a higer education.
/sigh GG Florida, and I went to school there, I can say this.
Isn't this similar to a communist attitude? Note I said similar, not actual communism.
In the country where Freedom is our motto, we are starting to see less and less freedoms.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
They do this where I am in New York already. Not really news, and its not like a major in College. Usually a more basic major like art, math, or science.
On the other hand, the school, Dwight Morrow High School, shares its campus with "Academies@Englewood": "With more than 400 high-achieving students enrolled, the program --housed in its own building on the Dwight Morrow campus -- offers concentrations in engineering, law and public safety, biomedicine, finance, and information systems." I have to say, I would rather be in the high-achievers school with the decent subjects than the low-achievers school on the same campus which has such a poor selection of subjects.
Just my $0.02.
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
I guess Walmart, McDonalds, and the like are adding classes that teach proper greeting methods, technical aspects of french fries, and different layouts of cash registers.
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
What age is 9th grade?
The more I see of high school, the more I want to homeschool.
And I don't really want to homeschool, but if stupid stuff like this goes on...
Actually I am a lab rat in an elaborate plot to take over the world.
I'm not sure what the problem is, in 20 years with this system we will have a country filled with firemen, doctors, lawyers and veterinarians. Sure, the trash will be heaping around town without garbage men and the hospitals will be filthy without janitors.
Excuse me while I gather the virgin sacrifice and assemble the pentagram required to solve your problem
I know a girl who was awarded a scholarship by a an organization of prominent successful women in the area. One thing that all of these successful women had in common was that they had all changed careers.
Is this true for men? (it was for me).
How to best prepare a high school child to be successful? It seems that limiting the breadth of the curriculum in favor of depth would handicap a child who wants to change paths.
Or maybe we should just measure success by happiness and not in dollars.
Look around you and count the percentage of people who are actually working in the same field as their college degree. I honestly doubt that this percentage will be affected much by requiring the students to make a decision when they are 17 instead of when they are 19. I mean, seriously -- how many people in their 30s would trust their own judgment made in late teens?
In fact, in many other countries you have to make a choice by the time you're applying to the university. Shifting it by 2 years doesn't make much difference, if any at all.
If you open yourself to the foo, You and foo become one.
C major!
Nice and easy. No sharps or flats.
Our school has implemented this with the hope of dividing the school into a bunch of "career academies." The idea is that this will make the students feel closer to each other and keep them from alienation. I hate the idea personally, but luckily I missed the year cutoff so I don't have to deal with it. Of course I won't have a shiny sticker on my high school diploma, but I doubt any of the colleges will care. You have kids fresh out of eighth grade deciding what to do with the rest of their lives, with no margin for change of mind. It won't work.
As a transplant from the UK to the US, with high school/college age kids, I think it's about time that we stopped mollycoddling and pandering to the kids here, and started getting them thinking that they cannot just drift through high school and college, they need a direction, which making a choice starts to prepare them for.
When I was at school in the UK in the early 1980's, at age 14 we had to narrow our courses to about eight subjects in total (English, Maths and a couple of others mandatory, leaving quite a bit of choice) and we studied for national exams ("O" levels) at age 16. We then chose three or four subjects usually from the eight, to take to an advanced level ("A" level), leading to national exams at the age of 18. When it cam to university time, there was no such thing as this "undeclared major" rubbish that my son is doing at an American university starting this fall. Our university admission was into a particular course, based on prerequisite courses at "A" level at required grades. This allowed the universities to know the minimum level and rely on the expected knowledge of all the students in a given course, and there was no need for foundation years, or spending the first term or two catching everyone up. This is why we could have three year Bachelor's courses instead of the four year ones here in the US.
Today's kids are not being properly prepared for the work environment. I've lost count of the number of confident, self assured, broadly educated US Bachelors or Masters graduates I have interviewed for jobs in electronics who don't understand Ohm's Law or basic op-amp theory after graduating from between four and six years of study. It's time to stop the madness, and start preparing the kids for the new world, where they are competing against low wage earning graduates based in India or China, and if you think the UK system was harsh in making people choose, you should see the focus and emphasis on academics and career preparation in Asia...
Decissions like these are made by people who have not pride in their work or care at all about the work itself but only the status and wealth that it brings. To them, the exact nature of the work is irrelevant. If they can become famous and rich hauling garbage, they will. They do not understand that the majority of people DO want a profession where the tasks meets their personal interrests, and since watching porn all day isn't a job, they'll usually need some time to figure out what they like doing and what professions enable them to do that.
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This is ridiculous. To ask a child at that age to make an educational decision that could affect his career track is just downright asinine. Hell, I didn't know what subject I wanted to major in four years later when I went to college -- after experiencing a full four years of high school and taking a wide variety of subjects while there. Frankly, I think that even asking high school seniors to try to decide what they want to do for a living is a little foolish. I know many people my age (26) who still haven't decided on a career track and are still going back to school in order to gain new knowledge in the hopes that they will be able to decide on a career that they do like.
I know that I, for one, would have loved to take a year or two off after high school to work and explore my interests. It would have been nice to have the time to develop new skills before I went to college to further my education. And I would have done so, were it not for my scholarship. Alas, it is very hard to get a scholarship at or even to gain entry to a good university as a freshman if you don't do it directly after high school. This is a problem born of the steep post-secondary education costs in our country. I for one wouldn't have had the funds go attend the university I attended were it not for the scholarship, and the same goes for most universities. Unfortunately, I can think of no way to rectify this other than to increase the quality of our educational system from the bottom up. Pay the friggin' teachers more - they deserve it. Lower the costs of tuition at public universities each year instead of raising them - our children deserve every opportunity they can get to obtain a college education; especially in this day and age where more and more jobs list a bachelor's degree as a basic qualification.
I wish more people would understand that an investment in our children's education now is equivalent to an investment in the future well being of our country. Then again, we're talking about a country where financial investors demand to see short term profits and damn the long term longevity of the company. It appears that some people wish to apply the same sort of thinking to our educational system, and this saddens me. Reorganizing school curriculum to force high school students to declare a major is comparable to a corporate reorganization to more narrowly focus a product line. Both are signs that the organization is in trouble and neither situation points to a good future for the organization and its citizens.
I hope these schools drop this nonsense and attempt to concentrate on the root of the problem - under funding most likely - instead of trying to apply short term solutions to a long term problem.
If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.
Allow students to learn to think and communicate, the colleges surely jest, public schools were set up to prevent that from happening as much as possible and students are punished for such abhorent behaviour. Instead they must be prepared for real life duties to their employer, government and society. In short they have to learn to think and do as we tell them while believing this is the right thing to do and they will remain happy when we give them their gold stars.
Bah, colleges and universities have long since gotten away from real education too. Perhaps they are afraid that high schools will now replace them as job trainers, a movement that has been going for a while now as many high schools work with local industry to "prepare the student for the workplace with skills that the local job market needs". If a child learns at an early age how to learn and how to think and gets a good strong general education they can continue to learn in areas that interest them on their own. Picking a specialization that early has a strong chance of being the wrong choice for the person and have to wonder if many will be "guided" into those choices due to government or corporate influence. Many even chose to change careers after going to graduate school in another area. What the kids really need is to be allowed to learn to think and the time to do it and make observations of the world while having some fun before they join us in our Dilbert world.
HSers still need a broader education. It is necessary for a democratic republic for them to be able to reason and be well literate and to have strong math, reading, and writing skills, along with science.
In a totaltarion state - well, none of that is necessary. So this career-curriculim in HS is ok for them.
The IB program is an ideal these schools need to reach for.
> high school freshmen at many high schools across the nation are now being forced to pick a major
It makes a lot of sense. Only rich kids can afford to go to college and spend several years screwing around while they figure what they want to do. Much better if we get clear in these kids minds what their options are. It saves everyone time: Subjects on offer are infantry, artillery, bomb disposal or Mitt Romney internships. Any a great way for young people to serve!
Doctor: Here's your scientifically selected career.
Kid1: Architect!
Kid2: Insurance Salesman.
Ralph: Salmon gutter?
Milhouse: Military strongman!
Martin: Systems analyst....Systems analyst....Systems analyst...
Doctor: Systems analyst!
Martin: All right!
Is it exciting or disturbing that real life seems to become more like The Simpsons every day?
I attended a Vo-Tech HS in the early-mid '80s, and students were required to choose a major at the end of their freshman year, after a series of 6-week "exploratory" classes to give exposure to various career areas. I already knew what area I wanted to pursue (electronics), but also got exposure to areas from auto repair to graphic arts, in addition to all the standard HS curriculum.
Upon leaving HS, you received a standard HS diploma, along with the equivalent of an associate's degree in your chosen technical area. Many graduates went right into the job market, but some of us (myself included) went on to college/university, where we were that much more secure in our chosen major (mine was EE), where we had much more practical, hands-on experience that most of the students who came out of ordinary high schools. I now work for a university, doing design/prototyping of instrumentation for scientific research.
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Echoing other comments, my first impression was "WHAT? Most people don't know what they want to be at that age!" but on further reflection it's quite similar to what I went through. Though born american, I grew up in Spain (that small country over there) and went to a spanish High School. Our second year of HS we had to decide between 4 choices: Letras (literally Letters, equivalent to Humanities) both pure and mixed (with Sciences), and Ciencias (Sciences), pure and mixed. All tracks had common classes to help develop a varied background (Latin, Philosophy, etc.) while still channeling the interests of the student.
Insert witty comment here
Many accidently selected Pat Buchanan as their major.
Many college students are not sure yet of what they want to become, how are kids even younger going to make a choice like this, if they even should.
How can you choose what you want to be when you don't even know yourself yet. At that age kids are still living in the shadows of their parents, and do what their parents tell them to do. They have not yet discovered what they like, what they are good at, what makes them get up in the morning.
Perhaps a better idea would be to invest the money in improving the existing programs in the hard sciences, along with reading, writing, and arithmetic the foundation of all professions. Then as students begin the process of self discovery they will be prepared regardless of what profession they ultimately choose.
High School students should NOT be given a choice, rather they should be told what to do, and disciplined to achieve good results.
Hope is the currency of fools
Think back to grade school. You're sitting there taking a course that you didn't want to take but had to because the school chose it for you. You have no freedom of choice. I'm all for core curriculum as in math, science, language, and social studies, which is primarily what your first year of college is spent doing anyway. It does make you more balanced and gives a reasonable baseline. Students involved in AP or gifted programs have more options to study what they want, but it's those kids who aren't that need something to work towards. If you're interested in science and math, you have a science curriculum, if you're interested in business, then you have a mixture of economics and social studies. The idea of having targeted paths for students is great, in my opinion. For students that may change their minds, make the "major" be more like a minor. You take so many science classes for a science concentration, etc, while the core classes make up the real "major." In this case, the school seems to be making this a bit harder than it needs to be, but I think they're on the right track at least. High school is bad enough, so let the kids at least take classes that they want.
As people move up the academic chain, they focus on their chosen area of study and learn more and more about less and less. (eventually knowing everything about nothing?) To do so, they start out with a broad base, learning at least something about everything, then deciding what interest them. How is someone supposed to decide on a major when they haven't any idea what's out there? Isn't that what high school is for? And even if someone already knows what they want, wouldn't we rather have individuals who are able to converse about things other than just their job? I don't like it; education should be more like a pyramid than an obelisk.
If I went around claiming I was an emperor...they'd put me away!
In my high school back in Jamaica, we all did the broad subjects until around 9th grade. Then by 10th and 11th grade (4th to 5th form there), we either chose majors, or one was foisted upon us.
For me that was a good thing. I did not chose, but I was recognized as having a good technical aptitude (based on grades), so I was sent to Tech. Tech involved Electronics, Metal Shop, Wood Shop, Technical Drafting, more Advanced Math, Biology and basic physics. Of course we also still did all the standard courses such as geography, religious sciences, literature and english (yes, different). But the courses that were double sessions were tech.
Now looking back at all my friends, it seemed that we did not have an issue with choosing careers. I bumped into a guy who was into tech a few weeks ago, and surprise! He was a tech at one of the local cellphone companies, many of my friends who were into science are now in the medical fields. And the guys who went into arts and business also tended to gravitate to those fields.
I think it definitely helped. Of course in those days (late 70's) we had excellent teachers who could get you into the right area. Teachers make a lot of difference in those situations.
