Should high school students be required to declare majors?

I'm struck by a very common theme that seems to be the rhetoric of secondary education - provide the basic curriculum requirements then shovel them out to post-secondary education in hopes that they figure out there what they want to do for a living. The problem - many aren't graduating from HS and those who do graduate, often don't graduate college. So they (WE as society) are left with no education and no relevant work skills. We need to equip kids for work and not just post-secondary education (which we fail at as well since most students are required to take remedial courses to get to core courses for their major). Instead we toss a book on US history hope teachers have enough time to go through material with a room full of distracted and unengaged teenagers who think they are entitled to a "sweet" job that pays $50K. Traditional pedagogy doesn't work anymore for U.S. kids who are now competing for work with kids from China and India.

I think they should first focus on the child’s intellect before choosing a major because it depends upon the child’s mental ability if he can really endure a certain course without. Of course we all know that our parents send us to school for us to learn. Education is the most important thing that we should have because we need it for our future but nowadays there are some practices that is not good for the students. In the midst of the call for change in our nation’s educational system, the officials out in New Hampshire have come up with an idea all their own, which is to push high-schoolers to graduate by 10th grade, or at least some of them. The proposed program will create board exams that students can sit for by the end of their sophomore year, and those that pass can move on to community college or technical schools. However, are 16 year olds really prepared to handle those kinds of responsibilities at that age? Most of us are barely prepared enough by 18, let alone the age we were when we finally graduated. A 16 year old trying to navigate the murky waters of higher education and its burden of tuition, textbooks, and transportation costs is difficult to imagine, and they don’t need to grow up any faster. If they fell short, and didn’t have parental help to rely on, they wouldn’t be old enough to get payday loans if they needed one to cover school costs.

i am a sophomore in high school and i have, indeed, been feeling very stressed about my future. i don't think that my school really gives enough options for the different types of things that us teenagers are into. Some of us have our future all planned out, and we want to take courses that support, and have to do with what we want our future to look like.
I've read some of the posts from other people and their taking this simple subject and exagerating and stretching it way too far. Its not going to be how they think its going to be. If we have options in high school that relate to our future, it will be very beneficial to the ones who want support for our future occupation.
Sure, we need math for paying our bills, and all that fun stuff...but thats what middle school is for. We learn math all the way up to albebra in middle school, and i think thats all we really need. We're not going to need geometry and calculus to pay our bills, i don't think that is neccessary for the people who want to major in english literature. Math may not be everyones "special talent." Some people are going to want to major in math, so that is why there is that option for them. If people want to major in english literature, there will be that option as well. even scaling down to the branches of english, like, journalism. I just think it will help teens get a better grasp on their future, and get them excited by having classes and that will support them.

im a ninth grader and i don't even know wut i want to be our school gives us steps to get to what we want to be but as for decided at that moment who want to be, no. They lead us toward it and in Junior year is when we totally decided but we are allowed to take classes that will take us in the direction we want. i don't like that they're making this kids decide. How horrible.

Students shouldn't be required to declare majors. Because speaking for the kids. Conisdering I am one. We will not be able to know what we want to do. I know that it will cause a lot more uneeded stress. It will also make us feel like we are being trapped into something that we are locked into for the rest of our lives.I think that this is a really bad idea. It will put a ton more perruse kids. We will be a lot more up tight and not creative.

Our society currently tries to offer its children the first 18 years of their lives as purely educational time - their "career" during that time is to learn as much as they can about the world around them before they have to start committing to a single path. Are we now saying that this time period in their lives has shrunk to 14 years or less? If this is indeed the trend, why not bring back the old guild apprenticeship program? Teach a child a trade as soon as they can read and write, say around 7, and let the more esoteric disciplines (e.g. math, science, and social studies) be considered the electives. Isn't this where all of this kind of thinking is heading? Nevertheless, we have some students, parents, and teachers who have lost sight of the fundamental purposes of educating our young in our society, and that's to prepare them for what this generation thinks they may have to deal with in the future. A high-school major implies some adult committee's ideas of some specific path through the curriculum that will prepare a 14-year-old for a field they likely won't be fully contributing to until at least another seven years have passed. Is this rational? Isn't this just a "marketing" tool to sell our overgrown curricula in yet another way? Why not look at PBL and majors? Isn't there some crossover thinking here? We know that students who work on wide-ranging projects that both meet standards and develop "real world" connections for students are very motivating for students and teachers. We also know that a comprehensive curriculum based on PBL requires resources few of us ever see. Do proponents of high-school majors expect to have the kind of in-depth expertise available in the schools to justify and fully implement this kind of program at the high school level? I have my doubts...

This is another example where politicians stick their noses without any experience in education. It just sounds good and gives the public the illusion that they are trying to improve education. I could recite a litany of changes "to improve" education in the past decade and where they are fallen short. Why declare major when you are 14? The career you might be interested in might not be around in four years or changed so much that you might not be interested for various reasons. Some careers might seem lucrative to a 14 year old but by the time they are 18 might not be.

First, I notice there is an assumption amongst commenters that college is a given. "I didn't declare my major until my junior year of college!" "I changed my major three times in college!" Well, super, but many high school students have absolutely no interest in attending college, and all the liberal arts education in the world isn't going to change that. The choice to "major" in vocational fields is more likely to engage at-risk students and provide them with not only specialized training, but an incentive to stay in school. Truthfully, since the students will still be required to complete the same core curriculum (four credits of English and math; three credits of social studies and science; one credit of fine arts; and one credit in physical education and health), I fail to see how asking students to focus their electives into major and minor courses will limit them in any way. It's a flexible program; they can "change their major" just as many of us did in college. In my opinion, you don't have to be an astrophysicist to know that adolescence is a stressful time: a time when students explore their interests, struggle with a sense of identity, test their independence (we've all been there). But it also makes sense that this stress can be minimized when students are given the opportunity to take an active decision-making role in their education. In life. Too many students graduate from high school lacking the ability to evaluate priorities and make decisions, essential life skills. To say that people who recommend declaring a major in high school do not have any knowledge of adolescent development is not only condescending, but disingenuous. Good for Florida.

I noticed that a major arguement for selecting majors in high school is that it will motivate students to focus on their future. I am a senior in high school myself and have spent the past 4 years of my life struggling through a torrent of propaganda saying that I should be desperately planning out my future as quickly as I can. I know for a fact that high school students are already pressured every day in numerous manners to achieve in high school and plan for their future and despite that, many high school students still drift through high school without a worry or care. It doesn't seem to me like having them choose a major is really going to motivate them anymore than the other forms of motivation currently used. Those few students who already plan ahead will make use of this opportunity and those that don't already will simply select a major without a worry or a second thought and then proceed to ignore their specially selected classes just like they now ignore their regular classes.

It is clear that those who recommend declaring a major in high school do not have any knowledge of adolescent development. High School years are exploratory giving students a broad, not narrow, selection of subjects. Included beyond the required courses are electives so that students have an option to explore various course offerings. Requiring students to declare a major is ignoring the purpose of high school. Requiring a major will not help students in selecting a career in college. Life is a journey, not a race. A well balanced high school program will provide them opportunities to explore in more detail and gain insight into what direction they wish to take at the college level or other academic paths.