What can schools — and parents — do to relieve some of the résumé-building pressure that young people are feeling?
What can schools — and parents — do to relieve some of the résumé-building pressure that young people are feeling?
Only in the NYT could someone suggest with a straight face that “Whole childhoods are sometimes sacrificed in a relentless regimen of preparing kids for Harvard[.]” Maybe they are for the upper middle class firm lawyers who are apparently the only people who still take the Times, but rest of us often enough have trouble getting the kids to do enough homework so they can get into the local community college. There are a lot of problems with the whole college prep situation but this is something that even a smaller proportion of the Ivy-bound get subjected to, I would venture to guess.
Kohn misses the key point. Most people are not college material, and most jobs really do not need a college degree. In fact, many employers will avoid college graduates these days because their efforts are weak and their attitudes bad.
It is entirely fair to say that to a large extent [url=http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/the-great-college-degree-scam/28067]college degrees are a scam[/url] designed to keep otherwise unemployable academic types in the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed.
So what is to be done?
a) stop the nonsense about attempting to get ever more people a college degree. Mr. Obama, are you listening? A good first step would be to seriously restrict access to student loans. They are a non-bankruptable debt-trap for students and a stimulus to horribly over-inflated tuitions.
b) return undergraduate colleges to their formerly pre-eminent positions as institutions dedicated to the sciences, history, classics, pre-law, pre-med, economics, literature (in various languages). A good first step would be to eliminate all two-word majors, especially when the second word is “studies.”
c) eliminate all race-based admissions in the name of “diversity.” Almost everywhere black students graduate at a far lower rate than other groups, especially asians. Most “diversity” admissions don’t belong there and we’re doing them a disservice by pushing them in that direction.
d) really support and encourage community colleges for training in things like film, culinary, theatre, studio art, nursing, horticulture, and so on.
e) support and encourage labor unions to establish even more effective trade schools in things like welding, sheet metal, tool & die, heavy and light construction, HVAC, diesel mechanics and so on. Make those schools available to any qualified student.
f) begin to alter the uniquely American expectation that parents will “put their kids through college.” It creates dependent, unappreciative wastrels completely unprepared for any real-world employment.
g) return secondary education to its basics. That entails in part a return to intellect-based “sections” for Grades 7 through 9 so that ALL students can be exposed to the key things — grammar & composition, history, geography, sciences, economics, mathematics, etc — but at a level where they’ll learn the material instead of walking away frustrated.
h) for Grades 10 through 12 offer a wide range of “shop” and “home ec” courses along with medium level and pre-college level courses in all the basic subjects.
That’s an initial kick at the can, at least. We should make every attempt to have a high school diploma or a community college certificate be respected terminal degrees.
Ancillary to that, we should end immediately the virulent tendency of teachers and professors — prevalent for over 40 years — to disrespect and discourage manual work as inferior and unsatisfying.
Good ideas Bart.
I agree with Bart. Most jobs don’t need college degrees. Why not adopt the British system of O and A levels? Encourage bright students who have no desire to study, or who have no interest in areas of knowledge other than one or two (for example, a kid who wants to be a landscape architect, a baker of wedding cakes, or design automobile chassis) to go to trade schools, and stop thinking of trades schools as “lower class” than the Harvards of higher education. As for eliminating grades and AP classes, that is an idea proposed by those who would give college entrance/jobs on the basis of “diversity.” There has to be a quantitative way to evaluate one’s knowledge of a subject.
Additionally, there are some courses that are required of all college prep students that shouldn’t be. Not every kid bound for the University of Whatever needs to know calculus. For that matter, why should an English major in college be required to study science, or math? Why should a chemical engineering major be required to take a course in literature, history, or any of the “liberal arts”? I know someone out there will answer “so (s)he can be “well-rounded”, but why should that be imposed at the university level? Children can’t graduate from high school without so many English/history/science/language credits – why isn’t that exposure at the pre-college level enough?