I dropped out of college and went to work, but that was for other reasons. So these days, I'm hiring guys who thought they knew what they were doing when the majored in psychology in college, but turned out to be super programmers. And I'm dismissing CS majors who went into their fields and were lousy developers.
No doubt in my mind that at around 15 years old, it makes sense to help nudge the student into the general direction where they show aptitude best.
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The reason why I feel sympathy is that I believe in offering children choices. It's my view that few children are given any choice at all that they feel in any way will affect their long-term position, and so any choice taken is always with a mental horison of about two days or the next party. This kills involvement, motivation, attachment and focus.
That's not to say you should actually _let them decide_ their long-term position at the age of 14 - you can offer choices that, while they feel big at the time, are ultimately mostly irrelevant.
As such, I sympathise with the programme, and my own country has a similar choice of programme focus only at the age of 16 (or rather 15, as you need to apply the year before you start) for a long time and there have been neither complaints nor attempts to change it. I would also like to know exactly how much common content there is between courses - acid test being e.g. whether someone studying Sports Management but having the motivation to would have any chance at all at going to college for Management with Accounting or vica versa. 14 still feels a bit early however.
A significant chunk of college freshmen enter as "undecided" majors. I vaguely recall that something like one-third of all college students change majors at least once. If college students don't even know what they want to do, how can you expect high-school kids to know. Give them interesting electives and concentrations or magnet schools, but don't lock people into "majors".
The headline of TFA is polemical - "forced to" pick a major. However there is little detail about what the choice of major will actually mean. What opportunities will it open for students and what will it close? This may not amount to much from a student's point of view. I went to high school in the mid-1980s and my school had majors. In order to take Advanced Placement English you had to major in English. In order to take AP calculus you had to major in math. In order to take sculpture you had to major in art. So I triple-majored in English, Math, and Art (actually, science also but that didn't affect my study options). It was perfectly feasible. I think I had less study hall than some other kids because I took art classes instead, and that was about it. So really majors do not need to "track" or constrain the students. (Now I admit if I had wanted to major in metalworking and home economics simultaneously, that might not have been possible because the classes were at the same time.) Looking back, I think the reason for majors at my school was that there was limited funding for the advanced classes and they wanted some token commitment from the students in order to enroll them. It helps make planning easier - if you have 60 freshmen majoring in science, then you can predict that 4 years from now you'll need 60 or fewer seats in the senior-level physics class.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Is it's purpose to train kids to pass exams or is it's purpose to inform them about the world?
If exams are the purpose, you get this kind of crap where kids are taught to pass a test and nothing else.
Deleted
College administrators think otherwise: 'youngsters should instead concentrate on developing a broad range of critical thinking and communication skills,' says Debra Humphreys from the Association of American Colleges and Universities."
Because everybody knows we're not going to teach them critical thinking or communication in college, it's going to be the same old regurgitating facts for a piece of paper that goes on in high school.
Since kids have to pick what they want to be at an early age maybe now we will have a lot more astronauts and firemen. Not sure what girls might pick maybe actress or singer? To bad they can't pick those...
Half the lies they say about me aren't true
Cute Rush
We've got a bunch of idiots running our public schools. Let's focus on getting 90% of kids reading, writing and thinking critically with math and science skills up to the proper pre-collegiate levels by the 12th grade before we even think about making them declare a major.
I've been out of college for several years now but when I was a freshmen I heard professor after professor bemoan the fact that more and more kids were enrolling without having mastered what they considered the "basics". So you had freshman taking courses at the college level learning things they should have been taught in high school. This wasn't a community college either, this was the public university with the highest admission standards in the state.
You kind of do that already. You have basic elective courses along with all the math, history, science, and english. You get to choose if you want to take a foreign language (not necessary at my high school), computer courses, home ec (sic), art courses, FFA courses (farmers, NJ country side here), or you can go out and get a job for half the day. I think in Europe some countries do more a two or three path thing where you can study to go to college as one of the choices then the others are so that the student can join the work force right out of high school. People made a choice at lease starting at 9th grade in which direction they wanted to go, but you have a choice to spread out over all of them, not just declare a major and have courses just on that subject along with math, english and science. I see this as not being necessary.
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F.Y.I. in Spain it used to work in the following way: At 14th you decide whether you go for University or for other studies If you want University you must go for High School If you don't want University you must go for Professional School where they can teach a great variety of jobs (plumbing, secretary, carpenter, etc) In High School you have 2 years of common studies When you are 16th you have to choose whether you want to study sciences or something else Then when you are 17th you have to choose into 4 different things: 1-Technical Sciences (Engineering, Maths, Physics, Arquitechture, etc) 2-Bilogical Sciences (Doctors, Vet's, Biologics, etc) 3-Layers, Economits and such 4-Art, Phylosophy, History, etc I agree it is difficult for such age to decide what to choose, but I can say on my side that I was more than happy not to have to study subjects such us Latin, Greek, Story of Art etc when I was 16/17 and study more Maths, Chemistry, Physics, etc. I finally studied a degree in engineering....
In Norway we have had a similar system, where you choose what you want to do when you are sixteen. The choices are Mechanical, Electrical, Almen "All around", music etc. Most kids choose Almen, which will give you a broad set of knowledge, no skills, and prepare you for university, where you narrow it (We use the Bologna system in Norway).
Personally I went Electrical and IT. Biggest mistake of my life. IT is what I want to do, but the Teachers sucked, the curriculum sucked, the shcool sucked. It only focused on MS products, linux was only mentioned in passing (my teacher told me that I would never in a million years administer a linux server, guess what I am doing today), we had 8 hours a week of learning how to use the MS office suite, instead of learning useful things. In retro perspective I think it would have been better not to attend school at all after I turned sixteen, or gone of to the university.
This is the problem students face. They don't know for sure what each class, course, teacher, school is going to be like. One thing is knowing what you want to work as. You should be able to find that out early in life, but its the way there that is problematic.
Some administrators in one school even "anointed" kids' desks before the test with holy oil, hoping for higher scores.
Sounds like you have bigger problems than test scores going on there.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
14 and 15 year olds are not emotionally capable of choosing this early. It's stupid. And forcing this decision is typical of the public education system and the stranglehold the system has on the US.
The excuse for this decision is that they want to generate interest and keeping students in school. The truth is this: Educators don't have a fucking clue how to keep students in school. They don't understand that behind these high school dropouts are bad parents, and forcing EVERY student to choose will likely ruin more students' career path more than it will help those few that drop out.
Bureaucrats, educators, and politicians know that without change, things will remain the same. With that in mind, these brilliant minds have a series of meetings... they will call it an exploratory committee. Then, they throw a bunch of really stupid ideas into a hat, and the least stupid idea wins!
What these brainless twits don't realize is that parents are the problem. Parents who don't care enough to keep their children in school. Parents who are more interested in anything but the children they've spawned. These people should be held accountable for their children.
Children are not disciplined anymore. Forcing every student to pick a "major" is a stupid, lame idea that will likely hurt more kids than it will help. It's just a bandaid to cover a more serious issue. If the child is at risk of dropping out of school the parents should be involved. If the parents aren't involved, pull that student out of school, get them in a tutoring/mentoring system.
Although I don't think they should detract from the core classes for this, it could be a good way to get people to think about what interests them, and help nudge them to build life goals. My concerns with this program are:
(In true slashdot spirit, I did not RTFA)
"Hate is baggage. Life's too short to be pissed off all the time." Danny Vinyard -American History X
You guys all assume that this is for the kids going to college. There are a LOT of high schoolers (even in Florida, where college is practically free) who will never go to college. They will barely graduate high school (because they don't care), never leave their hometown, and will make less than $15/hr for the rest of their life. This program is for them. Everyone on here talks about "that would never work for me" and that's because 90% of Slashdot folks went to college. Not only that, but are -smart- geeks. I think that if these kids pick a "major" with the intent of going to college later, that won't pigeon hole them. I had to pick one as soon as I enrolled at UF, but they told me it didn't really matter. For the kids NOT going to college, I think it will be beneficial.
You seem to forget that about half of the age class, after graduating from the 9th class of elementary school did choose a major, namely those that chose to go vocational or trade school. Actually you too did choose a major, that major just happened to be all-a-round preparation for collage or university.
It should also be noted that choosing vocational or trade school at the age of 16 isn't a decision that closes doors for the rest of your life. A friend of mine, that I first met when studying at University of Vaasa, at teenage didn't want to go to a high school and chose trade school. Later after graduating from trade school he wanted to more challenge and applied to Vaasa to study M.Sc.Econ and when doing that got interested about engineering, and after graduating from Vaasa continued at HUT (Helsinki University of Technology) to get a degree in engineering. So making a choice in young age doesn't mean that you can't progress in life.
Also it should be noted that to many students studying and academics are just not interesting. Many want to learn a profession, get a job, start a family, buy a house and get kids in early age and I have to say that there isn't anything wrong in this. If that half of my elementary school class that chose vocational or trade school had been forced to go to high school, they would have seriously puked at studying more and also in the process made sure that rest of us who wanted to study couldn't concentrate on studying.
In the end, the question isn't should teens choose their profession or career early on, but why not they shouldn't do it? I know myself many metal workers, cooks, secretaries, hair stylist etc.. that chose their profession early on and haven't had any regrets. They are proud of their professional skills and they like what they do. How is it so bad thing to let young people make a decision about their career in young age? They can always change what they do and go to study again, if they choose so.
Survey research tool for commercial and scientific use
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specialist_school
What business wants is trained workers. Not educated people. They want people whose education is narrowed down to the point where they are useful for the company, while at the same time limiting them to whatever is useful for the company. This has many advantages for them. First of all, a focused education can be much deeper than a broad education. Meaning, the person will have a better understanding of his focus. And second, the person can hardly switch jobs. If you are an expert mechanic for Toyota but know little if anything about anything else, you cannot simply quit and move to a different job. You are pressed into your job with no room to move.
Worse yet, you have to swallow whatever is said about anything that's not in your field of expertise. You have to believe what you don't know. Sure, you will get irate and call bullshit on everything spewed on the media about the things you do understand, but you will readily believe everything else.
And that's what is wanted. It's also a very convenient way for Government out of its dilemma: You need dumb people to govern them easily, but smart people to have a strong economy.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I agree it seems a knee-jerk reaction deciding on a major so early in school, but it isn't as career-defining as it's made to sound. There are more than 9 careers available to them when they leave college (or high school for that matter), this isn't as pigeon-holing as it's made to sound. And it works in other countries, many have such specialisations, even more restrictive.
After all this is only asking students to choose their vague direction at this stage - performing arts, humanities, science, mathematics, languages, that sort of thing. The scope for variation within each of those is very wide, and most kids have an idea of where they see themselves going at that age already. I remember having to choose my GCSEs (14-16 year old UK courses) at 13-14, and while it was daunting, I already knew what I was good at and enjoyed, and what I wanted to drop.
The bonus to this sort of specialisation is it allows students to devote more time to their chosen subjects (and for lecturers to put more into their courses) and therefore for the system as a whole to turn out more qualified graduates - it's been the international consensus for a while that most US university degrees, particularly in technical subjects, are less thorough than other courses simply because the students do more varied work, concentrating less on their chosen field. For instance on a Physics BSc in the UK, a student would be spending 90-100% of their lectures on Physics specifically, and are finishing their courses more knowledgeable about their specialist subject as a result.
I am worried about America's future. What is happening to our government and education system? Are smart people being banned from taking a proactive role in leadership position in many of these organizations which has countless history of making bad decisions?
Has politics at organizations has gotten too ugly and smart folks are getting out or gives up on becoming a leader out of fear for having to wade through nightmarish politics?
I am just worried to see more not so smart, but more self seeking, master of deception, and ultimate manipulative people with financial power and political powers gaining ever so important leadership position across vast organizations.
Having a good mentor and leader makes world of difference like day and night. If we don't change and elect more leaders with smart, wisdom, and sacrificial mind-set oriented leaders, then our future experience will be very negative and hard one.
I wonder how many of us knew what they wanted to do with their lives when they were 21 let alone 15 or 16. About the only time you knew that was when you were 5 or 6 and you wanted to be a fireman, cowboy, or a ballerina.
