As spending by wealthy weakens, so does economy

Started by Jude, August 01, 2010, 03:05:43 PM

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Noelle

Quote from: RubySlippers on September 03, 2010, 03:28:12 PM
Its a simple matter of resources if the state is paying for a childs education why put good money into students for college prep if they are unlikely to earn a degree, teach them a trade or profession over four years where itspretty much free.

Then why try at all? Any student can fail for any number of reasons. Treating education like it's not productive is...not productive. Education is vitally important. There have been a large number of articles cropping up in the news lately that high-paying jobs are going unfilled because there aren't enough qualified people. Why aren't they qualified? They don't have an education. Relying on unskilled labor alone makes everyone's quality of life go down. The fact is, education improves life. It improves the quality of life you enjoy. You don't have health care and neither do I, but we're living far better off than the poor in other nations. If you don't have doctors, all the free health care in the world won't matter. If you don't have scientists, the range of ways you can be treated by medical staff suffers. If you don't have teachers, nothing matters period.

QuoteI'm no idealist we need every young person to be prodective asap after their educations like other nations and we are FAILING.

Being productive includes furthering your education and thinking long-term. Having a generation of kids where, by your estimate, less than thirty percent actually has a college education is damaging, plain and simple. When it comes time for you to retire, you will be relying on that generation to be taking care of you. A carpenter, a construction worker, an auto mechanic -- these are all completely valid pursuits, but the fact is, none of these people are going to be extending your lifespan, curing diseases, maintaining your food supply, innovating technology, or even running your legal system. There will always be people to do the "grunt" work. There is no shortage of people willing to shovel shit or push buttons on a cash register because there is already a natural number of people who aren't making it to college who still require employment. Those who choose not to be employed at all are the ones that worry me.

QuoteAnd I never said just testing teacher reports, parents input and the advice of college admissions folks should all count to decide which track a student gets. And a child can always go to college as an adult just don't waste High School by having overly lofty ambitions.

...Wasting high school by having overly lofty ambitions? People who have overly lofty ambitions are the kinds of people who go on to college to begin with. College itself is an overly lofty ambition for most people simply because it's not affordable -- My family gave me no financial support whatsoever and I just graduated with two degrees. I did fairly average in high school, but I see a lot of students who were, by all means, academically better-off than me who failed in college or never went to begin with. Conversely, I have friends who don't seem outwardly intelligent, but are very, very insightful when given the chance. Your ideas are fundamentally flawed against the very ideas that make this country in that in that you grant power to everyone but the student to decide for them. College admissions already screens students in various ways as it is.

QuoteAs for job skills when a High School graduate has a job at Burger King and think its ok to regularly show up late without calling there is need for improvement folks - and some can't even make change.

All the education in the world cannot make someone work harder or show up on time and if you can please state a little research for some of this to prove otherwise, I would be inclined to consider it. Work ethic is not equated to academia. They do not go hand in hand. If somebody is working at Burger King because they have no education, then they're getting precisely the kind of job they prepared for, and if they can't show up on time, then they deserve to be unemployed. That's a personal problem, not one that tax dollars need to go towards fixing.

QuoteCome on a year of general employability skills would not hurt.

Except, as I've pointed out, general employment skills are taught on the job and most high school students get a part-time job while they're still in high school, thus making it redundant and a waste of resources and tax dollars.

QuoteSome people are just not college material just look at how many students quit by their Junior year with lots of debt and then have no major job skills. And in this job market and society entry level training is very hard to get employers want workers ready to go pretty much.

Then isn't the issue with the cost of college? Of course some people aren't college material and drop out, so why would you limit that pool even further by narrowing down those allowed to go try anyway? You would turn out an even smaller percentage of people actually finishing college than there already is, thus damaging your economy further by having an even tinier pool of qualified people to do high-end jobs. That makes absolutely no logical sense.

I'd also be interested in seeing any kind of research on the reasoning of your last claim, because from my experience, entry-level training is not hard to get, given every single job I've ever held has been entry-level and I have picked up my training in two weeks or less. It's unskilled labor with an emphasis on unskilled. It's not high-end academia. It's not surgery or aviation. Running a cash register, serving food, and cleaning bathrooms are certainly legitimate ways to earn money, but they are not jobs that require huge amounts of technical proficiency or education -- most require little to none at all, which is why most of those kinds of jobs only require you to have a high school diploma, if even that.

Serephino

I'm going to have to go with Noelle and Oniya on this one.  I don't see anything wrong with offering technical training to those interested, kind of like our county vo-tech I mentioned, but to decide for them is a bit extreme.  You can't predict the future.

I got decent grades in high school.  I scored off the charts in tests, except in math.  By your standards I would have been an excellent candidate for college.  Anyone who knew me would have expected me to do well.  The thing is I did go to college because that was what was expected of me.  I had a major nervous breakdown after a year. 

