High School Students Forced To Declare A Major 670
i_like_spam writes "As reported in the NYTimes, high school freshmen at many high schools across the nation are now being forced to pick a major. Starting this Fall, 9th graders in Florida will have to choose to major from among a set of state-approved subjects, while some students in Mississippi will have to follow one of nine designated career paths. High school administrators hope that having students declare majors will lead to greater student interest in school until graduation. College administrators think otherwise: 'youngsters should instead concentrate on developing a broad range of critical thinking and communication skills,' says Debra Humphreys from the Association of American Colleges and Universities."
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:With top down decisions like this (Score:1, Interesting)
By the time I was done with high school, I had a clue to which major to declare. Now, I have successfully landed my first career position within the Software Development field because of it.
I say, Don't force students to decide @ 14-15, but open their worlds to new ideas. Give them a chance to view new ideas. Let them explore themselves (not talking about sexual but mental). I say by their final semester, they should have a Declaration and/or a well developed paper on their findings to their college/career path. Give them the sense that they must start developing their path to graduation (and beyond) at Freshman year (high school). To unwillingly force someone at such a tender age will provide terrible results in wich these kids will not know if this is the perfect fit for them.
Sounds like a good idea! (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree with the idea that students shouldn't be all lumped into the same category. If you're destined to be a scientist, why spend half your high school career studying unrelated subjects? Cram all the knowledge in now, while your brain still has a huge memory capacity. That way, college is reserved for deeper study of a subject, not review of stuff you should have learned in high school.
Also, high school curricula are pretty much aimed at the lowest common denominator. It makes sense to separate those who are interested in learning from those who are interested in using up oxygen. Ever wonder why college degrees are almost required for any corporate job? Because high school doesn't give you enough preparation to do a "real world" job. This would also prevent people from being forced through college who otherwise don't need it. There are very few non-menial jobs you can get anymore without a degree, and some people, while qualified for a job, are not suited for advanced study.
Re:This is stupid. (Score:3, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Sounds like a good idea! (Score:2, Interesting)
I always wanted to be a scientist/engineer, so I only did Maths, Physics and Chemistry at A-level. I'm still interested in English, History, foreign languages etc., but I would have hated being forced to study them 16-18.
Re:This is stupid. (Score:2, Interesting)
We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks. - Woodrow Wilson
Rockefeller's General Education Board - in a document called Occasional Letter Number One (1906):
In our dreams...people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present educational conventions [intellectual and character education] fade from our minds, and unhampered by tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, educators, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have ample supply. The task we set before ourselves is very simple...we will organize children...and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way.
In 1975 Gerald Bracey, a leading professional promoter of government schooling, wrote in his annual report to clients: "We must continue to produce an uneducated social class."
I could go on, but it makes me sick. Read the book
Re:This is stupid. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:This is stupid. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:This is stupid. (Score:5, Interesting)
Amen, brother.
I majored in Physics in college, only to find that I was exceptionally good at explaining things in our campus planetarium and observatory. After two years of friends, family, and planetarium patrons telling me I should become a teacher, I took the plunge and added Secondary Education to my major.
I met with my new adviser who told me, "You have a lot of ground to cover -- you've missed two years... I just don't know how you're going to make it up in time."
Then I attended my first class. Every test -- EVERY test -- was based on the bold letter definitions in the text book. Hell, in one of my "advanced" classes (500-level (I had to get "special permission" to take it as an undergrad)) the professor handed out the final exam on the first day of class. She said, "Have this back to me by the end of the semester. It's really hard, so I figured I'd give you the whole time. Again, bold-letter definitions and requests to copy and paste -- err, transcribe -- huge segments of text from the textbook into the space provided.
My most memorable experience was coming from a Stat Therm in the morning. The prof in that class said to us, "I realize nobody has the book yet, but the first 10 problems are due tomorrow. There's a copy of the book in the library, so not having the book is not an excuse." I went from that to my education class, wherein the prof said, "Here's a 90-page novella that I think is nice. Please read it by the end of the semester and write a paragraph on what you thought."
