Post by christie on May 11, 2004 20:23:21 GMT -5
I THINK THIS IS A VERY IMPORTANT MESSAGE -- OUR STUDENTS DON;T HAVE TO GO TO COLLEGE TO BE SUCCESSFUL YEARS AGO, WE FOUGHT THE GUIDANCE COUNSELORS WHO SAID "HE' LL NEVER MAKE IT TO COLLEGE, HE'S SPECIAL ED - " SO WE TRAINED AND CAJOLED THEM until THEY GOT AROUND TO ADMITTING THAT, YES, THEY COULD GO TO COLLEGE; NOW THE PENDULUM HAS SWUNG THE OTHER WAY, WHERE EVERYBODY HAS TO GO TO COLLEGE -- IT'S TIME WE GAVE THE SAME PRESTIGE TO THE TRADE/VOCATIONAL SCHOOLS AS WE DO TO THE COLLEGES. MYFORMER STUDENTS ARE ALL SUCCESSFUL,; SOME WENT TO COLLEGE, BUT MOST WENT ON TO A TRADE-THEY NOW GIVE ME THEIR BUSINESS CARDS AND SAY "THANKS" . THEY WERE TAUGHT EMPLOYMENT ORIENTATION: HOW TO GET AND KEEP A JOB, ETC., BUT THE STATE CAME IN AND SAID I HAD TO TEACH US HISTORY !! NOW THEY HAVE CAREER ED IN THE CORE CURRICULUM ----BIG DUH
Subject: [greatschools] Kids with tool belts also deserve educators' respect
I think Dan Walters has written an excellent column this morning.
We used to have great vocational classes in the PUSD. We have
almost finished removing them all.
Ed
Dan Walters: Kids with tool belts also deserve educators' respect
By Dan Walters -- Bee Columnist - /(Published May 10, 2004)/
When Andrew deBrito went to school Thursday, he strapped on a tool belt
rather than a book bag.
The 17-year-old Wheatland High School junior was one of about 200
Sacramento-area builders-in-training - 13 teams from 12 high schools -
who took part in a two-day design-build competition at Cal Expo,
sponsored by the Sacramento Builders' Exchange to boost vocational
education.
Voc-ed, as it's called, needs all the help it can get. The state's
educational and political overseers have a very evident disdain for the
notion of training high school students for jobs and have reworked state
policy to reflect a wholly fallacious, if popular, assumption that every
high schooler is headed to college.
Indeed, just a day before the saws began whirring and the hammers began
pounding at Cal Expo, state schools chief Jack O'Connell issued a press
release crowing about initial legislative approval of his high school
"reform" program whose centerpiece measure would put every student on a
college prep track. A Senate committee analysis suggests that its
provisions would undermine voc-ed classes because they would not meet
specified college-track standards.
Already, countless carpentry, mechanics and other voc-ed programs have
been abolished or severely reduced by administrators who are under heavy
political pressure to raise academic test scores. With about a third of
high school freshmen dropping out of school already, this inane
obsession with college prep classes and academic tests, when coupled
with the wholesale destruction of voc-ed, can only worsen that problem.
Meanwhile, however, auto repair shops, building contractors and other
employers have thousands of jobs - high-paying jobs that cannot be
outsourced to India - going begging. One auto dealer has been renting
very expensive billboard space along Interstate 405 near Los Angeles
International Airport to advertise for auto mechanics. California,
meanwhile, creates 16,000 new construction jobs a year, many of which go
unfilled.
DeBrito is planning to fill one of those jobs, and perhaps become a
licensed contractor himself, after finishing high school.
"My whole family is in the trades," he says. "It's like sports."
His team, and the others in the competition, were given identical sets
of construction materials, but each had to design and build its own
structure, a small outbuilding that might be used as a storage shed or
workshop. After grading, the structures were to be displayed at the
Sacramento County Fair and then sold, with the proceeds going back into
the high schools' voc-ed programs.
The politics of the one-size-fits-all approach to high school are
evident. Parents - particularly middle-and upper-middle-class parents
who are politically active - universally want to believe that their
children are destined for college and professional careers. Indeed,
we've almost been brainwashed to believe that anyone who doesn't pursue
that path is somehow a lesser being - even though common sense tells us
that not every kid is suited for academe, and even though society is
absolutely dependent on the skills and energies of people like Andrew
deBrito to build its houses and offices, fabricate and maintain its
machinery and otherwise do its real work.
