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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.
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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.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
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]
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
Many accidently selected Pat Buchanan as their major.
Copy/paste troll, complete with spelling errors.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
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
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!
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.--
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.
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.
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.
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.