College for All Confronted: In general, I have to think that many of the readers of this article and of the "college for all" initiative are taking the term college much too literally. I completely agree with Michael Cohen when he says that it isnt just going to be a 4 year University that they are trying to get students to go to but any kind of post-high school education. I was really impressed with the statistic (however, I have to say that I have absolutely NO idea as to how they came up with it; I would be very interested to know as to how they figured it out) that half of the new jobs are going to be ones that require associate degrees or vocational training. This further emphasizes the increasing need for more and more high school graduates to continue with their education.
Another alternative to continuing their education past high school, and the article touched on this, is that high school could do a better job of preparing students for life in the technical fields. I for one side on the air of hesitation for exactly the reasons outlined by Kati Hayock, the president of Education Trust. I have done a project on tracking before in one of my education classes I took in undergrad and have personally been tracked myself (even though I was the receiver of many of the benefits of a tracking system) and just like she says, more minorities and more lower income students inevitably get funneled towards the lesser of the tracks. This means that we are selling our kids short and they are not realizing their full potential.
I'm not sure if it is entirely possible to make it so that the minorities and the lower income students are not funneled towards tracks. I think that the suggestion/model school in which students take all of the same core classes but choose a certain kind of field or focus for their electives is a great idea. Say for instance that a kid did all of the electricity courses in addition to all of his normal core classes. Sure that kid is probably in all likelihood going to heads towards becoming an electrician but that isn't a "for sure" thing. What is to stop that kid from going to a "traditional" four year college or university? Won't they see that he had that electrician kind of focus and disregard him? NO! If anything that makes him/her a much more intriguing prospect for the school and will add to the diversity of that class significantly with the unique skillset and opinions that he/she brings to the classroom. The focus fields of these "tracks" still need to be wide enough that a kid will still be fully prepared to do anything else should he/she decide that whatever track they are in is not what they want to do with the rest of their lives.
No comments:
Post a Comment