Politicians and educational administrators pander to the myth because
it's the safest attitude to take. To suggest that some kids might, in
fact, be better off as mechanics, carpenters, electricians or plumbers
is to risk the wrath of parents, or even allegations of racist
"tracking." And the state's colleges exacerbate the trend by making it
very difficult for would-be voc-ed teachers to gain credential-worthy
training.
Privately, many superintendents, principals and teachers decry the
college-or-nothing assumption, and the destruction of voc-ed that it
generates, but feel helpless in the face of pressure from above.
California and its kids would be much better served if we abandoned
fallacy and embraced reality, creating the kind of high schools in which
the vocationally oriented - the kids who want to work with their hands
as well as their brains - were accorded as much respect as the
academically oriented, and educational programs were tailored to
individual needs.
Subject: [greatschools] Kids with tool belts also deserve educators' respect
I think Dan Walters has written an excellent column this morning.
We used to have great vocational classes in the PUSD. We have
almost finished removing them all.
Ed
Dan Walters: Kids with tool belts also deserve educators' respect
By Dan Walters -- Bee Columnist - /(Published May 10, 2004)/
When Andrew deBrito went to school Thursday, he strapped on a tool belt
rather than a book bag.
The 17-year-old Wheatland High School junior was one of about 200
Sacramento-area builders-in-training - 13 teams from 12 high schools -
who took part in a two-day design-build competition at Cal Expo,
sponsored by the Sacramento Builders' Exchange to boost vocational
education.
Voc-ed, as it's called, needs all the help it can get. The state's
educational and political overseers have a very evident disdain for the
notion of training high school students for jobs and have reworked state
policy to reflect a wholly fallacious, if popular, assumption that every
high schooler is headed to college.
Indeed, just a day before the saws began whirring and the hammers began
pounding at Cal Expo, state schools chief Jack O'Connell issued a press
release crowing about initial legislative approval of his high school
"reform" program whose centerpiece measure would put every student on a
college prep track. A Senate committee analysis suggests that its
provisions would undermine voc-ed classes because they would not meet
specified college-track standards.
Already, countless carpentry, mechanics and other voc-ed programs have
been abolished or severely reduced by administrators who are under heavy
political pressure to raise academic test scores. With about a third of
high school freshmen dropping out of school already, this inane
obsession with college prep classes and academic tests, when coupled
with the wholesale destruction of voc-ed, can only worsen that problem.
Meanwhile, however, auto repair shops, building contractors and other
employers have thousands of jobs - high-paying jobs that cannot be
outsourced to India - going begging. One auto dealer has been renting
very expensive billboard space along Interstate 405 near Los Angeles
International Airport to advertise for auto mechanics. California,
meanwhile, creates 16,000 new construction jobs a year, many of which go
unfilled.
DeBrito is planning to fill one of those jobs, and perhaps become a
licensed contractor himself, after finishing high school.
"My whole family is in the trades," he says. "It's like sports."
His team, and the others in the competition, were given identical sets
of construction materials, but each had to design and build its own
structure, a small outbuilding that might be used as a storage shed or
workshop. After grading, the structures were to be displayed at the
Sacramento County Fair and then sold, with the proceeds going back into
the high schools' voc-ed programs.
The politics of the one-size-fits-all approach to high school are
evident. Parents - particularly middle-and upper-middle-class parents
who are politically active - universally want to believe that their
children are destined for college and professional careers. Indeed,
we've almost been brainwashed to believe that anyone who doesn't pursue
that path is somehow a lesser being - even though common sense tells us
that not every kid is suited for academe, and even though society is
absolutely dependent on the skills and energies of people like Andrew
deBrito to build its houses and offices, fabricate and maintain its
machinery and otherwise do its real work.
Politicians and educational administrators pander to the myth because
it's the safest attitude to take. To suggest that some kids might, in
fact, be better off as mechanics, carpenters, electricians or plumbers
is to risk the wrath of parents, or even allegations of racist
"tracking." And the state's colleges exacerbate the trend by making it
very difficult for would-be voc-ed teachers to gain credential-worthy
training.
Privately, many superintendents, principals and teachers decry the
college-or-nothing assumption, and the destruction of voc-ed that it
generates, but feel helpless in the face of pressure from above.
California and its kids would be much better served if we abandoned
fallacy and embraced reality, creating the kind of high schools in which
the vocationally oriented - the kids who want to work with their hands
as well as their brains - were accorded as much respect as the
academically oriented, and educational programs were tailored to
individual needs.