Intelligent Discontent

• Written by: PogieJune 20th, 2007
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• Category:Education
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Not all of my students intend to go to
college. Many of them believe that college would be a waste of time
and money, hope to work in fields that do not require an advanced
degree, or simply don't enjoy education. These students would (and
have) told me that high schools should not be so focused on
preparing people for college. Many teachers and guidance counselors
agree, arguing that we need to make schools more relevant to the
jobs and job skills that these students need.

I think they are mostly wrong.

Creating high schools where some students
focus on vocational, rather than academic skills, seems to me to be
putting a benevolent face on an old ugly idea: tracking students,
usually based on socioeconomic factors, into two largely segregated
camps the upper and middle class students who pursue college level
skills, and lower class students who are "encouraged" to pursue
their interest in job training, ignoring the fact that so many
students just don't know what they are capable of, or come from
backgrounds that lead them to believe that a college education is
unattainable.

Professor James Rosenbaum argues that focusing on college skills for all
students will give them false hope

Politicians like to make grand promises of getting all
children to be doctors and lawyers. But education policy should
focus on meeting the needs of the entire society and all students.
Otherwise, we will offer only dreams and delusions to roughly half
our young people, who will not only fail to earn a college degree,
but also will lack the basic work habits needed to have any
productive, respectable job in society.

Rosenbaum's argument sounds appealing, even logical, but it fails
to address what I believe is the most important aspect of
education, opening up doors of opportunity for students rather than
closing them. If we write off half of the student population,
believing that either they are incapable of advanced thinking or
that the skills and knowledge needed for college are somehow
superfluous for most of the population, those are exactly the
results we will achieve: a society that increasingly limits
opportunities and discredits the very idea of academic pursuits.
Will all of my students spend their adult lives closely reading
literary texts, doing advanced math, or thinking about the
relationships between various cultures? Perhaps not, but schools
can't be in the business of making that choice for them, by pushing a vocational agenda as somehow more
valuable. And shouldn't we hope for a society where adults are
capable of all of those things?

It's unimaginably arrogant to think that teachers and other school
officials should make the choice between college and vocational
classes for students, and it's irresponsible to let students make
the choice without exposing them to both worlds. Movements to make
the curriculum "more relevant" for students interested in job
training cannot be allowed to become arguments for simplifying or
diluting what we teach our students nor what we expect from them.
Teaching students the skills necessary for college is not a form of
generating false hope, but an example of believing in human
capacity, a faith that some students cannot develop on their own.
If we lose that, what real purpose do schools serve?

None of this means that we shouldn't provide students–all of our
students–with the opportunity to develop vocational skills. Of
course schools should, and do, offer these classes and programs.
That's another example of opening up opportunities that students
may not have been aware of, but we do no favors to our students who
are disinclined to believe in the importance of education when we
reduce our expectations of them. We imprison them with their own
expectations and our acceptance of them.

Not all of my students may attend college immediately after high
school. Some may never do so. It shouldn't ever be because I, or
any other teacher, decided they didn't need the skills to do so.
Education must be about giving students choices and allowing them
to explore their interests, but more than anything, it must be
about helping them see what they never believed they could do. To
do anything less is to fail in our most important task.