I can't tell you how shocked I was when the hands went up and the litany of childish grunts from ALL of the other students began:
These are the people to whom we trust the education of our children.
Ugh.
Re:This is stupid. (Score:5, Interesting)
I think there needs to be a distinction between "educator", "Teacher", "Administrator", and "F'n state department of Ed".
The vast majority of teachers really do care about the students, and about teaching the students what they really need to know, and making them well-rounded individuals. As a whole, so do educators... however, as a general rule these days, teachers don't get to teach.
No Child Left Behind (or NCLB as it's known) has forced massive numbers of assessments on the students. There are literally over 5 different assessments that have to be done on the students at the school here, at least twice a year. These assessments sometimes take over a week to do with each child in the class individually. During this time, the teacher is often out of the room, assessing a student, and so can't be teaching the class.
Then there's the "Warm fuzzy shit" that has to be taken care of, because kids just aren't getting it at home.
Then there's the attitude (often "enforced" by administration) that homework is a burden on students, and it takes them away from their social life/basketball/etc. So you can't keep kids after for academic reasons.
Then there are the parents that threaten to sue the school any time their kid gets kept in for recess for slugging another kid (and the school has it on camera)
Please, do me, the rest of the country's educators, and the kids a favor... Be active in education. Find out when your local school board meets. Go to the meetings, inform yourself about the issues, talk with the board members. volunteer at the school.
Don't just worry about taxes, because that's what pays for the schools. Worry about how the school district is using the money. Work with the educators to make the schools better, Please.
Alt. title: HS Students Allowed to Specialize (Score:1, Interesting)
A couple of points to respond to you knee-jerkers who think this idea is unfair:
* There are four main ways to improve an economy; specialization is one of them. That's what we're discussing here. Have you noticed that we haven't seen any Mozart's or Chaplin's lately? Given any thought as to why? They essentially _majored_ in their field at an early age and stayed with it! Where in the US will you find an educational system that will allow specialization at an early age? Home school. That's it. Until this plan came along. I'm not claiming it's perfect, but specialization isn't the Big Bad Wolf.
*I suspect that most of you how have responded negatively haven't taught high school or college, ever. We have high schools that turn out students who need Basic and Intermediate Algebra and sometimes Remedial Composition I _and_ II in college. Something must change in public school systems. At least if an older student can pursue something s/he finds relevent, there would be initiative to pursue quality work. That might help a the students who recognize that public school is a jail from which they can't escape until they turn 18.
*As for the 'let the kids be kids!' argument: crap. They demand to be treated like adults when it comes to sex, alcohol, drugs, and the use of a parent's car. But when they enter the school, they want Mommy and Daddy to threaten a lawsuit if their homework becomes "too hard". As others have posted, we're facing fierce competition in India and Asia from hyper-educated grads who are willing to work for $1/hour. It's time to throw out the idea of a leisurely stroll through K-12 or K-BS.
*Re: 'They don't know what they want to do yet!' Do they want to eat? Do they want to be able to move out of Mommy and Daddy's house and live on their own? If so, they need money. If they can't inherit it, they'll have to work for it. That requires a job. A job requires training. They may not like it, but I won't pay for their Welfare checks just because they couldn't find the inspiration to be a fill-in-the-blank.
*And if they don't know what they want to do yet, then we, the adults, with scars on our bodies from what Life was done to us, have the right to choose for them. They're not adults yet. If they were, they'd pay taxes and have a job. They don't know what it's like to get laid off or lose a child or go bankrupt -- in short, they don't know what they need yet. They only know what they want. And that's not enough to survive.
In short, if you complain that forcing children to begin to take responsibility for their own adulthood is cruel/harsh/unfair, you're as much of the problem as administrators and teachers who teach solely for the tests. Is this FL plan perfect? Doubt it. Argue about its implementation then. But for God's sake make it a priority that your children grow up instead of just growing old.
