Posted on 12/04/2013 9:03:38 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Instead of going through Congress and making the initiative bipartisan, President Obama acted alone in mid-November, promising $100 million in grants to specialized high schools — such as New York City's Pathways in Technology Early College High School — that prepare students for technical careers. The president's on the right track, but why make it partisan? Schools like P-TECH are an idea whose time has come — one that can be adopted by both parties and by business as well as government.
Vocational education fell from favor decades ago because it was seen as an inferior track for less able students. More Americans attend college today than ever before: this year, 42% of young people 18 to 24 years old. Even among high school students in the bottom quarter of their class, 90% expect to go to college. And there's no question that, for many Americans, college is a ticket to the middle class.
But there's also mounting evidence that the college-for-all model isn't working......
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
No kidding. We need polytechnics like they have in Europe — basically trade schools with a little more academic oomph. This would benefit the people who go to them and their future employers and, actually, our colleges and universities — folks who want job training wouldn’t be cluttering them up, and we’d only need to deal with folks who actually want an education.
I like that proposal.
Vo-tech schools should be built all over the place. But I guess we don’t need them since Mexicans will do all the jobs that we don’t want to do. Like building houses, plumbing, electrical, HVAC, mechanics, etc.
I taught Advanced Precision Measuring Equipment Laboratory Technician training to Navy and Air Force active duty (also civilians and foreign military). Many “college grads” wouldn’t be able to get through the courses.
General Dynamics (and many other companies) know which MOS’s, AFSC’s, Navy NEC’s etc. will have the skills and knowledge they are looking for.
Everyone has the same potential.
Not.
I have a friend whose MOS is Patriot MD—would that be among those you reference?
I see from your post #5 that you condemn “worthless degrees.” To some extent you are correct, degrees in “African studies” do strike me as non-academic and frivolous. But you probably also see degrees in, say, history as worthless, too.
More than likely you do not understand what a truly good education confers on someone, i.e., an understanding of the world we live in. IOW, you see education as job training. Too bad.
Politics
Millennials Abandon Obama and Obamacare
A majority of America’s youngest adults would vote to recall the president.
Take this test to determine you are a Millennial:
My score was: “Your Millennial score is 0”
How Millennial Are You?
Take our 14 item quiz and we’ll tell you how “Millennial” you are, on a scale from 0 to 100, by comparing your answers with those of respondents to a scientific nationwide survey. You can also find out how you stack up against others your age.
http://www.pewresearch.org/quiz/how-millennial-are-you/
***plumbing, electrical, HVAC, mechanics, etc.***
THAT is where the real money is, along with welding, fit up, machinists, pipeline work.
Unfortunately such jobs require you to sweat in the summer and get cold in the winter, and come home diry, something today’s kids hate!
ten years ago I was at a gathering that included a bunch of public school teachers...
you should have seen the looks of shock and outrage when I said something to the effect of “college isn’t for everyone”.
Today they are called heavy equipment operators and they make a pretty good living. ;~))
Putting everyone on an academic track and downplaying vocational education was a big mistake.
See, Judge Smails was a genius.
As a young lad years ago I decided I wanted to be a mining engineer and go to exotic SA. I sweated working in a bakery all summer so that I could make enough money for the first semester at a highly rated JC. On the first day at orientation I was introduced to the idea that just being enrolled put me in the elite of the young people. What a joke especially when I got the impression that the girls could expect to meet some exceptional young men. WWII cut into my thoughts for rumba and samba for two years. When I got back to college after WWII I found a much different college atmosphere. The colleges and universities had found there was a lot of government money being tossed around and decided to cash in with a bunch of meaningless, as to real professional societal needs,to make money and student curriculums. That their were societal vultures just waiting for such opportunities to pillage the system didn’t help matters. I did graduate from one of worlds best universities in a tech field with help from the G.I. Bill but my eyes and thoughts were opened to a belief the Nation had created a wasteland as to real academic and societal needs.
There is a difference between teach critical thinking and indoctrination. Most people could save a lot of money by going to vocational schools or junior colleges and getting useful skills and not paying for a gold plated “education” that's worthless.
I would expect anyone with the screen name of MasterGunner01 to not understand the purpose of higher education. You are fixated on college as job training and there’s no way to penetrate that barrier. And I’m not about to try.
There is always a huge attrition rate among freshmen and it makes more sense to get one’s academic identity established close to home than far away. Likewise, if one must go to a four year institution, then go to a state university because of in-state tuition benefits.
College or university work is very expensive and I believe it is important for a student to understand what he or she is signing up to do, its pros and cons, and the cost of that decision.
Rather than automatically send your kids off to college, maybe you need to have a long discussion about what they want to do for a living and what their goals in life are. There are alternatives to college that provide training in many different disciplines that can lead to rewarding jobs.
I'm retired and I can tell you that what I learned in college was great for my general knowledge base, but it did not factor in the job I got. The job that T pursued for 30 years was technical writing for aviation systems. In effect, I had to translate the engineer's jargon into instructions for maintenance technicians to follow. That is not an easy task.
[If you think this is a no brainer, then sit down and write a step by step procedure to turn on, sign in, and open various programs on your computer for someone who is completely ignorant of computers and their associated jargon. Bonus points: write up the closing of programs and step by step shutdown procedures for your computer. Then, have someone follow those directions to see how well you did.]
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