However, if this really does keep a few students in school who otherwise would have dropped out, its probably a non-issue. For those who are motivated to go to college, it isn't going to do anything.
Both Germany and Japan have tried this same approach, in grade school, expecting the children ot their parents to be able to predict the future some twent to thirty years on.
The net result is a lot of frustrated kids, learning less, pigenholed into incredibly inappropriate programems and expecting a hell-ride when they start
Both Germany and Japan have tried this same approach, in grade school, expecting the children or their parents to be able to predict the future some twenty to thirty years on.
The net result is a lot of frustrated kids, learning less, pigeonholed into incredibly inappropriate programmes and expecting a hell-ride when they start trying to work in an industry they already detest.
The Ontario high-school system used to try to do the same thing, and placed me in "terminal technical" (3 years and then out to work for McDonalds), when I applied for the academic (pre-university) stream. Fortunately my Father was able to produce an IQ score which proved I had been misplaced, apparently by being mistaken for a different David Brown.
--dave trying to work in an industry they already detest.
The Ontario high-school system used to try to do the same thing, and placed me in "terminal technical" (3 years and then out to work for McDonalds), when I applid for teh academic (pre-university) stream. Fortunately my Father was able to produce an IQ score which proved I had been misplaced, apaprently by being mistaken for a different David Brown.
One should do one's literature survey before making decisions which can do harm.
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
This is a coping mechanism because personal responsibility and direction are on the decline. Kids no longer see their opportunity, value, and pleasure in life coming from education and the potential it offers. Look at YouTube comments and myspace pages: they learned all they need to know about being cool and having fun by the time they were thirteen. All they're waiting to do is grow up, drive, smoke, and get DUIs; they're set for life!
:).] found this out at some point in lives.
So, of course kids are setting no productive future for their own lives--and see no reason to--and of course the school system is going to step in an impose some "career traintracks" on the kids who don't know how to drive their own cars of personal responsibility. It's a horrible because it's damage control.
There are more enjoyable and fulfilling things to do, but children have no vision that maybe more satisfaction comes through educationally-based accomplishments, rather than laziness and cheating, dropping out and drinking. I think most people here on slashdot, or who have done something productive with their lives [note, two separate groups.
A hard day's work can bring more satisfaction than browsing Facebook or posting on myspace, but "skills" like math, kernel compiling, or even YouTube movie *posting*, instead of watching... well, these things take *work*, and meanwhile their friends are out having a "good time" and ridiculing them for daring to assert that there might be a better way to pass the time than wasting it.
If a decision you make is trying to "keep kids in school," that's the intellectual version of building prison walls. Show kids that school is a playground, and I bet they'll stick around of their own free will, and maybe start using it a little more.
Copy/paste troll, complete with spelling errors.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Thats what I told my soon to be Florida Freshman son put on his application.
Seriously, he is in gifted and has no clue what he wants to do. I'm not forcing him to make a decision why should the school. My motto? Give them lots of options and let them make the decision when ready.
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.
The A Major triad is a chord made up of the notes A, C#, and E. It is the Tonic Major of A Minor, and the Dominant of F# Minor.
The triad can be played in one of three different voicings; Root position (A-C#-E), 1st Inversion (C#-E-A), or 2nd Inversion (E-A-C#). When played in the 'home' key of A Major, the root note (that is, the A) should always be doubled when voicing the chord in four-part harmony. If the chord is being played as the dominant of its key, then the bass note should be doubled when playing in an inverted position.
Common variants on the A Major chord include A Maj7 - where a G# is introduced into the voicing, replacing the 5th note (E); A Sus2, where a B is substituted for the C# (to be used only in higher voicings), and A6, where the 6th note of the scale (F#) is substituted for the 5th. Guitarists are familiar with the "A5" chord, where only the root and 5th notes of the chord are played. This chord (a "power chord") can be played in place of either an A Major or A Minor chord.
Because in my experience, China's educational system sucks.
Having talked to people who've gone and taught there (actual teachers, not regular Joes called in to play teacher) they say it is all route memorization. To be smart is to have a lot of facts and formulas in your head. Well as it turns out memorization and analyzation are really only useful to a point. That makes you good at taking tests, but you need to be able to synthesize that knowledge in to what else you know, and apply it to novel problems to really be useful. What more for some subjects it just totally and utterly fails. Language would be a good example. They teach foreign language the same way: memorize hundreds of phrases a week. However one needs only to examine the way you use your native language to realise that's not how we process it.
I then get to see the results of this education where I work, which is an engineering department at a university. What I see, fails to impress. The language skills of a large number of our Chinese students are ATROCIOUS. I've no idea how they passed the entrance exam (actually I do know, it is because memorization will do good for that, just not for the real world). They have extreme difficulty expressing themselves and almost as much difficulty understanding native speakers, even for quite simple things. They get along primarily by joining labs of professors that speak their native language, and simply isolating themselves. We have students who've been here for 4 years, yet still struggle, when a year of immersion is usually enough for extreme proficiency if you apply yourself.
Likewise I find in general they are extremely poor problem solvers. They've little trouble with book work or tests, however they are sunk when it comes to a practical problem. A lab full of people allegedly getting degrees in networking will be befuddled by a simple subnetting problem (they had their default gateway set outside of the subnet and didn't see the problem). They have knowledge, but it seems not understanding. If a problem isn't phrased in the theoretical terms and abstract equations they learned, they can't solve it.
Based on my experiences with these students, who are supposed to be very good since they can come to a foreign university, and with students from the US and other countries, along with what I've learned of China's educational system, I don't think I'd hold it up as the model to follow. It does seem to do well at preparing people for taking standardised tests, but alas the world isn't composed of those. It's the ability to use all that information on problems in the real world that is truly useful.
So I disagree that a better educational system is one that's more hardcore, one that forces kids to concentrate on only one thing at a very early age. I think a better educational system is one that tries to generally educate the mind, one that teaches people how to think, how to solve problems, and gives them a set of tools to do that for many different ones. Then, later, if they are interested in a field that requires more specialized knowledge, they can get that specialized training.
One of our professors has a quote I like very much:
BS: To learn how to think.
MS: To think about what others have thought.
PhD: To boldly think where none have thought before.
I think there's some truth to that. An undergraduate degree (and ESPICALLY a high school education) shouldn't be to try an hyper focus. It should be to teach you how to be a better thinker, to give you more skills and tools to that end. Yes there should be some focus since the skills for engineering are not the same skills for linguistics, but not a hyper focused program. That comes at a masters level, should you want it, where you really focus on one area of research.
For more on this, you might want to read Richard Feynman's biography (Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman). In it he talks about his experience in Brazil. He found that they really emphasised science in schools, teaching elementary kids
As far as I can see, the main reason is that pupils in the US are encouraged to waste the whole time they spend in High School goofing off, and then spend about half the time in College making up for their deficiencies. Unfortunately a typical high-school graduate can't spell, can't write even a small report, can't do arithmetic, knows damn-all about mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, history or geography. Not bad for a budding plumber or manager, but quite lethal to anyone thinking of going into science or engineering.
If this is to change, there has to be a division _at high school level_ between those wishing to go to college, and those wishing to enter the job market, or choose a vocational career after high school. Only then will it be possible to give high-school pupils with appropriate majors the depth they are currently lacking.
Making it mandatory to choose a majors that early may seem stupid, but there are plenty of meaningful majors that don't close off any significant career avenues. (High}
And besides ... school is supposed to prepare pupils for their later career. This includes teaching them how to study, how to work hard, and where their limits are. Nobody ever discovered his limits without trying to see how far they can go. What we have now is a system where the pace and depth of learning of a heterogeneous class is determined by that of the least talented, the least industrious, and the least motivated.
As a result, pupils either have to shine *despite* the efforts of the school system to keep them dumbed down, which is a really mean way of selecting people on self-motivation, or they have to be lucky enough to have wealthy parents who understand the value of education and send their children to very expensive special schools. How else do you suppose the current president made it through one of the Ivy League universities?
Schools should not leave all to pupil's self motivation. Of course ... if a pupil is un-motivated, there is little one can do. What one *can* and *should* do is to offer challenging and rewarding education to those that want it. For example to pupils who choose a science-heavy majors.
Some of us were blessed in that we knew what we wanted to do early in high school. I was one of those, I loved computers and took business courses until grade 13. I also took welding, machine shop, shop for small engines (marine, snowmobile etc), physics, biology and chemistry, typing along with the all of the math, geography, history and english courses. I had a very well rounded education so that if I did change my mind I had the education to change careers totally. Those skills are still used today as I can weld/braze things, I can use machinery to make metal items and tools and I can strip and rebuild small engines with my eyes shut. When people ask me what I do for a living it sometimes freaks them out that a 'computer geek' can hold a welding torch without burning down the building.
When our children leave high school they should know
Panic now, beat the rush!
This district, where sixty percent of students qualify for free lunches, has decided -- based on future job trends and what colleges want -- to offer sports, art, health, political science, business, communication, global warming and education.
I graduated high school nine years ago, when -- to save money on vocational classes -- if you wanted to take a particular set of vocational classes like shop or bookkeeping you went to a different high school: these career academies as the article called it.
How many of these kids are college bound? Is Pre-Ed what you take if you're going to become a day care worker after high school? Health if you are indeed going to go to cosmetology school instead of nursing school? To say nothing of preparing for a skilled trade -- Welding jobs in the manufacturing sector may be subject to outsourcing, but we'll always need licensed plumbers nearby.
Plus, the college-bound kids can't study stuff like science & engineering or agriculture. Or are they subsumed into the Liberal Arts catch-all or the Global Warming major?
The proponents of this program think having a major will put an end to the whining of "When am I ever gonna have to use this stuff?" But if a kid picks "International Business" and later foresees himself going into the foodservice industry -- even though McDonald's is an international business -- he's going to be asking that same question.
I know, secondary school teachers and administrators dream of all their little eggs going onto ivy league schools, but the best teachers know their audience / customer / whatever, and meet those needs and without patronizing them.
One might ask the same about birds. What ARE birds? We just don't know.
Maybe they should try treating students with some dignity and respect. Considering the quote in the summary calls these high schoolers "youngsters", I'd say the students are going to leave no matter what these administrators do.
Besides, many college students have trouble picking their majors. Having them pick majors that young will only hurt them later when they ask themselves, "What am I doing?"
I have nothing to say.
We have/had something similar here, except more broad. There were 3 tracks:
1) Advanced - Going to University
2) General - Going to community college
3) Basic - I like soup
That was in the mid/late 90s and they've since made the names a little more "PC". Each was geared to get the student what they needed for after highschool, without pigeonholing them into a specific field. Also, it was on a course by course basis so that people weak in certain areas but strong in others could tailor their classes along those lines.
It's a good system, except that because students who should have been in basic math wanted to be in general and general in advanced they would dumb down classes. All because teachers/councilors didn't have the balls to tell students, "You really should be in general/basic." So the students who should be there suffer from the progress being held back. This has rolled over into the community colleges where we have students entering Journalism who don't have a basic grasp of the English language and students entering Computer Programming who've never turned on a computer. Again they lower the bar so that people's feelings don't get hurt, and the people who really should be there suffer for it.
Sorry for the slight tangent. It's a bit of a pet peeve of mine.
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
NCLB is designed obscure the truth about education in America with gimmicks. I was a statistical analyst in charge of producing NCLB reports for the state of CT. The NCLB regulations and reporting were the reason I left the education field altogether. The statistics are both unsound and completely incorrect given the sample base and intent.
i ew/fl.doc Link to the doc quoted above, from the US Department of Education. Every state has to submit hundreds of narrative documents like this every year in order to qualify for funding.
Here are the major issues with education right now in Florida (and most states):
1. There is a significant achievement gap between high/low poverty schools and white/minority schools. That gap has increased due to NCLB.
2. Highly Qalified Teachers: There aren't enough. Another component of NCLB requires schools to move toward 100% highly qualified staff. The gap here is the same as the achievement gap. The rich/white schools get better teachers.
To quote a report by the Florida Department of Education to the feds regarding their progress toward "HQT = 100%":
"The percentage of classes taught by HQTs is above 90 percent in all categories except high-poverty secondary schools. At the secondary level, there is a six percentage point gap between high- and low-poverty schools."
http://www.ed.gov/programs/teacherqual/hqtltr/rev
Teach teachers how to teach. Make parents responsible for their children.
