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Chicago To Make Future Plans a Graduation Requirement (thehill.com)
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanual's recently approved plan will require high school students show their plans for the future before obtaining their diploma. "Students will soon have to show that they've secured a job or received a letter of acceptance to college, a trade apprenticeship, a gap year program or the military in order to graduate," reports The Hill. From the report: "We are going to help kids have a plan, because they're going to need it to succeed," Emanuel told the Post. "You cannot have kids think that 12th grade is done." But critics say the district may not be able to provide mentoring to help needy students when the rule takes effect in 2020. "It sounds good on paper, but the problem is that when you've cut the number of counselors in schools, when you've cut the kind of services that kids need, who is going to do this work?" Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, told the Post. "If you've done the work to earn a diploma, then you should get a diploma. Because if you don't, you are forcing kids into more poverty."
This seems ass-backwards. Let's hold students back because we don't want to hold them back. Isn't the point to successfully get out of "school" (not drop out) as soon as possible? Won't this just lead to more dropouts?
This is really an excellent thing to do. If they have the resources in counselors to handle it, it's really a great idea, and it could be a real help to the US education system at large. So many of the country's political, social, environmental, and economic problems come from people not thinking ahead. I'd love to see this go into place. I think this would help knock some sense into a lot of people who've never stopped to think for a few minutes about the future. I think something this simple could really nudge a generation of kids into some basic thoughtfulness.
I don't respond to AC's.
It took me a couple years after high school to figure out what I wanted to do. Started out EE, then computer science, finally got a degree in Math.
If, at 18, I'd had to lay out my future plans they would have been somewhere along the lines of "smoke a lot of dope. Get laid. Find money to pay for weed and women".
Those 18 year olds are free men and women. Neither Chicago, nor the State of Illinois, nor the Federal government own them. This proposal, however, presumes too much. One must have a diploma at minimum to participate in much of society. But now this paternalistic body speaks to these young men and women as if to say, "Before you can receive this academic certification, you must prove your willingness to offer years of your life to a corporate master (i.e. find an employer who will deign to accept you), a military hierarchy (with the concomitant possibility of losing your life), or to a bank (in the form of bankruptcy-proof student loans). The wealthy, of course, will be excepted by means of gap-year programs but you, peasant, you must swear fealty."
I cannot deny the practical value of a proposal like this. It's certainly there. But I do deny the right of the state to gainsay an adults freedom to choose either to work or not work, to go to college or to spend a few years mooching off his willing parents, to take on debt or hang out in the basement writing or inventing or starting a business or playing video games.
and it's the kind of thing that makes me think there's something genuinely evil behind it. There's no benefit here. If a kid doesn't have problems in life they'll be college bound. But a kid who does just got a whole new set of problems to worry about. More friction at home. More fights.
As for 'counselors' my kid just graduated. Her counselors were worse than useless. Overworked. Under trained and under resourced. They knew most of the kids were boned and made no secret of it. And this was in one of the best schools in the city. What I'm saying is any kid that doesn't have amazing parents (or at least rich ones) is screwed. Oh, and speaking of rich parents if you're the kind of rich brat that gets to travel for a year you can easily get exempted from this.
My guess is this is the local businesses looking to get cheap labor from desperate kids who now must have a job to graduate. We'll probably see more 'internships' where you're working full time for little or no pay. I can't think of another reason to push something this awful and this obviously unpopular. If anyone else knows what evil thing is behind this let me know.
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Need a high school diploma to get a decent job, but can't get the diploma until you have a job. How to make more burger flippers.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
How about just focusing on making sure they can read the newspaper, write at an equivalent level, perform basic math as needed to balance a checkbook, do basic geometry, learn about US history (at the very least - ideally world history as well), and have two years of science classes - biology, chemistry, physics? Oh - and can actually PASS the course without having "adjustments" made for life experiences. In essence - make sure they EARNED their degree, proving a minimal level of educational achievement. What they do with the degree after that is none of your concern, Rahm...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
So every college student without a plan is going to go to their mailbox, pull out the latest "acceptance letter" from the nearest vampire college that takes anyone with a pulse, and submit it to get their diploma. Meanwhile, the idiots that wrote this law can do a press conference and talk about how he's thinking of the children.
I knew a lot of people in high school whose plan was to get married. Honest. Then there were those who stayed home to help care for ailing family.
If they only needed to articulate a plan this would be ok, but to actually have secured a job, training, college, etc, that's suddenly very difficult. The economy sucks right now, and it may very well suck even more in the future if employment rates fall. What do you do if all of your job applications are rejected? You can't even get going on a job while still actively studying in high school, no one's going to let you skip class to go to a job interview, and if you start job hunting early who's going to want to hire someone who can't start until summer?
Then the catch-22 of not being able to get a job without diploma in hand, and can't get a diploma without the job offer in writing.
Maybe best bet if grades are decent is get a spot at a junior college as tuition is still cheap and you don't have to actually attend once you get the high school diploma. But if the grades are good enough to normally graduate from high school, but not good enough to get in a JC (a C- average) then what?
I never heard of a gap year program. Everyone I know who did gap year just did it with no plan and certainly no formal program, and they did the gap year precisely because they had no plan.
Maybe what this requirement will do is increase the number of people taking the GED test.
schools work with employers, especially ones filling apprentice type jobs with on-the-job training
Oh you mean unpaid internships? Yeah sure, if you're going to give me some slaves for 6 months or a year I'm sure I can find work for them. Do you think employers will "work with schools" out of the kindness of their hearts? Where's the profit in that? There are hundreds if not thousands of candidates for any job opening. It's not hard for an employer to find employees. Why should I even take the time to set up some sort of "program"? Unless of course, you're going to promise me suckers who are told that their "experience" is their salary.
Amazing how the US is behind absolutely everyone else in terms of laws that actually protect workers.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Education is important, but it's not clear this has anything much to do with education. This is about a probably nutty idea that punishes 17-18 year olds for not having a clear idea what they want to do with their lives. Or maybe it punishes them for having such an idea if it isn't conventional.
My opinion. The kids did the school work. Give them their damn diploma.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
I'd say that this lines up perfectly with the current trend of withholding benefits to people unless they work for them.
If a graduate doesn't have a plan to "hit the ground running", then he/she is more likely to be a drain on the public coffers and we wouldn't want to see our hard-earned tax dollars wasted by some muzzy-minded HS graduate would we? Come to think of it, why don't we demand a drug test too? Our local Republican legislature is really big on thing like this.
Speaking from real life, however, I can say that having a goal and actually being able to move towards that goal at age 18 aren't the same thing. I'm afraid that neither educational, home or community environments left me with any clue on how to advance to the next stage. I just muddled through until eventually I managed to sort of fall into a track that led ultimately to a career as a happy taxpayer.
What about a girl completing high school who just wants to marry and have some kids? Being a homemaker doesnt seem to be one of the prescribed choices! This is the central planner way of micromanaging everyone's life. If the kids show competency required to finish high school, give them their diploma. Not everyone knows what they want to be, nor does everyone actually become what they profess to want to be. I remember as a kid hearing about communist Russia dictating who would be what when they grew up. Seems we are moving in that direction - for the betterment of the dear citizens of course.
Um, Chicago is 200% Democrat, not Republican.
200% because all the dead people vote Democrat too.
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