Steer all towards college or not???

[Alsatian]

I wasn't sure how to title this topic. I read an article in the paper today where a journalist encouraged Obama to encourage companies to do away with the job requirement of a college education . . . for some jobs, those "that don't need a college education." The journalist's idea seemed to be (1) not every family can afford to send their children to college, (2) not every child is able to perform college-level work, and (3) not every child is motivated to perform college-level work. Before proceeding, I want to observe that there is some ambiguity -- lots of ambiguity -- in that provision about those jobs ". . . that don't need a college education." It seems if you have a surplus of candidates who have what is needed to perform a job, some other optional qualification needs to be used to throttle back the flow of applicants, you don't want to interview 200 people for a position, maybe 4 to 10; why isn't a college degree a reasonable cut-filter? Additionally, many attributes that contribute to successfully completing a college degree -- persistence, reliability (going to class regularly, showing up to take scheduled tests), ability to learn, ability to read, the ability to navigate one's way through complicated large organizations -- do in fact contribute to success in many business situations.

But now to the point. I have heard or encountered this position in different forms recently, one articulated by a member of a university (dean? president? department head? I don't remember). While granting all of the realities identified by number above, how does this change the situation? Don't we want to encourage our children to obtain every advantage in life that we can provide and/or that they can claw their way to securing for themselves? Is this a matter of redirecting the goals of the unwashed masses so they "feel good" about being condemned to mediocrity and being forever blocked from improving themselves (or at least severely encumbered with detriments to improving themselves)? Leaving aside the matter of finding economic resources for going to college, is it true that some individuals just don't have the gray matter to perform college-level work, that their brains are wired differently? This sounds suspiciously like those who said that blacks were physically better adapted for working in the deep, hot mines of Africa. Other self-serving rationales for confining the underclasses in their subservient places will readily suggest themselves to those who think but a moment. I really don't get it. There is no more profitable path to improving oneself and freeing oneself from either repression or the limitations of one's accidents of birth than becoming educated, by going to college.

What do you all think? My thought is you steer all towards college, notwithstanding that some may not be able to afford to go and some may not be capable of succeeding there. More will get there and get through than following the other course. Additionally, it seems that maybe the solution is not to lower the bar, but try to inculcate higher expectations earlier in the process so children DO reach the point by graduation from high school that the majority are capable of college-level work and not too lazy to do the work. One of the facts cited by the journalist I spoke of above was that some high school students don't read well and/or don't read enough to be able to handle college. Again, seems to me the answer to that problem is to change the earlier education to make those kids capable of such reading.

[stealthycat II]

To each his own ...... I think the absolute biggest waste of time and money is for a kid to go to college because they think thats what they're suppose to do ..... and they waste away 1-4 years of their lives to get out and join the work force they could have without the college years or degree.

The ones that really desire to go to a higher level of education? Bravo, thats a great deal, but it isn't for everyone for damn sure.

[Fieldmouse]

(1) not every family can afford to send their children to college,

BS. Every family can afford to send their kid to college. It comes down to how much they really want to.

(2) not every child is able to perform college-level work

This statement is true. 50% of the population can't do highschool level work.

(3) not every child is motivated to perform college-level work.

The world needs ditch diggers too.

[stealthycat II]

[blockquote]quote:

(1) not every family can afford to send their children to college,[/blockquote]BS. Every family can afford to send their kid to college. It comes down to how much they really want to.

Its not the family's respsonsibility .... its the young adults responsibility ... but yes, the means is there for college especially if you're black skinned or a woman. White males have the toughest time getting help forcollege.

[blockquote]quote:

(2) not every child is able to perform college-level work
[/blockquote]This statement is true. 50% of the population can't do highschool level work.

yep - however how many of those kids try and go to college because that's what kids do after college ?

[blockquote]quote:

(3) not every child is motivated to perform college-level work.
[/blockquote]
The world needs ditch diggers too.

yep

[etothepii]

I teach at a Career and Technical High School -- that is what was once known as Vocational Education. The current trend in my school and state is to push all students toward college, and I think it is a big mistake. We train future nurses and computer programmers -- so the college "push" is certainly required. Bet we also train carpenters, welders, auto mechanics, pet shop workers, food service workers, etc. For these students, there are a few who might go to college and combine their trade with a degree to achieve higher levels within their field. But for the vast majority, they want to be able to find a job out of high school, get a place, start a family, etc.

