School Is Cool

Besides a huge lack of funding, the educational system in America suffers from what is perhaps an even greater problem. We have become completely out of touch with the realities of the modern world and continue to cling to archaic systems, all to the detriment of today's and tomorrow's youth. What is the main purpose of education? Is it to provide a skilled and able workforce? That's what I thought but my 16 years of education have proved otherwise.

Let's start with high school. High school is completely and totally worthless unless you plan to go to college. The whole curriculum is geared towards college prep work which leaves the high school grad that doesn't plan or can't go to college in the dust. What trade skills did you learn? How is naming the 22nd president going to get you a better job? A high school diploma is totally worthless for anything beyond a minimum wage job yet it doesn't have to be this way.

Here's my solution. High school should be two years of basic schooling. Let's face it, you really only need math until 8th grade and English until 10th to be able to function. After two years of the standard curriculum the student would have to choose between continuing with college prep work or going into one of the various trades offered by high school. Two years of computer programming, graphic design, carpentry, commercial trucking, clerical skills etc. is a hundred times more valuable than a worthless degree to someone that's not going to go to college. In this way those who knew they weren't going to college would have viable, real world skills. I know that it's tough to make that choice of the end of 10th grade but getting out of high school with no opportunities is far worse. Many other countries have remarkably effective trade schools that insure every citizen is skilled in a trade. Why don't we?

Our other problem is college. Earlier in the century some academicians decided that students were to narrow in their studies and didn't know enough about the world. The birth of Liberal Arts. Now we produce Renaissance students that can have in-depth conversations about the finer points of the Shinto religion or describe in detail the years of 1864-1912 in American History, yet can't find a job. The job market is highly specialized. Why are we wasting two years of college learning about things that will never help us get a job? I realize that this is to give students a more well-rounded perspective and allow them more choice in their major but almost all programs start your freshman year and we are talking about people's livelihood here. Being well rounded is great but being unemployed after spending thousands on a degree kind of offsets that.

We need to return to the age of highly specialized students that know their field inside and out. Being a jack of all trades that's good at a lot of things but not great at anything is bullshit. Specialization is such a common concept in business it seems odd that we have discounted it in education. College provides a service for which you pay money. Shouldn't you be damn good at your profession after?

Our educational system is great if you want to accumulate a vast wealth of American historical propaganda or learn hot to perform regression analysis, but it's not providing its most vital function. Being a productive member of society is so important to Americans yet we don't give people the tools to become them. The real goal of education is provide people with skills that are valuable to the society they live in. If people with 12 to 16 years of schooling under their belt but cannot get a job than obviously the educational system is not performing its function. We love tradition here but clinging to it because it's "always been that way" is having a detrimental effect. In order to change the system we need to change every aspect of it and education is no less important than the government or the judicial part.

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