--Always, I mean never..., No I mean always check your references.--
girls, rock music, and wasting his time.
- bemused dads everywhere
...to just have them draw career cards from the game of life?
Report your kids to the compound, ladies and gents! For the Motherland, Comrades!
This is INSANE. In high school a person's mind is still developing, and what they might be good at in 10th grade could be completely opposite a few years later. Case in point: In level I of highschool I almost failed math; English was one of my top courses. Luckly, I managed to keep in the academic stream. I just finished highschool in June. 100% in third level math (no joke, that was my course grade, but the grading curve helped a little); only 80ish in english (though,I still think the exam correctors were on glue). Entering level II I wanted to do design tech, but the principle convinced me to do biology instead, setting me on the completely different path that I'm on now; it was probably my faverite high school course, and it's what I plan to major in in university if biochem doesn't work out.
Seriously, it may sound like I'm bragging about my marks a bit (I'm sure many on slashdot have better), but forcing kids to pick their path this quick is criminal.
Also, sorry for the terminology; I'm Canadian, I'm not sure how different the American school system is.
I had to declare a major and a minor in a public high school and it couldn't involve any of the required subjects like English. Funny how we keep reinventing things that once to worked and we have let slide. Probably because of the destructive nature of the "No child left behind" policy. At the time I didn't care because I had five majors. But it did make some people think.
What's that ? Shop classes --> blue collar work ?? If you mean the best craftsmen are well into "formal operations" , then of-course. Otherwise, I cannot imagine better preparation ( K-12 ) for a budding physicist or engineer than well_equiped woodworking, machine and electrical shops. The concrete forms of measurement, planning, testing, geometry, trig and combinatorics all get worked through. Easy to integrate with parallel CAD tasks. Both allowing immediate, concrete feedback. Teaching otherwise does NOT reflect how human understanding grows itself into formal systems.
If the title of the /. article had read: "HS Students Allowed to Specialize", would there have been this uproar?
A couple of points to respond to you knee-jerkers who think this idea is unfair:
* There are four main ways to improve an economy; specialization is one of them. That's what we're discussing here. Have you noticed that we haven't seen any Mozart's or Chaplin's lately? Given any thought as to why? They essentially _majored_ in their field at an early age and stayed with it! Where in the US will you find an educational system that will allow specialization at an early age? Home school. That's it. Until this plan came along. I'm not claiming it's perfect, but specialization isn't the Big Bad Wolf.
*I suspect that most of you how have responded negatively haven't taught high school or college, ever. We have high schools that turn out students who need Basic and Intermediate Algebra and sometimes Remedial Composition I _and_ II in college. Something must change in public school systems. At least if an older student can pursue something s/he finds relevent, there would be initiative to pursue quality work. That might help a the students who recognize that public school is a jail from which they can't escape until they turn 18.
*As for the 'let the kids be kids!' argument: crap. They demand to be treated like adults when it comes to sex, alcohol, drugs, and the use of a parent's car. But when they enter the school, they want Mommy and Daddy to threaten a lawsuit if their homework becomes "too hard". As others have posted, we're facing fierce competition in India and Asia from hyper-educated grads who are willing to work for $1/hour. It's time to throw out the idea of a leisurely stroll through K-12 or K-BS.
*Re: 'They don't know what they want to do yet!' Do they want to eat? Do they want to be able to move out of Mommy and Daddy's house and live on their own? If so, they need money. If they can't inherit it, they'll have to work for it. That requires a job. A job requires training. They may not like it, but I won't pay for their Welfare checks just because they couldn't find the inspiration to be a fill-in-the-blank.
*And if they don't know what they want to do yet, then we, the adults, with scars on our bodies from what Life was done to us, have the right to choose for them. They're not adults yet. If they were, they'd pay taxes and have a job. They don't know what it's like to get laid off or lose a child or go bankrupt -- in short, they don't know what they need yet. They only know what they want. And that's not enough to survive.
In short, if you complain that forcing children to begin to take responsibility for their own adulthood is cruel/harsh/unfair, you're as much of the problem as administrators and teachers who teach solely for the tests. Is this FL plan perfect? Doubt it. Argue about its implementation then. But for God's sake make it a priority that your children grow up instead of just growing old.
For those not from the US-
... not that that ever happens.)
Schooling typically starts at age 5 (kindergarten) and then have 5 years of primary/elementary school, 3 years in middle school, and 4 of high school (= 13 yrs). This varies a bit by state, my experience is mostly in New Mexico (the state, not to be confused with Mexico
Attendance in school is mandatory until you're 16, at which point you can legally drop out. Most high schools aren't too specialized and putting students into "trade" or "college-prep" tracks is seen as unfairly restricting them, though there are "magnet" or "charter" (and I'm sure other terms) schools which specialize more. Students can take courses which will better prepare them for different post-high school routes, but they're free to switch, as long as they can handle the coursework changes.
For example, NM graduation requirements include 3 years of science classes. This is for everyone, regardless of whether they're college-bound or not, as high school is seen as primarily providing a broad-based education, not career prep. Since everyone can't handle the same depth of material, a science class has 2 forms, analytical for the college prep kids, and conceptual. A student who's taken his first year of science at the conceptual level is free to switch to analytical the next (or vice-versa), though moving up can take significant motivation.
This is different from European education systems (according to my understanding, please correct me if I'm wrong) where once you're on a track, switching is quite hard.
I can see merits and problems with both systems, though I'm relieved I wasn't forced to pick a major when I went through high school.
Thats all I remember from High School.
Learning how to communicate and think critically by being told what to do? Yes! makes perfect sense!
Few people seem to recognize that spending on k-12 education is comparable to the defense budget. $500 billion dollars in 2005 nationwide and mostly funded through property taxes (http://sourcebook.governing.com/topicresults.jsp? ind=631) versus 532 billion for the defense budget in 2007(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countrie s_by_military_expenditures)
Granted Iraq is accounted for elsewhere,but it is important to note that we spend more than any other nation per pupil for k-12 education, yet we aren't anywhere near number 1 in results.
Perhaps many Americans don't truly value education, parent's aren't involved enough in their kids education, and the majority kids don't feel the social pressures to excel like the do in other countries.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
Remember those tests you would fill out with a bunch of random questions and then you would end up with a bunch of potential "best fit" jobs? If I remember right, my two top jobs were something like rocket scientist and garbage man. I'm glad I wasn't made to decide that day what my future was... I managed to take the middle road and become a EE.
However ... what people *can* do is look into themselves and see how much aptitude and interest they have in a career that involves higher learning. Of course the opinions of their parents and their teachers will have some weight, but it won't *determine* their choice generally speaking.
Now ... people who expect to go into retail, management, business, or choose a vocational career can simply choose subjects that won't unduly tire them during school hours and might even come in handy ... like car mechanics or cooking or embroidery.
On the other hand, pupils who like learning ... and who are reasonably good at it (so they don't have to bust their backside to complete the course) ... may e.g. take a combined major in Maths, Physics, Chemistry, English, and Spanish or French if they are thinking of going into science or engineering, and perhaps Economics, English, History, Geography, and Spanish or French if they are thinking of a going further in humanities.
It's quite doable and it won't close any avenues for them. It may stretch and/or challenge them a bit, but how bad is that? School (not to mention "High" school) is a place for learning, not a day-care centre.
The "careers" that most of my high school buddies would have chosen at that age were things like "partying," "football," "rap stardom," and "hemp studies." Seriously, I was barely mature enough to choose a major in COLLEGE, much less high school. Don't these poor kids have enough shit to deal with already without throwing this on them too?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
In Sweden you're forced to choose a technical or a social high school. This gives the kids who really don't like math and science a chance to focus on other subjects and vice versa. They all still get some of both, but by dividing them out at this level it makes it easier and faster to obtain a higher-level of proficiency. Germany has a similar system.
The only real problem is that people see that the students in the technical schools earn more money (more demanding jobs) and want to do it for the money, not because they're interested in the subject.
Don't rate this insightful. It's a logical fallacy.
"Some schools with lots of resources are badly managed. Therefore, spending money to create better schools a bad idea."
The truth is that most schools with lots of funding produce students with higher GPA's. In general, more funding is a good thing.
I live in NYS where there are two tracks one for math and science and one for everything else many of the core classes are the same all that changes are the electives when you get to be a junior and senior. I was on the science track until my junior year when I decided to go into Graphic design wich meant I changed tracks. Although there are two tracks both of them can lead to college if the student wants to go.
Definitely, we should all look very carefully as to what *Florida* and *Mississippi* are doing in their state school systems.
And then we should all run in the opposite direction as fast as possible.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Um, where's the hard sciences? Where's the math-heavy subjects (including CS)? What is something as narrow as sports management doing in that list? WTF is "international studies" anyway?
When I was in school I took shop one year (it was actually required for all students) What I learned was that I could solder OK with a torch (I already could solder with an iron), could do a halfway-decent welding job with acetylene, but don't let me near an arc welder unless you want metal with ragged holes in it. Certainly it was more relevant to my future than Freshman English (a class taught by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing -- and I did not learn that line in that class), and more interesting as well. If these majors are so all-inclusive as to lock students into a single track with no opportunity to try other things, it'll make high school an even worse grind than it already is.
Anyway, I know people about my own age (mid-thirties) who had a major in high school. It seems to be a fad some schools go through from time to time. Actual practical effect is likely negligible, at least for college-bound students.
I haven't read the rest of the comments yet and I'm sure something to this effect has already been said, but I recall pretty vividly being frustrated and bored by how aimless my education had gotten by the end of high school. My senior year, I suddenly found myself in an AP Calculus class which I had positively no interest in but had somehow ascended to by way of being pretty good at Algebra four years ago. I resolved to not learn Calculus under any circumstances, and eventually my guidance counselor called me into her office in mid-semester to inform me that they were just going to drop the class for me (long past the official course drop deadline) and I, cheerfully taking the whole thing to be a joke I'd gotten the better of at this point, agreed. A year later, I was roughly as frustrated with these "gen eds" I found myself stuck with, even as I naturally had no idea what I felt like studying. I'd just as soon call myself a pretty extreme example - and god knows the schools are trying hard enough to push college acceptance as the most important thing in the history of mankind for your average seventeen-year-old student (which I can reasonably say might as well be now that I'm no longer actively having to call the whole thing a crock on a day-to-day basis to maintain my high-school-dignity) - but this is a decent enough sign that things need to change. Problem is, of course, that I would never in a million years think a ninth-grader capable of making that kind of decision. (I ended up doubling in Cognitive Science and Film as an undergrad, at a university that had neither department. The degree is, quite fittingly, useless.)
This is probably related to all this talk about bringing back the military draft. I'll bet the career paths are fighter pilot, infantry personnel, marine, navy seal, field medic...
I teach math at a Pinellas County HS. The level of student competence in ANY of the basic subjects is abysmal. BTW, it is intentional, the system has been designed that way and the Suits got exactly what they want: "What's your major? What do you want to be?" "I wan' be a Constipedic Surgeon on a NUK'lar submarine!!!" "Yeah, just great...'N what IS 8 * 7 anyway?" Note to Debra: Shut up. The other half of this tale is found in the comment by Debra as to what we should be teaching. I am reminded of the ads for "Dream Away" a few years back. "Take a Dream-Away tablet before bedtime and you will lose weight - Guaranteed!!! No more...Tiresome Exercises..." "If we all just think of these High Level Solutions to High Level Problems, the world will be a better place." No more drudgery of math facts and sentence formation. As I stated, the system was set up just this way. Hey, Debra! SHUT UP!!! CW
The earlier students choose a major the better. Get them used to the whole cycle of repeatedly switching majors like proper college students.
I majored in liberal arts in college because I didn't know what I wanted to do. But I became interested in science, so I overcame a lot of prejudice to get into a statistics graduate program. I had many professors tell me outright that I don't have a science background, therefore I'm incapable of getting into statistics. I've completed my M.S. at a major university and I'm working on my PhD now while working full time.
Well, I do believe basic economics are required learning. The fact that I didn't mention it is merely becuase I forgot to mention it specifically (the list was not meant to be exhaustive, merely a short list of examples).
Don't be so quick to judge. Basic psychology should have taught you that what you might perceive as a willful exclusion might be a mistake.