[blockquote] In fact, many employers will avoid college graduates these days because their efforts are weak and their attitudes bad.[/blockquote]
You neglect “and their salary requirements are higher” 😉
I think getting rid of grades. This is the only thing that keeps America schools accountable in terms of making sure the students learn anything.
While I am not a big fan of standardized tests, its not like there is a bunch of esoteric philosophy or history or civics on standardized tests. It’s basic math and science and (to an extent) reading.
Sorry, my browser refreshed and I did not get to finish. I think the solution to standardized tests is to get rid of multiple choice questions and force students to write and make coherent answers. I think the downfall of American education was indoctrinating students not so much with agendas or whatever but with the standardized ideal that every question is either A, B, C, or D. This has completely short circuited American ingenuity of past generations because kids can’t think and reason for themselves.
Bart,
The ideas you suggested are good. I think there’s needs to be more ideas about what are good methods for evaluating students work and progress. I’m all in favor of eliminating worthless and mindless homework but we need constructive suggestions of what we can and should replace them with.
Base the the college’s income on the pay of the graduate. Maybe they have to reimburse a graduate for a low salary and get a bonus for a graduate with a high salary. They will find a way to select students that have real potential and desire to succeed, and teach them things they really need to know.
[i]the solution to standardized tests is to get rid of multiple choice questions and force students to write and make coherent answers.[/i]
Agree, absolutely. I have taught at the university level (geology to civil engineers), the junior college level (small business management), and the high school level (chemistry and biology). Never once did I use a multiple-choice test.
Research shows that [i]RE-call[/i] of a fact will be about 40% lower than [i]recognition[/i] of that same fact. Multiple choice exams are recognition exams. Life is about re-call, and if you don’t need to re-call it, is it really worth teaching?
[i]Children can’t graduate from high school without so many English/history/science/language credits – why isn’t that exposure at the pre-college level enough?[/i]
Sorry, but high-school credits these days aren’t worth jack$#!+. I substituted in high schools around here until I gave up in frustration. When 4th-year French students can’t carry on a basic conversation in the language — silly me, I speak French with near-native fluency and I naively believed that four years of high school French might actually be useful — and when Grade 12 biology students have no idea what a pancreas does, and when other Grade 12 students cramming for a state-mandated US Constitution exam cannot name the three branches of government … let alone discuss the elastic clause versus enumerated powers — to say nothing of 4th amendment search and seizure provisions — there is something desperately wrong.
[i]I’m all in favor of eliminating worthless and mindless homework but we need constructive suggestions of what we can and should replace them with. [/i]
Begin by recognising that boys and girls are different. In our current educational milieu the only gender differences accepted are those making girls look better.
I read of one math teacher who took all his Grade 9 boys (plus a few interested girls) and set up a fantasy football league with them, allowing them to bet with real money. He was about to be reprimanded (and perhaps dismissed) until test results demonstrated that his fantasy football crew was comfortably handling probability and statistics at a university level.
Make it real. Make it relevant. Make it hard. Make it fun.
Students do not need to be wasting their time discussing the sexuality of Billy Budd.
Government schooling costs keep going higher and higher, yet results on standardised exams haven’t budged in almost 50 years. The longer American students remain in their government schools the farther behind the rest of the world they fall.
Most cannot place two coherent thoughts in the same sentence.
And what is the leftist “solution”? More money for teachers’ unions and administrators, of course. One local school district has a “Curriculum Coordinator” at about $140K plus generous bennies. Curricula in Kansas, however, are set by the state. There is nothing to “coordinate.”
Yet in medicine, where costs have risen less during the same period — but have produced phenomenal improvements in lifestyle and life expectancy after age 40 — the same lefties cry that we must [i]cut[/i] costs.
Schooling in America is rotten, sick and largely ineffective until you get to the graduate level in the sciences, engineering, medicine and such.
What an utter waste of resources, yet the typical academic looks down on the plumber who comes to unclog their environmentally-correct toilet.
I suggest the following:
1. 6,000-10,000 annual credit toward education for everybody for 12 years (ages 5-18), assuming the kid passes end of year competancy testing. This credit should be portable, and should be used at home schools, public schools, private schools, tutors and universities.
