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."

Comments

Re:This is stupid.

[Jafafa Hots]

When I was 15 in the early 80s, a school guidance counselor was told to talk to me. Having been abandoned by my family, abused, molested, malnourished, etc... school was the least of my worries as I tried to survive and find food. Obviously my attendance suffered.

The counselor (a woman) proceeded to tell me I had better decide right away what I was going to do with my life, what my career would be. "How do you expect to support a wife and family?" she asked pointedly.

That just further reinforced my impression at the time that at best adults were clueless idiots, and at worst dangerous.

Re:This is stupid.

[Caste11an]

Amen, brother.

I majored in Physics in college, only to find that I was exceptionally good at explaining things in our campus planetarium and observatory. After two years of friends, family, and planetarium patrons telling me I should become a teacher, I took the plunge and added Secondary Education to my major.

I met with my new adviser who told me, "You have a lot of ground to cover -- you've missed two years... I just don't know how you're going to make it up in time."

Then I attended my first class. Every test -- EVERY test -- was based on the bold letter definitions in the text book. Hell, in one of my "advanced" classes (500-level (I had to get "special permission" to take it as an undergrad)) the professor handed out the final exam on the first day of class. She said, "Have this back to me by the end of the semester. It's really hard, so I figured I'd give you the whole time. Again, bold-letter definitions and requests to copy and paste -- err, transcribe -- huge segments of text from the textbook into the space provided.

My most memorable experience was coming from a Stat Therm in the morning. The prof in that class said to us, "I realize nobody has the book yet, but the first 10 problems are due tomorrow. There's a copy of the book in the library, so not having the book is not an excuse." I went from that to my education class, wherein the prof said, "Here's a 90-page novella that I think is nice. Please read it by the end of the semester and write a paragraph on what you thought."

I can't tell you how shocked I was when the hands went up and the litany of childish grunts from ALL of the other students began:

• "Do we have to read the whole thing?"
• "Is this for a grade?!"
• "How many sentences have to be in this paragraph?"
• "Does our name have to be on this?!"

These are the people to whom we trust the education of our children.

Ugh.