croy's comments

Trends in Secondary Education: Specialization - Blog Entry

13 Feb 2008 06:46 PM

The problem with specialized education is that you are presuming a 14 year old is competent to make a choice at a young age of what they would like to focus on for the rest of their life. That's not how the world works. The average job for the new generation of college grads is 3-4 years before they begin another career. In my hometown there is much talk of reforming one of the urban high schools into a vocational school. For some reason it strikes me as inherently racist to say that if you are not white and from poverty the only jobs open to you will be vocational ones. Doesn't this kind of undermine the whole purpose of education? I don't get it! The other part that makes me fume is why it is public education's job to train the factory workers of tomorrow. Can't corporate America train their own labor force. I think America works best when we have a well educated citizenry. If that is the goal then we need to teach all students how to be lifelong learners.