Our education system is, well, I won’t say it’s in a shambles, but it’s pretty darn rueful. America, once the proud home of the world’s brightest and most innovative people, is failing to match a large portion of the rest of the world in aptitude. Sure, we still have our share of brilliant people, and granted, with over 250 million people the waters are going to be a little murky, if not downright muddy.
But I just read this today, and my whole outlook just veered two points to starboard. (That’s a good thing).
It seems that the fine state of New Hampshire is going to begin testing kids earlier, and give them the opportunity, if they qualify, to leave for college two years earlier than they do now, at sixteen. Myself, I think this is a brilliant idea, and I can tell you I might have been all over it when I was younger.
At sixteen, a qualifying youth could go into a community college or a technical school, or, if they wanted to go to a better school, they could wait another year or two to qualify for that. Me, I would have jumped at the prestigious and lavish George C. Wallace Community College at 16, and then probably transferred to a better school two years later.
“Forty years ago, the United States had the best educated workforce in the world,” says William Brock, one of the commission’s chairs and a former U.S. Secretary of Labor. “Now we’re No. 10 and falling.”
Now, I’m sure this wouldn’t work for everyone, I’m not suggesting it would. But it would have suited me just fine, considering my situation in school. The plan, of course, has its critics:
One key concern is whether test results, at age 16, are really valid enough to indicate if a child should go to university or instead head to a technical school- with the latter almost certainly guaranteeing lower future earning potential. “You know that the kids sent in that direction are going to be from low-income, less-educated families while wealthy parents won’t permit it,” says Iris Rotberg, a George Washington University education policy professor, who notes similar results in Europe and Asia.
Yeah, Iris, you’re right, but I think it’s important to stress at this point that giving the child in question the reins to their own futures will be especially appealing to many of the kids who would otherwise have dropped out of school altogether as soon as they reached 16. Wouldn’t it be better if they had the opportunity to learn a trade, even if it’s refrigerator repair, before they leap out into the world? Giving that kid a chance to learn a trade might actually encourage them to keep at it for a couple more years. It’s a program that represents hope and promise and I’d like to see it spread across the country.
And furthermore: I hear the G.I. Bill is now giving enlistees the choice of either using their money on education or as a down payment on a home. Again, to me, this is a terrific idea. I might have actually used mine if I’d been able to buy a house with it. And, you know, I wouldn’t have had to live in that trailer for all those years, tempting tornadoes like
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One Comment
My wife teaches at a local community college and she gets a lot of these high school students in her classes. As she tells me, the vast majority are the worst students she has. They just aren’t prepared for college level work, but because the state will pay for the classes for free (as long as they pass), the high schools are shoving as many kids as they can into the colleges. Most of them don’t pass, which then the state requires the parents to re-imburse the cost of tuition. This adds social pressure for the instructors to “socially” pass these students. On the flip side, the very few that are ready for it tend to be her better students. But if you ask her, she’ll say the program should be cancelled.
When I was a HS student, I probably would have jumped at the chance. But since, at the time, I didn’t care about my school performance (because I was intensely bored and discouraged by my teachers) I didn’t qualify for the program. In fact, I was never even offered the chance. I will say, though, while my in my high school I knew of six kids who went to college classes, I was only one of three who made it into a college honors program (my entrance test scores blew out the stops).