Isn't it more of a waste to spend all that time and money preparing someone for college when they won't finish?  My family and teachers were shocked.  I think it would be better to just not push everyone toward college.  When a teenager tells their parents they don't want to go to college they get read the riot act. 

I agree that not everyone is suited for higher education, but shouldn't it be up to the students? 

Jude

I think the real problem is that we push children and teenagers into making decisions they're not ready to commit for.  At 18 I decided to go to college because it was expected of me, I did graduate, but I don't like the area of focus I chose at all.  I know myself much better now in my 20s and if I had a chance to redo it, I would choose a completely different career path.

Since we make everyone take similar classes for the first year or two of college, I don't see why we shouldn't just integrate it into public education as an optional (but strongly encouraged) end.  Make a 13th and 14th grade where college gen ed courses are covered.  We need another transition, I think, between high school and college that offers students more freedom and flexibility, and anyone can benefit from gen ed courses even if you end up going to a trade school ultimately.  It would help also if during 13 & 14th grade students were offered part time jobs to help maintain and run schools in order to cut costs that teach responsibility and help foster a work ethic.

If you think about it, it is a little absurd that our overall lifespan has grown, people are expected to work longer than ever, but we spend the same amount of time preparing for this as we have since the inception of the college system.  The world is much more complicated today, easing people in their late teens into adult life a bit more gracefully (i.e. give them training wheels when they're 18 and 19) would have a greatly positive effect.

RubySlippers

For me its simply the best use of finite dollars and resources if we spend $1 on a child that is not likely to go to a four years college, get a degree that matters as in will give them a good chance at a job for the debt load then its wasted.

If instead they are given a skill base to work for that $1, they are therefore productive and not in debt to be so.

No one says they shouldn't go to college one could incorporate both into a tracked education if done well, where they have work skills and a certification in something to make a living at as a fallback. But what about poor people why should they be expected to take on larged debts for skills they could learn in High School over two years? One example LPN's in Florida there is a huge demand, its not the same as an RN and the courses could be taught in two years in High School and even set them up for an RN to be earned later on. I'm not talking crappy work here folks but many options so they are employable right out of High School at above entry level. Another idea paraprofessional health care workers like various techs that are taught at career acdemies you could teachon of those or maybe two.

But in Florida there is another issue they ar raisingthe bar to earna High School Diploma to:

Algebra 1
Algebra 2
Biology
Chemistry or Physics
One Other Science Class

What about students that CANNOT do some of these they will not get a diploma, not get employment skills and not have the kind of future they could have over learning some way to make a living. Are you says a student that can't do ALeebra 1 & 2 could go to college fora four year degree? I want the same attention paid to them.

This used to not be an issue when my uncle graduated nd he was slow in the 1940's he could go and work ina factory and low mthskills didn't matter when plugging this part into a car just some training. Over time his skills got better andhis work was good so they promoted him up. But he wasnot a machinist or a welder who hasskilled trades with  need to know mathematics to a higher level thanhe had. Without those jobs our High School students need to be realistic asdoes the system. If child is not likely to benefit from college getting a meaningful degree and although I love philosophy and history thsoe are not good degrees for an average student to get ifon is eecking by on a C average or a bit higher then teching them to be employed is likely a better option for them. But leve community collegeopen there is no reason they should not go to college its enriching but doing soloding up debts for degrees that are soft for career aspirations is another matter.

Jude

If you set the sights on a high school diploma so low that every student could accomplish it then what the point be?  Having a diploma would not say anything about the student, it would not in any way indicate to the employer the caliber of the individual.  High School Diplomas shouldn't be accessible to everyone, just the vast majority of students, and the lower end of that majority should have to put forth serious effort and struggle a bit to attain it.

I see no reason why the majority of students can't get a degree with the requirements you laid out, they're no different than the requirements were for the average students at my high school and we had a high graduation rate.

As for the students who fall between the cracks and literally can't achieve, that's what special education is for.  This is how the system is designed:  those who cannot get the same certificate everyone else does are instead taught life skills and basic employability skills so that they can find a job and become productive members of society.

It's true that we don't aim very high with that bottom rung of students.  We don't put a lot of focus, time, or energy into teaching them trade skills and usually they're only taught the bare minimum to get a menial job at places like the airport, fast food, home depot, etc.  I wish we had the resources, time, and will to teach them to be more, but the fact of the matter is, it's far more productive to society to focus on the average student than outliers in any direction.

As long as we're behind when it comes to our average student, we shouldn't be focusing on the people who are never going to add anything huge to society anyway.   That sort of focus is recipe for societal failure; we're already lagging behind in science and mathematics in the general populace, and unless you want to be buying the next generation iPod and Operating System from a Chinese company, we need to get serious about that.