Re:This is stupid. (Score:4, Interesting)
Simply throwing money at problems rarely solves them.
In 2004, the City of Minneapolis was spending more than $11500 per student, for a math proficiency below the 40th %ile, and reading around 55th %ile. And don't tell me it's the crowded classrooms...15.2 students/teacher. That would be a joke, if it wasn't so serious.
http://www.schoolmatters.com/app/location/q/stid=2 4/llid=116/stllid=148/locid=956260/stype=/catid=-1
So tell me again, it's the MONEY?
Let's take a good sized class, perhaps 25 students.
That's $287,500 per year to educate them.
Let's give the teacher a really nice salary - we want someone GOOD, who enjoys their work! - of $87500, leaving us $200,000.
Good suburban office space is leasing at just under $2/sqft...let's give these kids LOTS of space, and assume a goodly portion of shared spaces (a gym, a cafeteria, auditorium, etc.) 2500 sqft = 60,000 per year leaves us with $140,000. (Ignoring for the moment that School Districts and cities can/should obviously do MUCH better than 'market'.)
Let's even hire a nicely-paid assistant for the class, always better to have smaller groups learning when you can, and there's a lot of paperwork to teaching: $40,000/yr.
You're telling me that a class of 25, with a budget of $100,000/yr for materials, can't manage better than 40th percentile in Math?
If that's true, is another $200/student really going to make any difference? $2000?
You could buy them each an adequate laptop and STILL have $60,000/year for other supplies.
I call complete BS on your "underfunded" assertion - that's the lazy answer. US Public education is a perfect example of waste, bureaucracy, sinecure, and mismanagement from top to bottom.
Teaching is one of the hardest jobs there is. I believe that more of the $$ should be going to the teachers and students, than whatever rathole it's disappearing down now. Many schools in the Western world are doing much, much better on much, much less than the US spends per pupil. We need to examine why, and see if we can emulate it.
Nota bene: it's easy to be a critic, but harder to provide suggestions, so I'll make a few
- schools have suffered from 100 years of 'mission creep' (ok, really only the last 40). School != Parents, and we need to stop expecting that teachers will parent our children for us.
- less funding for special-needs students. Yes, we all feel sorry for them, but schools are now doing the work that mental hospitals used to do. Why? I can understand that if Timmy is slightly disabled, having an aide work with him to get him up to speed is fine; but when you have 2 full time special-ed teachers in 1 elementary school to deal with a roomful of children who (AT BEST) *might* be able to feed themselves? That is educational dollars being wasted in medical care. That should NOT be a school's responsibility.
- English...the Mpls Schools crow about their 'diversity' of having courses in some 60+ languages. That's idiotic and wasteful. Elementary and High School ESL classes, otherwise all English.
- End social promotion. Teachers found passing children who do not meet grade benchmarks are fired. Stop the focus on 'self-esteem'. If a kid has trouble, hold him back. If this makes him sad, perhaps he'll work a little harder.
- 8-5 school day, 48 weeks a year.
Yes, this is harsh. But I'm 39, and my opinion of high school is informed by my experience. As a junior, I stopwatched my school days for a week. Out of a 7.5 hour day, I would start the timer whenever we were going over new material, or reviewing it the 1st time, or testing. I
Lesser of two evils (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:This is stupid. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:This is stupid. (Score:0, Interesting)
Last time I checked, the existence of the soul was not a fact, but a conjecture. Whether a test tube baby has one is dependent on your personal theology, not on facts.
Last time I checked, the lack of a reasonable scientific theory to explain something wasn't a cause for that something to cease to exist. Don't let the lack of "facts" get in the way of your understanding. Science only explains "how" - it doesn't explain "why". Too many people forget that the "why" is orthogonal to the "how".
Some things are true whether you believe them or not. Simply changing theology won't change whether a soul exists or not.