Here's the problem, as I encounter it, as a math teacher. I'm trying to teach Algebra II to students, of whom maybe 80 - 90% will never use it. Mean while, I cannot afford the time to teach them to balance a checkbook, read a ruler or micrometer, read blue prints, do scale drawings, make change at a register, etc.

So, no. You do not steer all toward college. Society is too dynamic for that.

Practical math that these kids can do and need to do is being thrown out the window so they can be taught a watered down version of college prep math. And, they struggle and fail at it, only to never use it ever again.

As teachers, we are supposed to respect children's diversity, but heaven forbid you suggest they have cognitive differences. Oh no. The must all be equal. They will all go to college. They will all make $75,000 per year in a suit. It's ridiculous.

My student, "Joe X" can be a successful cabinet maker, contribute to his personal economy and the national economy, fulfill a role, meat societal need, raise a family, save for retirement ... with or without college prep classes in high school. With the appropriate education, he can do so more successfully. In his case, college prep is not appropriate, if he is not ready for it. If he has great ability at math, then put him in Algebra II, for sure. But again, in my experience, that's not likely. It's more likely that he needs practical math that he can use in his life, and his vocation.

[Alsatian]

Fieldmouse: I don't normally find myself on the opposite side of an argument with you. In this case, I see your points and they are rational, reasonable, intelligent positions that I could advance myself. For purposes of discussion, I'm going to argue against them, at least for awhile. Please don't take offense.

I agree that money is not a serious problem. There are resources available. Families can dig deep, change their priorities and mode of living if it matters enough to them. Additionally, there are a surprising variety of other ways to pay for college, including borrowing money and finding employment with a company that provides tuition reimbursement.

If 50% of students can't do high school work, I argue we should reform those students, their culture, their families, or whatever is impeding them from doing high school work. My premise is we all have the same brain, we can all do the same mental activities. Granted, some are gifted with bodies that allow them to run faster than others -- a 4.2 s 40-yard dash for example -- but at least all of us can walk, right? Frankly, I'm thinking high school academics corresponds to the physical level of difficulty of walking, maybe walking 5 miles at a stretch, at the outside. If a healthy, mature adult -- not aninfant, not an invalid, not an aged person -- cannot walk 5 miles on the level, at low altitude, at a stretch, I argue the fault lies with their neglect of their health.

Yes, we do need ditch diggers, but the proportion of our workforce that is engaged in unskilled manual labor has been diminishing for a long time and will continue to diminish in the future. To the extent that the wealth of our nation depends upon all of our efforts, our nation is impoverished by the failure to academically engage and improve the mental capabilities of our young. When the auto manufacturers go down, the "good paying" auto worker unskilled assembly line jobs will be replaced with "good paying" jobs that are skilled rather than unskilled.

Well, that is enough counterargument for now. I am very conservative economically and politically. I'm generally about as "laissez-faire" as they come. On the subject of education, however, I am drawn to ideas of public investment and public solutions. Generally, I would rather invst public moneys in that than in welfare, jobs programs, disaster relief programs, bailouts, etc. At the same time, I see many problems to public solutions -- cultural issues, such as family attitudes towards education and sub-culture attitudes towards education, may exercise a dominant role in setting low education expectations and countenancing mediocre academic performance. I'm not charry about the prospects of solving those kinds of problems.

I guess I'm content to mind my own business and "cultivate my own garden," following the guidance of Voltaire's "Candide." Perhaps it is enough to set high expectations for my own children, to move my residence to a suburb with excellent schools (as I did when my wife became pregnant with our first child), to create an environment in my own home that promotes, revers,and encourages academic achievement. I suppose if some educators and/or some journalists begin to repudiate their long standing advice to all to seek a college education, this merely makes the road easier for my own children -- less competition for limited seats in the better universities for example.

[Alsatian]

Etothepii: I see your handle in a new light today: e^(pi).

It is hard to argue with your experience, so I won't. I have long been disturbed by the idea I have heard lately circulated that different people have different learning styles. I'm not arguing the truth of this insight; I'm objecting to the unpleasant implications of this insight. In my opinion, if your learning style is graphical and not oriented to reading books, this makes succeeding in college a much more difficult task. College is heavily reading oriented. Another implication is that the most reliable path to economic improvement and advancement, education, is foreclosed to many through no fault of their own but an accident of their birth. I feel deep affection for the hypothesis of free will and self-reliance. The notion -- which may be a perfectly true notion -- that different people have different learning styles severely attacks this hypothesis of free will and self-reliance. According to this notion, it is NOT the case that you can be anything you want to be, merely by asserting your free-will. For example, if you can't do the math and you can't do the reading, there are many things you cannot be -- not a doctor, not an engineer, not a lawyer.