2. Standardized testing q3 months (minum annually) for grades 1-12, and college 1-4 with a core curriculum (including college).
3. If you can place out of 1st grade-12th grade, you get to automatically place into whatever grade your competance places you in your elementary school, middle school, high school or college.
4. Thus, if your mother, tutor, private school can tutor you up sufficiently to permit you to finish the 4 year of college in 7th grade SO be it. You get an automatic “Graduate of USA University” and you are now allowed to spend 6,000 year for your remaining 5 year credit at medical school, engineering school, MBA, homeschool business start up, whatever.
5. If you are too unprepared, lazy etc. to make grade for grade progress, you can keep repeating 3rd grade until your 12 years are up. However if you cannot pass in your school in 2 tries that school automatically loses its access to your credit. This would be true of a public school, private school or home school. This would result in most failing schools finding they have no pupils, and would prevent parents from confiscating the kids school monies while pretending to home school.
6. Part of the problem is that the high school, college and other degrees have become a certification system. This allows some 30% of kids to fail high school without consequences for the high school, and some 60% to fail college without consequences for the college. This is because they have a monopoly. If anybody could mug up the college core curriculum and place out of college in exams in Brit Lit, Anthropology, Calculus, whatever , and get the certification, colleges would be cheaper, and gifted teachers would simply set up tutoring services in their homes. A gifted teacher teaching 10 kids would make 60 thousand, and the education would be highly personal, and tailored to each child. If a kid acted out, he could be asked to leave and to take his voucher with him.
#11–One thing about those tests (and your methodology basically covers this). My daughter, who is smart but no rocket scientist, passed the state exit exam after 10th grade. She went to a private school 3d to 9th (which absolutely DIDN’T teach the exam) and a state arts school in 10th to 12th. I have always wondered why she needed to keep taking “core cirriculum” after that since she had already mastered the core cirriculum. My personal opionon is the test is really easy, and basic dumbing down teaching methods of public education are at fault. Until we let unintelligent or unmotivated children fail, things will never get better in public education. I knew a lot of kids in High School who took auto mechanics or secretarial science and did just fine in the real world.
One thing which several folks (especially 11) seem to have forgotten (or maybe were unaware of) is the reason that compulsory school attendance laws were passed in the 19th and early 20th Century.
They were NOT passed to increase the learning of the kids. And contrary to popular thought, they were not passed to provide jobs for teachers (GRIN!!). No, they were passed to remove young people from the labor market which forced companies to pay higher wages to the adults who could work. When I learned this in my education history class (Education Department of a Major University-who you would think would have come up with a “noble” reason for ed laws) it made sense to me.
Some states require 4 years for a high school diploma. I had a classmate in college who had finished every course in his high school by the time he was 15. He only took three years to do so. Thus he did NOT have a high school diploma. He attended the University and was always at the top of his class (the going to college at 15 and going with fraternity brothers to get his driver’s license is another discussion) so this young man has a college degree and, by his early 20’s a PhD in Mathematics but NO High School diploma. That shows how messed up our education system is!!
Re: #4
Landscape Architecture, per se, is a rather hard-core field. Perhaps you mean landscape designer?
There are two strong reasons an English major should take some science and math. (1) Math: Most folks will need to know a fair amount of math in order to perform a job past entry-level. For example, a salesperson may plausibly succeed on personality and product knowledge, but to be promoted to (and succeed as) sales manager will have to understand graphs, ratios, etc. at a level that the median high school grad does not. In short, the English major needs to know this stuff in order to have a successful career. (2) Science: Being a contributing member of society, who understands major public policy issues, requires a reasonable understanding of basic science. One is not going to understand science, without knowing some math — math is almost the language in which science is stated.
As to why the science or engineering majors need to take English and humanities, they are almost unemployable if they cannot write English decently or if they cannot present their ideas. The specific major asked about was Chemical Engineering, and for them the word “almost” in the preceding sentence must be evaporated and blown away.
I mean these comments kindly, by the way.