Like this in Louisiana, sort of... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Alt. title: HS Students Allowed to Specialize (Score:2, Interesting)
If the title of the /. article had read: "HS Students Allowed to Specialize", would there have been this uproar?
Um... no I suppose if the title was wrong there wouldn't be an uproar. Allowed != Forced It's pretty basic. The rest of your comments are equally wrong.
* There are four main ways to improve an economy; specialization is one of them. That's what we're discussing here. Have you noticed that we haven't seen any Mozart's or Chaplin's lately? Given any thought as to why? They essentially _majored_ in their field at an early age and stayed with it! Where in the US will you find an educational system that will allow specialization at an early age? Home school. That's it. Until this plan came along. I'm not claiming it's perfect, but specialization isn't the Big Bad Wolf.
There are lots of ways of improving an economy, many of which are socially damaging or outright immoral. If they work (and I still question this way would) it doesn't change the fact that they're wrong. As for Mozart, etc. your argument is speculative at best, seeing as Mozart was composing by age 5, which is BEFORE we put children in kindergarten. Mozart was special beyond his education, he was a savant.
*I suspect that most of you how have responded negatively haven't taught high school or college, ever. We have high schools that turn out students who need Basic and Intermediate Algebra and sometimes Remedial Composition I _and_ II in college. Something must change in public school systems. At least if an older student can pursue something s/he finds relevant, there would be initiative to pursue quality work. That might help a the students who recognize that public school is a jail from which they can't escape until they turn 18.
I had a hard time with this "point" because it talks about a lot of fairly different things, yet draws no conclusion. Needless to say I think it's not important for people to have taught high school in order to have an opinion about high school, seeing as most of us have been through it, and remember it. The rest doesn't actually seem to say anything about specialization at all.
*As for the 'let the kids be kids!' argument: crap. They demand to be treated like adults when it comes to sex, alcohol, drugs, and the use of a parent's car. But when they enter the school, they want Mommy and Daddy to threaten a lawsuit if their homework becomes "too hard". As others have posted, we're facing fierce competition in India and Asia from hyper-educated grads who are willing to work for $1/hour. It's time to throw out the idea of a leisurely stroll through K-12 or K-BS.
This is a straw man argument. We can let kids be kids, or not, and specialize, or not. The 2 don't necessarily affect each other. And if I had a 13 year old (the age we're talking about starting specializing at) having sex, drinking, doing drugs, and using my car, I think there would be bigger problems than what they took in school. And the "hyper-educated" foreign workforce doesn't have anything to do with specialization either.
*Re: 'They don't know what they want to do yet!' Do they want to eat? Do they want to be able to move out of Mommy and Daddy's house and live on their own? If so, they need money. If they can't inherit it, they'll have to work for it. That requires a job. A job requires training. They may not like it, but I won't pay for their Welfare checks just because they couldn't find the inspiration to be a fill-in-the-blank.
Fact: people need to work for money(Unless they inherit it/whatever). Fact: you need to be trained for any job, no matter how simple. How does this mean someone in grade 9 needs to know what they want to be when they grow up?
*And if they don't know what they want to do yet, then we, the adults, with scars on our bodies from what Life was done to us, have the right to choose for them. They're not adults yet. If they were, they'd pay taxes and have
I had a similar experience 20 years ago (Score:3, Interesting)
Today, I earn $50K as a developer. I should have gone the "vocational" route and taken shop. I could have become a housing developer and made millions the last decade.
Thanks for guiding me down the right path high school!
Crutches, not parachutes (Score:3, Interesting)
Want kids to be interested in school? Give them an actual reason to do well.
Let them leave once they have achieved a minimum level of competence in the core subjects.
My guess is that about half the students (the half that currently do not go on to college) would work pretty hard at learning the subjects if they knew that once they had mastered them, they would no longer be subject to the school system.
Then set up a decent secondary education system, for all those that decide that they need more education, after they've had a taste of the real world.
-- Should you believe authority without question?