A new Harvard study (PDF) says American students need to begin to decide in middle school whether they want to prepare for four-year college and then a career. The alternative approach, the study says, is to begin vocational training for a job earlier.High school teachers could have told them this years ago.
Politicians will never buy it. They want ALL kids to go to college. And by golly we are going to put square pegs in round holes no matter what it takes.
ReplyDeleteIsn't that the German system?
ReplyDeleteI don't know if you've seen The King's Speech but it's an excellent film. In an early scene when the king is lighting up a cigarette
ReplyDeleteLionel Logue: Please don't do that.
King George VI: I'm sorry?
Lionel Logue: I believe sucking smoke into your lungs will kill you.
King George VI: My physicians say it relaxes the throat.
Lionel Logue: They're idiots.
King George VI: They've all been knighted.
Lionel Logue: Makes it official then.
I've often said that many of the biggest morons I've know have the title doctorate of something or another after their name...this study is more evidence of sometime I've said to many. Having an advanced degree makes you educated, but it doesn't necessarily make you intelligent.
If anyone needs further explaination, you don't need an study that had to cost millions (such stupidity is not cheap) that college is not for everyone.
That's pretty much every school system in the industrialized world, except the U.S. That means it's all those systems we are so jealous of when it comes to test scores. Will we ever learn? Not with the current people in power who listen to reformers like Bill Gates and Michelle Rhee.
ReplyDeleteHigh Schools used to know this 50 years ago they had "shop class" for kids to "try out" a profession that did necessarily need a college degree.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, I know more than few PHD's with absolutely no common sense.
"Shop Class as Soul Craft" by Matt Crawford
ReplyDelete"The Saber Tooth Curriculum" by J. Abner Peddiwell