I graduated from high school in 1963, from a small town school where most of the parents worked in trades, declining factories, or small businesses. There was no push to go college, and even that for all but a handful was the then very inexpensive nearby state college.
The big difference back then, in that environment, it was assumed that nobody would leave high school without a job skill. The guys all took serious vocational courses. The college bound took a one-year combined course of shorthand, typing, basic book keeping. The non-college bound girls took business courses and home economics. Everyone took an economics course that involved budgeting, running a small business, basic economic principles. Guidance didn't direct anyone to colleges they and their parents couldn't afford.
I look at that list of things that prepared us for the future, and NOT ONE of them is in the contemporary high school curriculum.
The bias of the article is every one needs or wants to go to college.
There is no mention of the value of a vocational education, of schooling that gives young people practical life and job skills.
We don’t invest in making that possible because of our obsession with a four year liberal arts college degree and we’re short-changing our children and denying them an opportunity to choose what’s best for their future.
Then again, its easy to rail against poverty and say all we need is to push young people into college when it may not be right for all of them.
That sounds like heaven actually. When I got a job, my first act was to put myself through a lot of these types of courses at the local college just to function, the degree I earned for that was an associate’s.