Badgers, we don't need no stinking badgers! - UHF
The rest is pretty much the same.
The only question is who directly controls the armies. Aside from that, yes, soviet-style communism resembles nothing more than a nation-state that is also a single corporation with a nation-wide monopoly on everything.
As the peon, the working grunt, you're fucked in either system.
Well, it's one bright side to being "terminated" by your employer over here: you at least have the slim chance to try and start a competing company. Soviet "termination" tended to insure non-competes in a manner that the Final Court hasn't overturned in at least the last two thousand years or so....
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
...and not narrowing them!
I certainly didn't think I'd be an IT project manager, product strategist or consultant (to name just a few of my current hats at the SW firm I work for). I didn't even think about things like that in college 25 years ago, when I added computer science to my pre-med curriculum, or 20 years ago, as an analyst for a pharmaceutical company (where the education at least paid off well).
When I was in high school, there were 9 school periods per day... my son has eight! He wants to take some 'interesting' classes, but the mere college track classes of English, Math, Science, Foreign Language and History, plus Gym (required in this state for all 4 years), add lunch and you've got one 'elective' -- which happens to be Orchestra, leaving no opportunity to find out if art, computers, psychology, or any of the other courses they offer might be interesting enough to try in college.
Yes, there's a little more slack in the schedule than I said: History and Foreign Language aren't all four years, and my son has skipped a lunch period to take a web design class (which for him proved to be about as challenging as lunch).
But between no-child-left-behind testing prep, state requirements, higher college entrance requirements, it gets harder and harder to be well-rounded and special enough for the colleges to notice. It then falls to extra-curricular activities (orchestra, football, Boy Scouts, etc.) which then fill even more of the day.
Design for Use, not Construction!
On asking a friend of my daughter some years ago, what he wanted to be when he grew up, he semi-jokingly said "Street pharmacist".
He gets out next year.
This can be great for some students. If they're like myself and found the general material offered in high school so incredibly boring that they couldn't be bothered to put forth any effort. I know if there had been some sort of program gearing me towards something I was interested in, say Electrical Engineering, I would have actually put some effort into high school.
That being said as people have pointed out this can be a burden on kids who just don't know or don't have any interests compelling enough to work towards.
I know right after I finished school, New York State started offering a program where you chose a field you were interested in and the program would prepare you better for majoring in that subject when you went to university.
It's definitely a double edged sword. It can be great for kids who are bored and would like something interesting to work on, but terrible for those who are already struggling just to pass the general courses.
Once again, we have the people at colleges and universities that know what they're doing, and the people at K-12 schools that are completely and blissfully ignorant of reality and how behaviors work, completely at odds with eachother.
It's amazing how stupid so many of the people who go into K-12 education are, considering they should have learnt the same behavioral science that anyone else learns in that field of study in college.
This is ridiculous; almost to the point of being criminally negligent.
I agree and am always saying that one of the many, many major problems with education in America is that kids are not taught to think critically, to think for themselves.
They are taught to learn by rote and not to question authority.
With how the publication of science and textbooks has been politicized and corrupted; and then this crap and everything else that is going on with education here, it is clear that the goal is to create more cogs.
More cogs for the the machine that will be good little citizens. More bricks in the wall; like the Pink Floyd song "Another Brick in the Wall, pt.2"
More and more I am so sad for this country because I just don't see a way for America to survive as a free, progressive society. We were once the light of democracy for the world supposedly - and now , if we can avoid becoming a complete fascist dictatorship - we'll still have to deal with a country full of mindless cogs.
Today's kids are not being properly prepared for the work environment.
While this is a legitimate criticism of schools, there are two things you appear to have underconsidered.
First, this is only one of the intended functions of schools.
Second, this "declaring a major" nonsense may not solve the stated problem.
As the causes of the underlying ineffectiveness in education are with both the system AND the students, the mandatory "major" idea may even make the problem worse. Furthermore, it may impede some of the other useful functions, such as instilling some ability to understand how to come up with solutions to problems, not merely re-apply previous solutions. I want American schools to turn out students as Citizens whose reflex is to question, not Subjects whose reflex to obey.
I'd certainly support having such "majors" as an option... but making them mandatory is arsinine.
As for your comparison to Asia, I hear about their "best and brightest" students routinely at the university where I work. Their failure to grasp the idea of "individual original work", and the frequency (NB: not universality) of plagiarism and cheating due to the instilled "success by any means" morality rapidly turns new faculty deeply cynical. What it does to the old cynics is downright frightening.
(Yes, the American-born cheat too; however, the fraction is lower in that sub-population.)
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Every day, students come in and simply wander to whatever area they want.
Sorry, no. There are a certain number of things you need to learn, whether you are inclined to or not, and very few high school aged kids are mature enough to fully prosper in that kind of environment.
Mind you, it's a great format for a elementary/middle school age summer day camp; I attended one like that for a few years. It helped that the guy for chemistry was a local science teacher who had state and federal licenses for manufacture, transport, and use of explosives.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Plastics!
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
I remember reading an Imprimis article back in the 80's(?) that discussed public education and made the point that states in which the education tax money was spent locally did much better than those in which the money was poured into a general fund an redistributed to the school districts from a central authority. I don't have the citation, but in Texas we have passed a Robin-hood law that is very similar to those that exist in other states and the funds are shifting away from the local (and unequal) distribution to the centrally-controlled (and more equal) distribution method.
The idea being that funding from local sources encouraged better oversight from the taxpayers and led to more efficient usage.
I wonder how many, if any, states still distribute funds using the local method and if those states are at the top of the list in terms of education quality.
I do hope you realize that, historically, teaching is not a valued profession. Women became teachers first because it was considered something 'they could handle'. Little emphasis is placed on making the craft of teaching a challenging one, and our culture suffers for it at every level; at the lower levels we find we're failing to teach students anything because the teachers simply aren't expected to be good at anything, even teaching. At the higher levels we expect the 'teachers' (professors) to know their stuff, but have no expectation that they'll be good at teaching it to other people.
Somewhat off-topic, but my sixth grade teacher returned an essay to me once, circling the word 'minute' and marking me down a grade because that word is a unit of time, whereas I had tried to use it to describe something small. Small like his teaching ability.
[Ego]out
I've seen this before. It's also called streaming in some places. The major reason for it is to make timetabling easier. Think optimization problems with a much smaller set of choices.
I'm not saying that's the reason in this case, but any time a bureaucracy makes changes, look for the people whose jobs just got easier.
Here's the thing... kids that age can't possibly know what they want out of life, and yes, a broad range of fields is best for a good foundation for future specialization, but at the same time, having FOCUS is important. Both ideas here have their pros and cons. The current system is flawed in that while my adult opinion is that its good to have a broad range of skills, I can still remember that at that age I never understood HOW those various classes would have ANY importance in my life, regardless of the career I thought I'd end up in.
:-D
The challenge here is to FOCUS kids and also somehow make them CARE about having a good broad foundation. But how do you do that? I don't know. In my last year of HS I stopped caring about math, because I had applied to go into a Graphic Design college. Well, I'm a computer programmer now! Math matters!
I read slashdot and like reading about science news, etc. Yet I never took biology, chemistry or physics in HS. You really CAN'T know at grade 9 what a person could really be interested in and capable of by the time they hit their 30's......
milfie bewbz!
If X is the new Y, and Y is "X is the new Y", solve for X.
They are trying to do this here as well.
But I have no idea what I'm doing with my kids in a few years when they enter school...
Two words: Home School.
'Nuff said.
Part of the problem with teaching you how to run wiring and such is that electrical code changes periodically, so unless you are working on the field, you wouldn't be up to date on the most recent code. Also, for plumbing and electrical work, I believe you would still have to work under a Master for several years before you could do unsupervised work. If you want introductory knowledge, maybe you should look at the local community college for classes in these subjects.
I think the problem is that there's a certain amount of disconnect in most fields between what class is like and what a job in the real world is like. I thought I wanted to be a biologist of some sort when I was in High School, and worked at a local zoo to get a feel for what that was like. I found out it's not something I actually wanted to do. I loved reading about animals, teaching about them, and playing with them, but I didn't like dissecting them, experimenting on them, or spending time in the jungle collecting them. Even the teaching about animals and playing with them wasn't something I wanted to do every work day for the rest of my life- it was a fun way to spend weekends, but that's about it. So I spent most of High School figuring what I didn't want to do. I had take some CompSci courses in High school that I enjoyed- but I also enjoyed my Math, Physics, and Chemistry classes, so that didn't give me much in the way of direction. I decided to dual-major in Math/CompSci, but kept my options open in case those didn't work out for me. (As it turns out, they did.)
So, basically, I think you had it easy. You found something that you thought was cool, and you kept enjoying it the more you got into it. Most people aren't as lucky- they find they aren't really all that interested in the first thing they try. Even those that are often find something else they like better later on. I'm very glad that I kept my options open in High School instead of taking all Biology courses, (and even gladder I got some experience) otherwise I could have been a mediocre Biologist bored with his job.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
High school students declare a major? Why, here's some more realistic majors:
Multiple Baby Daddy (men) and Welfare Enthusiast (women)
with courses in filling out government forms, skipping out, whining, passing the time waiting for Congress to give you a raise, and how to quick-prep yourself when an episode of Cops stops by.
These, of course, have both a 4-year program and a new, 2-year "associates degree" version for those dropping out.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Politically he'd never get anywhere and be corned off by the fat cat's, I have several family members who teach and it's all the about time served and who you know. We're talking about a system where gym teachers who do almost nothing make the same as the AP Physics/Chem/Math teachers make, sometime more, bc with all their free time not grading anything tangible they can coach multiple sports... it's very unfortunate our system. First thing that needs to happen is to break the teachers union...
My children will be going to the best private school my wife and I can finance for this very reason... F no child left behind too.
I may be the only one who at 10 knew he wanted to be an electrical engineer of some kind. However the idea that all kids know what they want to do is absurd. How about an option? Either continue with your general education or choose to specialize in one area. This seems to be the case in most schools though if a previous post WAY up there is correct (I don't know, I went to private school, so I'm not much up-to-date on public school curriculum. Should I even be commenting on this?). In conclusion, no matter where you go to school, it blows, get over it.
Jesus, 8th grade? I guess in a few years we should be expecting a glut of astronauts, firemen, and ballerinas.
Wow, with the current crop of youngin's already demanding VIP treatment and feel-good's when they suck ass, way to really fuck over their future!
They need to learn things in a broad sense. Super specialization will not get you noticed until your at the phd level.
As a current double Mech E and Physics major, it really shocks me when I head into advisor meetings and inquire about business and life classes that a I get a somewhat puzzled look. If your set with rat racing and cube farming, then fine stay with pure engineering, but I'm not. And it's precisely why I have 0 intention of actually practicing either of them.
I remember having high schools in Romania which had career paths in mind. They were preparing people for mostly outdated professions, and were the worst schools around. They were all communist fallout, and due to low flexibility in the workforce, a major reason for post-communism unemployment.
What we need is schools with different mother languages so that people can expand their mind through thinking in more than one language and fit better in the global economy.
I'm a college freshmen in louisiana and we had to do this all through highschool. But it was more of a "okay class, the state says you have to fill out these forms, otherwise you won't be able to completely ignore them properly." We had to choose a track, but nobody took them seriously, I don't think the guidance counselors even looked at them when they were scheduling classes. Rufus
In the begining there was nothing. And then God said, "Let there be light!" And there was still nothing, but at least yo
Two 'Science' isn't opinion. Its like a big jigsaw puzzle, we try out pieces (hypotheses) and if enough connections are made that aren't screwing up something else we call it a theory and leave it be, until someone finds a reason that the theory isn't a valid piece of the puzzle.. Once a theorem is pretty well connected in the puzzle we treat it as fact. ATP as a energy currency in the cell isn't an opinion. Glycolysis isn't an opinion. It is a theory, an obscenely well tested theory that any reasonable scientist treats as an undeniable fact.
I am sure glad that your grammar and spelling have improved, because I would have a tough time understanding anything less coherent.
Storm
Well, I suppose it is somewhat presumptuous of me to assume this is satire, it could be a massively over-the-top trolling attempt. But the only difference is your motivation, and that I can't determine from any one post, regardless of how well it is done.
