I was here reading this and was again inspired by my fellow edubloggers out there.
College does not necessarily equal success to many people. My wife has a friend who is a hair-dresser who is making over 6 figures every year and the guy is 25 years old. No college.
I have a friend who went to college and is currently unemployed. He has too much education and not enough experience.
Obviously friend A is doing better than friend B.
Why don’t schools have vocational education programs anymore ? It only makes sense to offer alternatives to the college track that is being pushed by so many political talking heads and policy makers for those kids who have skills in working with their hands or who have families at an early age or those who simply want to work for themselves.
Providing students with more choice is a good thing. Choice leads to empowerment. Empowerment leads to personal investment and personal investment usually yields better results overall. I imagine that violence in schools and horrible test scores will severely diminish if kids are actually treated like human being and allowed to choose what they want as opposed to being told what they need.
Educational ideology suffers from schizophrenia. Is the goal of education simply to be educated or is it to be able to take care of yourself as an adult ? If it is the former we should definitely offer more classes of interest at earlier ages. If it is the latter we should teach kids how to make and manage money. If the goal is both well then shouldn’t we do a little bit of each ?
Maybe educational ideology isn’t about either. Maybe it’s designed to make us all employees and if that is the case the current system is doing a wonderful job. Either way, it’s time for a change.
I wonder how the educational industrial complex would deal with a nation of students who are actually interested in their studies because their studies would have some practical use to them later on.
Imagine that!
Good question. Perhaps the powers that be don’t most of us to be able to earn a living. You have an excellent blog.