Are you college? According to Chelsea Waite Reshape the Center for Public Educationthe answer is no. More and more students, parents and educators are aware of this.
Waite spent two years talking to administrators, teachers, parents and students at six high schools in New England to learn more about post-student desires. The study is aimed at reshaping the public education center specifically involving New England high schools, but White said she heard the findings from school leaders across the country resonated. “We found that the vision they portrayed was that they wanted every student in that school to have a path to a better life,” Waite said.
What does it mean to have a “good life” in this situation? What is the path that does not include the university? This is the problem we solved in this week’s episode Explain to meVox’s weekly call performance. Check out the conversation between Waite and host Jonquilyn Hill; it has been edited to extend length and clarity. You can listen Explain to me exist Apple Podcast,,,,, Spotifyor Wherever you get a podcast. If you want to submit a question, please email askvox@vox.com or call 1-800-618-8545.
When I was a kid, the purpose of high school was to prepare everyone to go to college. Has it changed now?
Let’s go back to the beginning of high school because I think this will help us answer where we are now. When high schools first started in the United States, they weren’t universal, they were indeed designed for the elite: mostly white, male, middle and upper class students who went to high school as a way to get them to higher education in order to play these leadership roles in society.
Then from the 1910s to the 1940s, there was a big High school sports This basically makes high school a little bit like everyone’s large-scale education. The idea is that as a society, it is our responsibility to ensure that young people are prepared for the world. For some of them, this could mean college. For others, this may mean they can work better and should be in different jobs or careers. As time goes by, it is clear that there is serious inequality on who can enter what path.
Yes, I remember my dad told me his school counselor, “Maybe you should join the army.” The wording feels weird for many reasons. (He ended up with a Ph.D.)
Draw from your father’s experience and compare it to what you describe yourself. I think this is a great representation of the changes from the 1950s to the 1970s all the way to the 1980s, 90s and early 2000s, where there is indeed a recognition that we are not giving young people equal opportunities to enter college, which is related to economic and social mobility and social mobility and opportunities and to earn higher incomes throughout your life. There are many schools (including many charter schools) that open in this way”Everyone’s university“ Mission.
Now fast forward to where we are now. Regarding how to push each student to college and accept college fees without having to really make it clear what they want to do for them means we have a lot of students attending college and then never finishing a college degree, taking on a lot of debt, and often working on the path of their careers.
Now, we are in a more holistic place: if you want to go to college, that’s OK. If you want to join the army, you can. If you want to trade or start working, you can. Does this transformation come from the students themselves or from other places?
Some of them come from the students themselves. Students really question whether the university is worth it and know that what they know about themselves is really true for them.
What we hear from students is that choosing to go to college is financially risky. Students are not sure if they really want to accept social pressures and social dynamics, especially from the pandemic. Some students don’t even really get a full high school experience. They describe not necessarily preparing to enter college experience. I think it does prove that students know what they need.
Parents say they just want their children to be happy. I think every generation of parents will say that to some extent. But if that means their kids don’t go to college, are parents really okay?
This is mixed. Now, many of us are working hard on this issue now. What we hear from many parents is that they really want their children to make the best choice for them.
Parents also saw the data. There is still clear evidence that more education in your life does mean more lifetime income on average. But the average is the key. If you actually look at the spread from the lowest income to the highest income at different levels of education, there is a lot of overlap.
Do you see the resistance of high school?
We heard some. I think this is from here: teachers are all in college. So, in most cases, everyone in the school has gone through a path that includes college at some point. Therefore, it is difficult to get rid of your own experience and truly recognize the other avenue to adopt.
Some of the parents and even teachers we spoke with said they had some concerns about celebrating a shift in greater school opportunities. That [it] This means schools are lowering expectations. This doesn’t have to be true. The expectations we see in schools are still high. Every student graduates are ready to go to college if they choose and have a good understanding of the careers they may want to pursue, including some that do not involve a degree.
However, I think the concern about lowering expectations is completely legal. By that time, teachers and parents even said, “There are a big risk when some students are in college and others do go to the military better or go with their hands.
Are we still asking too many students? Looking back, I was lucky that I wanted to be a journalist when I was 15 and I would do it as an adult. But this is so rare. How should children know what they want to do for the rest of their lives? Are we asking about too many children?
I don’t think we are. I think the risk is that we create a dead end. If you say at 15, “I want to be a journalist, that’s why it’s lightening me right now.” Then you go intern with another journalist, then start taking some early college journalism classes and decide, “Actually, what do you know? I want to be an engineer.” If you’ve closed the opportunity to be an engineer, or rather, if your school says, “She’s in the journalism repertoire. We don’t really have to teach her science or math,” it’s a dead end. So we need schools that don’t create dead ends for students, but encourage students to explore real-world careers they can imagine early.