Still, bravo, my good man. (Or woman, although I consider that rather less likely.)
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
I have my Masters in Computer Science and I am still not sure I chose the right major.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
If the title of the /. article had read: "HS Students Allowed to Specialize", would there have been this uproar?
Um... no I suppose if the title was wrong there wouldn't be an uproar. Allowed != Forced It's pretty basic. The rest of your comments are equally wrong.
* There are four main ways to improve an economy; specialization is one of them. That's what we're discussing here. Have you noticed that we haven't seen any Mozart's or Chaplin's lately? Given any thought as to why? They essentially _majored_ in their field at an early age and stayed with it! Where in the US will you find an educational system that will allow specialization at an early age? Home school. That's it. Until this plan came along. I'm not claiming it's perfect, but specialization isn't the Big Bad Wolf.
There are lots of ways of improving an economy, many of which are socially damaging or outright immoral. If they work (and I still question this way would) it doesn't change the fact that they're wrong. As for Mozart, etc. your argument is speculative at best, seeing as Mozart was composing by age 5, which is BEFORE we put children in kindergarten. Mozart was special beyond his education, he was a savant.
*I suspect that most of you how have responded negatively haven't taught high school or college, ever. We have high schools that turn out students who need Basic and Intermediate Algebra and sometimes Remedial Composition I _and_ II in college. Something must change in public school systems. At least if an older student can pursue something s/he finds relevant, there would be initiative to pursue quality work. That might help a the students who recognize that public school is a jail from which they can't escape until they turn 18.
I had a hard time with this "point" because it talks about a lot of fairly different things, yet draws no conclusion. Needless to say I think it's not important for people to have taught high school in order to have an opinion about high school, seeing as most of us have been through it, and remember it. The rest doesn't actually seem to say anything about specialization at all.
*As for the 'let the kids be kids!' argument: crap. They demand to be treated like adults when it comes to sex, alcohol, drugs, and the use of a parent's car. But when they enter the school, they want Mommy and Daddy to threaten a lawsuit if their homework becomes "too hard". As others have posted, we're facing fierce competition in India and Asia from hyper-educated grads who are willing to work for $1/hour. It's time to throw out the idea of a leisurely stroll through K-12 or K-BS.
This is a straw man argument. We can let kids be kids, or not, and specialize, or not. The 2 don't necessarily affect each other. And if I had a 13 year old (the age we're talking about starting specializing at) having sex, drinking, doing drugs, and using my car, I think there would be bigger problems than what they took in school. And the "hyper-educated" foreign workforce doesn't have anything to do with specialization either.
*Re: 'They don't know what they want to do yet!' Do they want to eat? Do they want to be able to move out of Mommy and Daddy's house and live on their own? If so, they need money. If they can't inherit it, they'll have to work for it. That requires a job. A job requires training. They may not like it, but I won't pay for their Welfare checks just because they couldn't find the inspiration to be a fill-in-the-blank.
Fact: people need to work for money(Unless they inherit it/whatever). Fact: you need to be trained for any job, no matter how simple. How does this mean someone in grade 9 needs to know what they want to be when they grow up?
*And if they don't know what they want to do yet, then we, the adults, with scars on our bodies from what Life was done to us, have the right to choose for them. They're not adults yet. If they were, they'd pay taxes and have
--Not to be worried, Pitr fix.
I would not expect someone only 14 to know what they want to do with the rest of their lives. Heck, even when you graduate from high school, most people don't know what they want to do with the rest of their lives.
How about offering electives in HS that allow students to try more things out instead of closing them in at such an early age.
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
Career Chip
r eer_Chip/
A small electronic implant used by the government of Earth to identify and regulate the employment assignments of its citizens. Testing and implanting is done at the age of 3. In 2999, Fry initially receives a career chip with the designation of delivery boy, but it is later replaced with a career chip of the designation of delivery boy.
http://www.gotfuturama.com/Information/Encyc-2-Ca
Chicken fried butter sticks? Do
Ok, I live in the USA and discuss the relative merits of the UK vs. USA education system quite often with my firends and colleges.
Using myself as an example here is how it works (in the UK)....
oh wait... I have to go in reverse chronological order for it to make sense.....
I work in a (USA) Laser Company as a Scientist. To get this job I needed a PhD in Laser Physics so I made sure I had one.
I did a PhD in Laser Physics (which was about 20 hours of courses at the start (in laser physics) and then 3 years it the lab doing novel research work for publications and my Thesis. I did NO other subjects but the field of my PhD in that time.
To get on the Laser Physics PhD course I needed a Degree in Physics so I took one of them (a 4 year Masters Degree) - by the way there is not really a concept of major and minor studies in the UK, when you do a university degree in physics you do 40 hours of week of Physics lessons for 3-4 years and nothing else.
To get on the University Physics Degree Program I needed high school "A levels" qualifications in Physics, Maths and another science subject - so I chose those courses when I was 16 (and for 2 years of hte A-level studies, I only did those 3 subjects.
To get on the physics and maths A level courses at high school I needed to take Maths, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, (and a few other subjects) at GCSE level so I choose those high school courses when I was 14 (and stopped learning History and other areas of study as I had no specifically chosen as GCSE's).
I didn't know how to take this route so I had my first career and university counseling aged 12 and I decided then I wanted to be a Scientist.
Telling most people in the USA this usually results in horror upon their faces.
You know how many of my friends from 1st year of Univ stayed with the program they applied to / got accepted for? - One, and they regret it. EVERYONE I know from my 1st year of School has changed majors at least once. Others, including myself have changed schools / programs entirely.
Do expect someone in Grade 9 to know what they want to "major" in is silly.
I am eighteen. I knew _years_ ago that I will be a programmer. Half of my class is highly skilled, we won physic, math and programming Polish Olympiads, some of us even Baltic and International Olympiad. We are *ill* when we have to learn history or polish grammar. Don't you think it is a huge waste of time and potential?
This was basically the sentiment when I started grade 9. Of course, it wasn't required to know what "we wanted to be when we grew up", but it was advised. For the most part, it made sense. Have a basic idea of what interests I had, and take courses related to them. In my case, by grade nine, out of all of my interests, cooking was the one that stood out. So I selected courses that my school required me to take before I could select a course at the local Vo-Tech school. (Simple minded courses like "Introduction to Occupations", that focused on crap like Unions, OSHA guidlines, writing resumes and brainless crap like how to fill out applications...) In grade eleven, my mind hadn't changed on my choosen vocation (and even if it had, I was still able to attend the Vo-Tech with another course, since I had the prerequisites fulfilled), so I selected the Food Services class. It ended up being a fun and useful class. It wasn't so much about "how to cook such&such", but how to cook such&such in a work environment. (Our class functioned as the Vo-Tech's cafeteria...)
Yes, I've had the typical "burger flipping" jobs in the past, but I've since moved on to decent and otherwise "respectable" establishments. I'm not a Mario Batali, Julia Child, or Graham Kerr, but I've done well in my chosen field to continue pursuing it.
In other words, I think it's a good idea for students to have a basic idea of what interests them by the time they enter the ninth grade so they can at least begin to make plans of what courses they need to take to begin on that path. I'm not so sure if it should be required, but there should be some stressed importance of knowing early so one can plan better.
I'm Chinese, and the pitiful state of public education in US really made me think. When my child is older, I will take him to China for education. Why? Because most Asians have Calculus on college entrance exams. Because a high school education is not for everyone. Because Mandarin is a lucrative skill to have. Because the huge population forces kids to know that they're not entitled to anything - ever! Because the disproportional interest in US schools about feel-good subjects is a sap on the mind. Because most Chinese kids don't grow up dreaming of becoming rap stars or Hollywood sweethearts. Because their little friends are relatively poor too. Because boys are expected to be sole bread winners, and need to understand bank accounts at an early age. Because girls don't worship high school jocks who brag about sex and treat women like dirt. Because failure is a stigma that tags you for life. Because stupidity is not funny, just annoying. Because if you can't cut it, the government is not there to help you. Because teachers want to help the most brilliant student, not the most thick-skulled ones. Because the world is a dangerous place, and trust is often misplaced. Because nobody ever gets anywhere without a plan. Because innocence is a liability after age 13. Because everybody dies, even closest family members. Because you're only tabula rasa once. Because time waits for no one.
It is good that a child bear the yoke. Some environments teach the lessons of life better.
I completely fucked off during high school because it felt like a total waste of my time. I dropped out as soon as I could and got a GED. There was a lot of pressure to start school straight away from a lot of people in my life. It had a negative impact. I've spent the last few years wandering the country and finding myself, and building a career in computers without the benefit of college education. Mostly on account of the fact that I hated high school so much that I couldn't bear the thought of doing more busy work in college. Schools are designed to make cogs in this country, and that's what I wanted to avoid.
Ironically enough I feel like a cog in the job I have now, and I've decided that computers aren't really what I want to do with my life. But how could I have known that 6 years ago when I was just starting out? I want to go to med school now, and I feel like having had another career beforehand is going to be a huge advantage. I think putting kids into college straight out of high school is a bad idea. I also think that the design of schools to create sheep instead of independent thinkers is absolutely abysmal. Making someone choose a 'career path' when they're 14 (FUCKING 14!?!?!?! What the *fuck* did you know about life when you were 14?) is about one of the worse things you could do to a young impressionable mind. They have enough pressure on them without adding this bullshit on top.
"Dude, pounds are so metric, fuck that." - Noah
"This is stupid" is a massive understatement.
This is extreme bulls--t.
Choosing a major at age 14? Extreme bullsh--. I am now a freshman, and I don't have to choose a major for like another year and a half. Jeez, they're started the college applications machine earlier and earlier - it's so unnessecarily stressful.
To seriously consider forcing high school freshmen to select a career path, junior high would have to be filled with one hour sessions of different career areas and opportunities to job shadow for a week at one or more places. Still, having core focus areas is probably better: college-prep, trade-prep, basic citizenship and life skills. However, electives should be built in such that any student with the pre-requisites for a course can take the course out of interest. Naturally, there are some very basic math, English, history, and such that are expected of everyone.
A Major, like in A + C# + E?
redesigning education for the 21st century
... I think it will motivate them [and] make them want to stay instead of want to leave."
[Mississippi Superintendent of Education Hank] Bounds said he will ask the state Legislature in January to fund the program. By fall 2008, if the program proceeds as planned, students could select from one of seven career paths: health care; agriculture and natural resources; construction and manufacturing; transportation; business management and marketing; science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM); and human services.
Bounds' plan also would redesign computer courses for students in grades 7-9. These courses now include a discovery program for careers (grade seven), computers (grade eight), and technology (grade nine). These would change to Information and Communications Technology I and II, then a STEM course in ninth grade, which Bounds said was "in line" with the president's initiative to boost math and science instruction in schools.
All of these courses would include components that help students meet the math and science requirements for their grade level and career-level applications of these skills. In the 10th grade, students would begin the career path training in their chosen subject area. Finally, Bounds said, a strong, ongoing professional development element would be incorporated into the plan as well.
Students speaking to local news organization The Clarion-Ledger were mixed in their reaction to the program.
Donovan Burse, a seventh-grader at Northwest Jackson Middle School, said he doesn't believe most students are prepared to choose a career path at the life stage targeted by the program.
But Angelyn Irvin, an eighth grader at Northwest Jackson Middle School, said she believes the plan might "actually increase the chances of them staying in school
I went to a technical high school where we had to declare a major and would concentrate our study on that area for our last 3 years. My major was commercial art. When I got to college, I wasn't required to continue in that area, but I did.
So of course now my career is in computer programming.
-- Boycott Shell
I graduated high school in 1985. I remember having to select a path my sophomore year. I chose the "Academic" path which allowed me to take Honors and AP courses. I was no longer eligible to take some other classes like shop. I figured this was the better way to go.
Today, I earn $50K as a developer. I should have gone the "vocational" route and taken shop. I could have become a housing developer and made millions the last decade.
Thanks for guiding me down the right path high school!
Most kids in my school thought of it as a baby sitting service, not a place of education.
Want kids to be interested in school? Give them an actual reason to do well.
Let them leave once they have achieved a minimum level of competence in the core subjects.
My guess is that about half the students (the half that currently do not go on to college) would work pretty hard at learning the subjects if they knew that once they had mastered them, they would no longer be subject to the school system.