In France there is a clear two-track education system. At some point students fork into the college track or into the "worker" track. The students who fork into the college track go to high school and study college prep material. They must pass an arduous uniform national exam -- the "Bac" -- to qualify to go to university. It is hard for those who follow the college track courses to pass the Bac; impossible for those who don't follow the college track. Thus, when students go down that fork, they forever commit themselves and limit their future lives. This is a fact of life for adults. For example, at my current age of 52 I realize there are many paths which I will never be able to tread. I accept that with equianimity. I would be uncomfortable with the French system where a decision about one's child at the age of perhaps 14 decides their future.

Anyway, nothing I'm discussing aboveis directed to the reality -- just my comfort levels, my kinds of reservations, the inferences I make from the hypotheses. I don't know enough about the facts or learning styles.

[etothepii]

I argue we should reform those students, their culture, their families, or whatever is impeding them from doing high school work.

This isn't even "easier said than done." It's easy said, impossible done."

My premise is we all have the same brain, we can all do the same mental activities. Granted, some are gifted with bodies that allow them to run faster than others -- a 4.2 s 40-yard dash for example -- but at least all of us can walk, right?

I'm sure you would not argue that a mentally retarded person has the same brain and can do the same mental activities as everybody else.

So it's safe to assume you are talking about "healthy" brains. But the problem is, even within the realm of healthy brains, there is a huge range of variance. I can teach two students how to derive the quadratic formula by completing the square (a standard Algebra II, college prep-level task), but that doesn't mean they both have the cognitive ability to learn it. What's more, some won't want to learn it and will never need to do that task for the rest of their life.

Should we force a student to learn it so that he can be "ready" for a college that he will never go to? Or should we take that task out of the curriculum, to make it "fair" for him? Or should we teach him a curriculum he needs and can actually use instead?

[Alsatian]

etothepii: I find myself heavily defeated by your arguments. I don't like it. Not because my ego can't stand the beating, far from it. I don't like it because of the implications of the conclusion. I agree with your ". . . isn't even 'easier said than done.' It's easy said, imposssible done." How do you reform a culture? A further implication of this is how do you resist the debilitating influence of a culture? For example, how do you resist the debilitating influence of television? What do I mean? How many people choose to watch television versus read, for example, Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter?" If you have watched television lately, you could not fail to agree that the vast majority of program material comprises mental junk food. And yet, how many who otherwise -- for example, had they lived in the 1940s before television was available -- might have read a book and engaged their brain in the activity of imagining a world guided by the book now turn on the "boob tube" and watch some vapid television show? What is the effect of choosing to watch the vapid television show versus reading a book, when the choice is repeated thousands of times? Television is only one instance of a cultural influence which have negative consequences for our mental life.

I often hear the complaint you raised that academic subjects are not of interest to at least some of the students and may never be used to practical effect by most students. I have a counterargument to that which I would like present for comment. In the movie "Karate Kid" the young student is first ordered to wash and wax all of the numerous automobiles in Mr Miaggi's enclosed yard. The boy is told to move the washing and waxing pads in a very specific motion -- "wax on, wax off!" The boy at the end of the day is tired and frustrated that he has been taken advantage of by the old man who has taught him zero karate. He rebels. The old man challenges him to defend himself against attack -- saying "wax on, wax off!" Turns out the repeated movements of waxing the cars has been good training . . . for something other than waxing cars. Can't it be argued that studying Algebra can be a good tool for training the mind in the application of abstraction? We manipulate and deal with abstractions a lot in adult life. Can't the study of higher mathematics be viewed as a high octane fuel for learning how to abstract? Even if students don't use algebra in their adult lives, isn't it arguable that the training of their minds to perform these abstract operations -- as abstractions rather than as puttering through the quadratic equation, factoring quadratics, etc. -- may be used by these students later in life?

[Lanse couche couche]

I've got about ten years worth of teaching experience at three different schools. The one thing I have learned is that lot's of kids simply do not belong in college. It can be for a number of reasons linked to intelligence, aptitude, or simply personality. They can be flat out too dumb to do it. Or, they can lack the discipline to do it. Or, you get people who are perfectly capable of doing well in college, but they more interested in getting a job and making money right away than spending four years sitting in a classroom and hoping for a long term payoff.