Submitted by Leonard Isenberg (not verified) on May 2, 2007 - 18:13.
The total capacity of all colleges and universities in the United States is 40% of high school graduates. Given this reality, it is disingenuous edspeak to treat all students as if they are going to college and offer no viable alternative by which the vast majority of students might be able to make a good living without going to college. For example, there is a critical shortage of welders in the United States where the starting salary is $40,000 a year- time required to be state certified as a welder is approximately 6 months.
For those in public school administration that see this as tracking, I would make the following points:
1. The continuing practices of social promotion and failure to teach Cognitive Academic Language Production (CALP) skills, which are a prerequisite for academic success in secondary school and beyond, is a far more deplorable kind of tracking since it assures that students with good native intelligence will not be competitive with more affluent students and will never reach their potential.
2. With the high cost of college tuition, working class people have a better chance of paying for college as a mechanic then they do selling fast food at minimum wage.
3. With 2 million people behind bars in the United States, one would think that the ability to make a good blue-collar living might significantly diminish these figures which are the highest of all industrialize countries.
4. The everybody’s going to college rhetoric started in the late 1950’s after the USSR launched Sputnik and we were afraid that we were falling behind the Russians educationally. In order to artificial increase the number of students denominated as academic, rigorous academic standards were and continue to be compromised. Edspeak talks of teaching to standards, but never questions whether previous year standards have been mastered as foundational to teaching present grade-level standards.
5. Viable Industrial Arts programs that were taken by all students were systematically closed down to artificially emphasize academics based on the false idea that retrofitting these shops for newer electronic equipment would be prohibitively expensive. In countries like France, these costs were borne by the private sector to insure a continuous supply of well-qualified technicians from the schools.
The total capacity of all
Submitted by Leonard Isenberg (not verified) on May 2, 2007 - 18:13.
The total capacity of all colleges and universities in the United States is 40% of high school graduates. Given this reality, it is disingenuous edspeak to treat all students as if they are going to college and offer no viable alternative by which the vast majority of students might be able to make a good living without going to college. For example, there is a critical shortage of welders in the United States where the starting salary is $40,000 a year- time required to be state certified as a welder is approximately 6 months.
For those in public school administration that see this as tracking, I would make the following points:
1. The continuing practices of social promotion and failure to teach Cognitive Academic Language Production (CALP) skills, which are a prerequisite for academic success in secondary school and beyond, is a far more deplorable kind of tracking since it assures that students with good native intelligence will not be competitive with more affluent students and will never reach their potential.
2. With the high cost of college tuition, working class people have a better chance of paying for college as a mechanic then they do selling fast food at minimum wage.
3. With 2 million people behind bars in the United States, one would think that the ability to make a good blue-collar living might significantly diminish these figures which are the highest of all industrialize countries.
4. The everybody’s going to college rhetoric started in the late 1950’s after the USSR launched Sputnik and we were afraid that we were falling behind the Russians educationally. In order to artificial increase the number of students denominated as academic, rigorous academic standards were and continue to be compromised. Edspeak talks of teaching to standards, but never questions whether previous year standards have been mastered as foundational to teaching present grade-level standards.
5. Viable Industrial Arts programs that were taken by all students were systematically closed down to artificially emphasize academics based on the false idea that retrofitting these shops for newer electronic equipment would be prohibitively expensive. In countries like France, these costs were borne by the private sector to insure a continuous supply of well-qualified technicians from the schools.