Then set up a decent secondary education system, for all those that decide that they need more education, after they've had a taste of the real world.
-- Should you believe authority without question?
The central point of Huxley's "Brave New World" was making human development into an assembly line process. While we're not yet conditioning embryos, I don't think we need to force career paths on 9th graders. As others have mentioned here, this is the method used by China and India to pump out engineers and doctors. The trouble is, passion for the physical sciences can be an important factor of a good engineer, and while India and China certainly have some good engineers, they have to get them by making a lot of them and culling out the bad ones. I don't want to live in a society where 75% of the population is thrown into a career they hate just to put the nation on the fast track to scientific progress with as little educational investment as possible. Instead, why don't we use all of our wonderful science--extended life times and better agricultural processes--on lengthening the possible path of education, so that students have time to get a larger sampling of human knowledge before they are required to move on. I thought it worth mentioning that I currently work in a Physics research lab, and many of the skills I use most often were learned working residential construction and low-level IT jobs in High School. Granted, I'm just an undergraduate so I'm doing more helpful lab work than actual research, but Grad students and even Professors occasionally have to fabricate their own lab equipment, too.
Schools have been going to the career path idea for earlier ages, but it just hasn't been implied.
Case in point: my dad has taught middle school for close to 20 years now. He was always the technology elective. That's fine, but here's the kicker: they've changed the curriculum to pre-engineering. They're trying to make a middle school into a magnet for engineering kids. All this while PE and art go down the drain.
bah.
Will it go on my permanent record? Because I don't want my high school teacher putting the fact that I changed my major on my permanent record.
What if I say I major as a beautician, but really just joined so I can get the girls? Could I sell the movie rights without having to give the state credit for the idea?
I remember those stupid career assessments. Some ignoramus guidance counselor playing a game of 20 questions and at the end telling you what you should be when you grow up.
When I did that, my counselor honestly, with a straight face, told me that the best career for me was to become a circus clown. I can't make this up.
I wish I could find that lady now and let her know how wrong she was. I am not a circus clown at all. I am a consultant!
Hey, wait a minute...
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
I think as long as one of the majors involved was a college preparation path then this isn't such a bad idea. Let the college bound, the ones who care, take the college path.
There are plenty of high school kids that don't want to go to college, why not teach them a vocation or set of skills that will be immediately useful to them out of high school. There are plenty of students just wasting time in college because "c's get degrees" and at the end of their 4 to 6 years they have a college degree thats maybe slightly less worthless that their high school diploma.
At the end of the day the educational system in this country is pretty much a joke...there aren't nearly enough jobs for the number of mediocre college grads we are turning out to keep them out of the service industry, so the only ones this focus on a college education is really benefiting are the educators and administrators.
Maybe if a college degree was a little less common and a little more relevant it might mean something again.
* There are four main ways to improve an economy; specialization is one of them. That's what we're discussing here. Have you noticed that we haven't seen any Mozart's or Chaplin's lately? Given any thought as to why? They essentially _majored_ in their field at an early age and stayed with it! Where in the US will you find an educational system that will allow specialization at an early age? Home school. That's it. Until this plan came along. I'm not claiming it's perfect, but specialization isn't the Big Bad Wolf.
Quite so. I was homeschooled for the last two years of high school, and taught myself computer programming (continually and progressively) since grade 5. Now I have a $10/hr summer job with a local university's EE department moving emails around and getting VPNs working. In fall I'll enter a BSU majoring in Computer Science.
My experience with specialization has brought my nothing but good fortune. However, I will still fight tooth and nail for the right to map my university's General Education requirements (30 credits of them) onto foreign language, music, and business classes. I will need the language I'm taking later on, music classes will help me meet girls, and business classes will give me some minimum preparation for the for-profit world.
But you can't force even a measly 60-credit major of specialization on someone who really has no direction in life. That's a personal problem they have to work out, even if it means that they lose the financial race to the top.
*I suspect that most of you how have responded negatively haven't taught high school or college, ever. We have high schools that turn out students who need Basic and Intermediate Algebra and sometimes Remedial Composition I _and_ II in college. Something must change in public school systems. At least if an older student can pursue something s/he finds relevent, there would be initiative to pursue quality work. That might help a the students who recognize that public school is a jail from which they can't escape until they turn 18.
Very, very true. I was a C-B student until I started homeschooling. Over two years, my averages rose to As. I will enter school this fall a member of the honors college. Sometimes people just need to be allowed to do what they're good at.
*As for the 'let the kids be kids!' argument: crap. They demand to be treated like adults when it comes to sex, alcohol, drugs, and the use of a parent's car. But when they enter the school, they want Mommy and Daddy to threaten a lawsuit if their homework becomes "too hard". As others have posted, we're facing fierce competition in India and Asia from hyper-educated grads who are willing to work for $1/hour. It's time to throw out the idea of a leisurely stroll through K-12 or K-BS.
You didn't get laid in high school, did you? Because this paragraph reads a lot like sour grapes. If some kid lacks direction and wants to laze around, leave their idiocy to them. After all, that leaves more money and more jobs for those of us with drive and talent, and it's not like you can force a talented but spoiled kid to immediately grow up and turn into a good professional.
*Re: 'They don't know what they want to do yet!' Do they want to eat? Do they want to be able to move out of Mommy and Daddy's house and live on their own? If so, they need money. If they can't inherit it, they'll have to work for it. That requires a job. A job requires training. They may not like it, but I won't pay for their Welfare checks just because they couldn't find the inspiration to be a fill-in-the-blank.
You damn well will pay for their welfare checks, minimal as they are. Someone needs to bag groceries, and I for one think it much better to penalize people for their own lack of planning by making them take crap jobs than to force them into lucrative fields they don't want to enter, especially given the investment involved in doi
I think high school murdered my desire to learn enough. Forcing me to choose a major? I think it would have been infinitely more likely for me to drop out and become a ski bum in that sort of enviroment. I'm very indecisive, which isn't helped by the fact that I'm generally capabable acedemically if I put some work in. To prove my point: I go to a very good technical school (RPI, to be exact, one of those "new ivys") and I study Computer Engineering (though I think I'm adding electrical too). If I had gone to a big state university, I doubt I'd still be in Engineering. I'm halfway through and part of me wants to be an English major. Actually, if I wasn't doing computers, I'd be studying english. As it is, I'm trying to add a Literature minor. Basically, I'm the definition of academically indecisive. I feel like all the education system has taught me is that I really like skiing better than any of it, so I'd better work for ten years and save up enough money that I can move to a ski town and be done with it all. Fuck normal life.
There are far more important things to fix like basic literacy (including language, math and science).
This sort of scheme is not uncommon in Europe (exists at least in FR and BE), only you pick in the 6th
grade (they have no concept of junior high). Forcing children to pick a career path, whether it be in
the 5th or 8th seems like a really bad idea. Simply offer as wide of a variety of *well taught and
funded* programs as possible, minimizing some of the arbitrary standardization. (Obviously we need some
standards to ensure that erveyone say, has some basic concept of the Bill of Rights and federal gov't's
struct, but not prescribed in such detail that there is no lattitude for creativity on the part of the
teacher. Teaching to the test is bad, 'm-kay?)
Were that I say, pancakes?
Freshman year: Engineering... Sophomore year: Biz ? Prequel of things to come?
From my experience the bad schools are not public or private, but the PARENTS and community impact on the quality of the school.
I tried different kinds of school: private and public, inner-city and suburbs.
BOTH suburban schools were bad and luckily I transferred to good inner-city public schools which were much higher quality (in Minnesota they were.) Plus the inner city schools didn't have the racism, class issues, and fewer drugs that the suburban schools did (and boy are the suburbanites BLIND to it..)
The quality differences between the suburban public & suburban private schools didn't have to do with public vs private as much as they did with the community's impact on the schools-- BOTH schools were NEXT TO EACH OTHER and BOTH had plenty of crazy suburban parents screwing everything up. The private school was worse for me, since I was big on science and their old hags still thought the earth was flat "just because." BOTH poor quality schools discouraged thought and trained students like dogs while the PTA and fanatic parents tried to force things to be done their way (usually for the benefit of just their child.) The suburban public school came out better on tests AT THAT TIME, largely because they taught to the test, started sooner, and had college educated teachers; which said a lot since they had to accept anybody as a student...(but they both sucked equally in reality.) Elitism and prejudice was/is a serious problem; merely expressing itself differently between the religious and secular frameworks.
My brother is now a suburban public school teacher; and he sees it-- although these days fewer suburban parents have the time and money to mess with him or his superiors, so its just the upper class parents raising hell-- a smaller group so they can be more easily marginalized for the nuts they are.
I know many people in public education. Mostly they are good at what they do and like it; however, the system is getting so political here and degrading to the level of other states that all of them are looking to leave teaching because of all the added BS they have to put up with. The system is being systematically dismantled and the ones who stick around are the drone idiot teachers who don't have any other career options. The people I know are getting out. Don't think private schools will solve all these societal problems; plus any private school that gets government funding is subject to regulations which will open them up to those problems (which can also be benefits sometimes.)
The problem you non-teacher types have is that education is not like other fields, there are no quantitative measures for performance and value. The best teachers are often the ones that did something unmeasurable for us. We are no closer to nailing the problem than we are to figuring out the human brain.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
The problem is that prior to "teaching to the test" they were "teaching to the nothing." It's not like there were schools doing an incredible job educating their charges, turning out well-rounded individuals prepared for the next stage of the adventure of life but unable to pass a multiple-guess test on a subset of that knowledge.
The argument falls flat because the people opposed to the test don't have an alternative method of evaluating the schools' performance. The teachers' unions argued against the need to even bother evaluating the schools' performance. Instead they focused on the "teachers can evaluate their students better than anyone else" aspect. Which is true for good teachers, but you still need an objective way to evaluate who those good teachers are.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Well in India till grade 5 you take English, Hindi, Science ( A mix of biology chemistry and Physics), Social Studies ( a mix of history,civics,economics,geography), General Knowledge (basically the basis of being a good quizzer), Math,Art,Music,Yoga,Moral Studies (this is things like why you should not steal),Computers Physical Ed (Basically go out and play football/basketball/volleyball/tennis/ cricket/TT/Badminton whichever you want in the ground. The school provides some equipment but no formal coaching except for those on the school teams - No wonder India with 1/5th of world population has problems winning even 1 gold medal at the olympics). :) so you go into your Class 10 board exams with English, second language, Social studies which is again tested as 1 subject with History 30% Geography 30% Civics 20% Economics 20%, 1 Subject science again tested as one subject with 33% weightage each for Physics,Chemistry and Biology and computers
At Grade 6-8 you have English, Hindi,Sanskrit/Foreign Language, History, Geography, Civics, Economics, Biology, chemistry, Physics, Math, Yoga,Art, Music now changes to where you get to choose an instrument or dance or vocal,computers and continue with Phys ed.
At Grade 9 you choose which one you want to continue Hindi/sanskrit/foreign language , yoga is dropped,music is dropped, phys ed would have been dropped but the students would revolt
At Grade 11 you get to choose based on your grades in the class 10 exam. If you score high you get to choose the science stream, middle grades get to choose the commerce stream and the lowest scorers get to choose Arts. Of course there are some exceptions where high scoring students choose arts or commerce but in general the peer pressure and family pressure is to go for Science. Even within science people are put on Engineering track (Math Physics Chemistry English) or Medical track (Physics Chemistry Biology English) Students also have to choose a 5th subject. For Engg track your choices are Computer Science/Economics. For the Biology track the choices are Economics/Math. The electives vary a bit from school to school these were the ones offered at my school and I chose Computer Science.
BTW till yoga , art, music , phys ed are not tested on a marks basis so noone takes them seriously.
After you take your Grade 12 you get to choose your college based on your score - Highest scores science major, middle scores commerce majors, low scores art majors.
The twist is that the Engineering and medical colleges dont use the Grade 12 national exam scores and have their own separate exams for entrance which are competitive so if 1 million people write the exam and their are only 2000 seats only the top 2000 get in irrespective of how well the rest scored.
So through high school grades 9-12 not only are people attending school they are also attending separate after school classes aimed at cracking these entrance exams.
Now the other thing which happens is that many of the students who were not able to score well in the Science stream end up going for commerce courses at college level.
And then of course a large number of people who go and start working after high school go to evening classes and get their AMIE qualifications which lets them take evening engineering classes and become equivalently qualified to 4 year Bachelor of Engineering students.
So yeah we may have a tracked hi school education system but its not as if we dont get enough breadth of education.
**Life is too short to be serious**
My Dad told me if I wanted to be a scientist, I should take metal shop in high school, along with physics, etc. I didn't. He was right. Now I'm an evolutionary biologist (blog: This Week in Evolution) and I'm always building something for an experiment, but not as competently as if I'd taken metal shop, I'm sure.
I'd like to double major in getting high and getting laid. I also have decided to minor in video games.
What I recall from when I was younger that others had said:
"Army commando!"
"Secret agent/spy"
"Flouriest"
"Princess/supermodel"
"Computer hacker"
"Mechanic"
"Policeman"
I have high doubts the majority of them would of picked the 'right' path.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
I hate engineering.
Its not the work, the calculations and design stuff, it was the arrogance and corruption I ran into with the people I worked with.
Now I am my own boss, thanks to Invent-Tech http://www.invent-tech.tv/inventionsnew/index.lass o?sc=Google&key=inventors&ad=inventors&disp=test&g clid=CJud2fus-40CFRUHWAodJXL5Kg!
sig sig sig siggy sig
I'm from India and our educational system is similar to that in U.K. We have general courses till class 10 - English, a second language (it was Hindi for me), Maths, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, History, Geography and another subject - we had to choose between Computer Science, Accounting and Economics (I chose CS). For class 11-12 (we call it higher secondary or plus two), we had to choose between Science (English, Physics, Chemistry, Maths, Biology optional and another subject - Computer Science or a second language), Arts and Commerce. When I moved to class 11, I was happy that I didn't have to study Arts and Commerce courses because I loved Science and Maths, but in hindsight I wish I had a broader exposure to other subjects. It's a separate issue that it's difficult to study a lot of courses during classes 11-12 and also prepare for the I.I.T. entrance exam that tests you on Maths, Physics and Chemistry only.
You pretty much hit the nail on the head with the BS, MS, and PhD system. That's how it used to work, back in medieval times (before and alongside actual Universities) with guilds. You became an apprentice to learn the craft, a journeyman to do work others have done, and a master to teach others and to invent new ways of doing things, and to have your own guild to manage. There's no reason to change that system. It works to open minds, which fosters creativity, and from that invention and progress. It's what humanity revels in.
I'd like to see people get off their fucking high horses for once.
Almost everybody has an opinion on this subject, it's almost always never right, and it never will be.
I don't know your circumstances, you don't know mine. Maybe my kids need to be "coddled", maybe they don't.
The problem is, everyone believes you can pigeon hole education such that, we can force the public education system to meet all of our needs.
The only way anybody's needs are going to be met, is if we deregulate and privatise the industry. Because I guarantee that, if government isn't standing in my way, I will choose the best education for my child, and then I will get what I pay for!
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Typically:
High school is 4 years.
One enters high school at age 13 to 15, and leaves high school at age 16 to 18.
One is required to attend school until age 16. That means 1 to 3 years of high school are required.
At about age 21, one is forced to leave high school. It is very rare for this to happen.
1. sports management -- oh please, spare us!
2. fine and performing arts -- because every kid can be a pop star
3. health sciences -- OK, caring for old people will be a decent career
4. international studies and global commerce -- WTF?
5. communications and new media and liberal arts -- WTF?
That's 5, not 7, so one or two of those need to be split. In any case...
No math? No science? No engineering? No computer programming? Not even accounting?
There is no way to make decent money unless that pop star thing works out.
I went to university in Aberdeen, Scotland, and I found that the curriculum for an engineering degree was pretty well-rounded.
The first two years of the 4-year Honours degree were general to ALL engineers, so you didn't have to lock in to a path until you'd tried a bit of everything- from Fluid Mechanics to Microprocessors to Statics/Dynamics....
As well as this, we had exposure to the 'practical' or 'dirty' ends of the discipline. We used to get sent to the local college to learn how to make concrete beams, solder, weld (Arc and Oxy-Acetelene), use theodolites, metalwork... This was in addition to doing technical drawing (by hand and using AUTOCAD), and the regular labs for fluids, materials, etc..., plus fun things like making trebouchets from balsa wood and having competitions to see who could fire their missiles the furthest..
I think that this approach certainly helped me in the workplace as I've been able to work comfortably on multi-disciplined projects and have a much better understanding of how the theoretical standards/tolerances translate into the real world.
I don't know what the degree is like now, but having compared educations with my counterparts across the globe (and reading the comments here), I think it would be a real shame if they changed the format.
Locking children in to making career choices when they've still so much to experience seems pretty crazy to me. I may have been taken down a much less satisfying path if I'd made my decisions based on the few careers I knew about at a young age.
Grammar matters. For spelling, you only need to know about things the spell checker won't catch.
One should go beyond "basic math". One should know enough geometry to to be able to calculate the volume or a pool or the area of a wall. One should know a bit about probability and statistics, to avoid being ripped off (gambling), terrified, or otherwise misled. One should understand compound interest.
Geography isn't critical.
Legal stuff is important. One should be able to understand all common consumer contracts: employment, car lease, home lease, home owner's association or condo association agreement, credit card agreement, rental car agreement, internet service contract, insurance policy, evil hospital admission waivers and shit, etc.
And I'm not even perfectly sure what I want to do for career, those kids will change their minds more times than one can imagine in those 4 years.
Did someone say cake?
I am an American currently living in Norway and the system here is as the article describes. For the remainer of this post which I expect to be quite long, I will use my Norwegian nephew as an example of how this system is a total failure.
:)
In New York, where I was raised, we have some schools of exceptional quality that focus on groups of students that are often referred to as gifted. For science and technical studies, schools like Stuyvesant High School (the school used in the movie Hackers), Bronx High School of Science, Brooklyn Tech, and to a lesser extent W.T. Clarke in Westbury, Long Island have long histories of producing students that have performed remarkably in the Westinghouse (now Intel) competitions, VICA (now SkillsUSA), and other competitions of their type. The students from these schools earn University credits at NYIT and other academies above the normal advanced placement programs that are focuseed towards their careers and are regularly welcomes with openned arms and scholorships into "The Ivy League of Tech" Universities such as MIT, CIT at Berkley and Stevens. These schools as I've said earlier are exceptional for exceptional students. All the students entering programs at these high schools have already chosen their futures while they are young, often at the age of 12 years old when they're first considering applying to these "Academies".
What is important to understand about programs like this in those schools is that although they teach more advanced sciences and technologies at an extremely excellerated rate in comparison to mainstream schools, they DO NOT under any circumstance sacrifice the quality of general education curriculum. In fact, in the programs I attended at Clarke, more than half the students in my electro-mechanical engineering track also performed at honors or AP level in English and other non-related topics.
These programs are not suitable for the average student. Most students don't know or don't care about what they will be when they're 12 years old. It would be entirely unreasonable to suggest that a teenager interested in "The Now" could be expected to make any decision that would impact the rest of their life at the age of 14 (or even 15 here in Norway), hell I've learned that most people when they enter the University rarely graduate with the a degree that reflects their original major. As a great example, my closest friend from New York, who studied engineering side-by-side with me later became a school teacher in Philidelphia. Of course I do like to taunt him saying that he was a crappy programmer anyway
Well, here in Norway, although a student has the option to choose a general education track when they're 16, an excellent option for students that have yet to decide their futures or simply want to be closer to their childhood friends, they do provide what they consider to be an "Academy" environment for students hoping to focus on arts, engineering, or other specialized topics. But this system is a total failure, though the government will say that it's a great success. After all, by specializing the curriculum presented to a teenager purely to the topics they are interested in, standardized testing will improve in each of those areas. I consider it a terrible failure since if all students were required to take the same standardized tests as opposed to the tests focussing on the topics they perform best at, the grades would drop considerably. After all, if the student isn't taught a topic they aren't interested in, they wouldn't have learned or been prepared for it.
Let me also point out that Norway has a huge number of students that at the age of 16 years old enter a school focusing on arts. They learn to sing, dance, play instruments, even compose their own symphonies if that is their interest, but their general education studies stop at that point. When they reach 19 years of age, if they decide they'd prefer to have a career that could feed them in the future, they lack the required education to enter the univer
No, _you_ are scary. All of those words, and not one hint of a solution to the problem anywhere. Nor a hint of direct experience with the problem. Your rebuttal might earn an A in a Communications class, but that's all.
But those things had even less appeal to me. If I had stayed with Biology I probably would have gone towards the information theory and mathematical parts of Biology, which are also closest to the majors I actually did take. My point, though, is there are so many options that expecting a 17-year old to know which he'll be happiest in is silly. Most 17-year-olds aren't even going to be understand all the options out there. Many High Schools don't even have Calculus, Statistics, Computer Science, or Physics classes (All of which I took and enjoyed). If I didn't have Computer Science classes offered at my High School, I would have picked Physics or Math as my starting major instead of Computer Science. I would have liked it, but probably not as much as I like what I'm doing now.
I think what I'm trying to say is that there are plenty of mature 17-year olds who realize they don't know enough yet about what they want to do despite going out of their way to learn about their options. College is a chance for these people to explore their options and get a better understanding of what they really want.
Of course, they are outnumbered by the idiots going to college for partying (with a degree being an afterthought), but they still resent being classified in the same category.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
>> You didn't get laid in high school, did you?
No, but photos of my 9 year old daughter will prove I've gotten over it.
My point was made after having sat in on a few days of high school this spring. There were some good classes, great teachers, and good students. But the amount of cajoling, hand-holding, and lawsuit-prevention that the administration and teachers went through sickened me.
If I have sour grapes, it's because I needed direction in HS and never got it. It's taken me 18 years since HS to make up for it. That's a long time to pay a price because of a broken educational system. Specialization would have at least helped pave the way toward a living wage. True, there's nothing you can do about a spoiled kid, but it's the directionless kid that concerns me. And even so: if someone you are responsible for (sibling, child, students, whatever) fails despite your best efforts, you can sleep well that night.
>> But you can't force even a measly 60-credit major of specialization on someone who really has no direction in life.
Yes you can. Someone with no direction almost by definition doesn't know their own strengths or weaknesses. Putting them in a program that emphasizes their strengths might just be the catalyst toward real change. I'm not claiming this is guaranteed, but it's better than saying "it's too late -- they're a loser, so let them lose."
>> Forcing specialization brings the crap up with the cream.
I would agree if we were talking about 1st-8th graders. At the least, it's worth a try with 9th graders and above.
i like the idea of OFFERING majors, but requiring them is a bit silly. At that age every girl thinks she is going to be a marine biologist and work with Flipper.
i'd like to see us adopt a system like the Germans have. Send the academic kids to a college prep system, lots of homework, challenging classes etc. The not so brainy kids get a basic education (simple math, lit, etc) and then learn how to DO things, how to MAKE things.
Then of course our culture needs to stop looking down on people who make their cushy lives possible.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
I agree; but if the parents fail and the kids fail (and failure occurs in that order), then it's either the public school system or Life that will choose the kids' careers; i.e., a rock and a hard place. But if we're going to forcefeed pre-adults a state-sponsored education anyway, the kids might as well have a chance to specialize before they graduate.
I'm not claiming it's the best approach. I'd rather have HS graduation occur at the end of 10th grade and have two years' mandatory national or public service. But the above is more feasible in the eyes of bureaucrats than a real fix.
That's all we can hope for. And I contend that, given the educational system we have, specialization before graduation is better than what we've had up until this point.
On the other hand, I don't want to let the current government and "national service" (ie: military) infrastructure anywhere near kids.
And we have apprenticeships. We call them internships, and we just need to arrange for them to pay something. The only way to get political traction on this idea (in the US anyway) would be to offer public service (volunteer firefighting, for example) as the default, with national service (military) requiring a parental signature. Which is how it should be, anyway. That sounds like a really good idea, actually. How good for society would it be if a man starts choking in a Burger King and 1/4 of the teenagers and 20-somethings in the room know the Heimlich maneuver? It would really help adult society deal better with young people.
But I actually think service should remain optional, even for civilian public service. You should lose out on loads of state benefits for declining, but you should have that option.