I appreciate State Superintendent of Public Instruction Susan Castillo encouraging Lebanon's 7th-8th graders to begin to ponder possible career options, and to know that there will be additional science and math requirements in place by the time they graduate from high school. But it seems there is pressure on students to select a career path before their developing brains can even get around the word "career." I would wager it's a small percentage of you reading these words who had selected a viable career choice by 8th grade.
The academy system at LHS tracks kids by asking them to pick a general career area so they can select the most appropriate academy before their freshman year. Each academy then tailors classes to cover high school basics within the framework of the academy career domains. This system greatly reduces the possibility that a student interested in physical science will enroll in a drama class (in a different academy) that sparks a passion for theatre arts, that might then lead to a college drama major: It reduces the chance a student strong in language arts (social systems academy) will discover a talent for chemistry as applied in a medical field (different academy).
High school resources are best spent offering a wide range of courses that cover basics and offer a taste of possible career futures. How will one know if one likes welding, if there is not a class to try? How will one know if they might have abilities and interests to train as a dentist if as an 8th grader they loved drama so selected a social academy?
Now dentists might indeed come out of a social academy: It can happen. But this tracking of high schoolers reduces the chances that they will find their way to a true passion. Just as tracking in the 60's steered some of us toward college, some towards vocational schools and some towards a terminal high school diploma -- this process limits students knowledge of their choices and interests by prematurely asking them to make life-changing choices.
There was a day when students graduated from high school, then decided on their next step. Then there was tracking by school-determined aptitude levels (college prep, voc prep, or high school is all you can hope for.). Now students are asked to decide in the 8th grade on a general career domain.
Will we keep pushing career-decisions to lower and lower grades? Do we start to teach the kindergardener who wants to be a cowboy to make rope loops?
We need to back off and gives kids space to discover interests and abilities at the high school level, while enthusiastically teaching basic courses with rigor so that as many students as possible are ready for college courses should they decide to pursue them.
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13 comments:
That is why the children of this country is falling behind many industrial nations. We baby them too much give them too much freedom and they end up working at McDonalds and other retail places. You should be ashamed of yourself not thinking outside the box and not encouraging students to plan for the future. Many older people that were born and grow up here live on SS from month to month. They did not plan to fail they fail to plan and see the future. If we encourage our children now they will be successful in the future. Have you read the story of the 10 year old who had just graduated from college? No special gift on her part she just plan ahead of her time. Why go with the flow and listen to people like you? If we all sit back and not have our children reach their full potential then we are the one who fail to be parents. I hope all the parents wish the best for their children and push their children to be successful in the future. My children are very young but I had already instilled in them the need to plan ahead for the future and the need to work hard in school.
You think so old fashion it is such a shame. I thought you said you have small children. If you really care about your children you should start planning for their future now and make sure they will be the best than the rest. Start thinking big and outside of the box. No wonder why children are failing. Their parents are living in the 19th century instead of the 21st.
I wonder if you had ever left Lebanon?
Do you think it's a good idea for a 10-year-old to have graduated from college?
Anonymous,
I think - to put it generously - you are conflating two things:
1. Planning for the future at all.
2. The content of the plan (in context, the presence of the academy system at LHS).
Certainly we can plan for the future without the academy system. Such a system is simply one way to do so.
Conversely, we can have an academy system and completely fail to plan for the future.
The two simply aren't the same thing.
Finally, I think your comment shows a lack of imagination: Who says we should accept a world in which 8th graders need to pick a career choice or face being at a disadvantage? The freakin' job market is a human creation, after all...
Dennis -- Huh?? Are you saying parents need to, outside the school system, make sure kids are exposed to various subject options so they can make better-informed career decisions, since they will be lacking that at LHS? I would be doing that anyway: I'm not about to leave ALL of that to a school system (at least not ours).
Of course we need to plan for the future, all the way through our lives, but some decisions are best left until a higher-level of cognitive development.
Guess I don't understand your comment.
I think Anonymous is conflating resistance to the academy system with resistance to planning for the future.
Needless to say, I think that's wrong.
Dennis -- Sorry -- I initially missed that you had directed that to anonymous...I mistakenly though you had directed it at my post.
Superintendent Castillo is showing young people that the things they find interesting (as individuals)conect to their school work. If young people want to do better in school they will have more choices when they are older. If adults can help them make that connection they will be more likely to do well in school and in life.
The choice of an academy does not limit student's choice in other areas. There are students crossing academies every term. They take band, art, newspaper, cooking, etc. in addition to their core classes. The academy focuses, ideally, their content in the academy's area. The living system has courses that focus on their areas. The physical system has three areas and the science and social studies courses incorporate those areas into their curriculum. The academies in no way forces a career choice on the student.
I know when I went to high school I liked certain courses and spent my time in those courses. It would have been nice if my social studies class and had some of my interest area in its curriculum, I would have enjoyed it more. The academy system works all over the country, they are called magnet schools among other things. The resistance to the academy system is stupid i n my opinion. The advantages of focused classes, smaller peer sets, more teacher interaction, all out weigh the slight disadvantages. The lack of options for students comes more from the lack of funding(there are less teachers), schedule(the trimester system is very limiting), and periods in a day(5 now opposed to 6-8 before).
I would like to focus more on those issues which would increase the effectiveness of the academy system. If we do away with the academies, we will lose all their benefits but gain nothing in return. There still won't be more options because the issues limiting options are not addressed.
"The academies in no way forces a career choice on the student."
Depends on what you mean by "force." Certainly, their resumes are not checked for academy suitability upon application, but many students self-identify as being limited in profession based on the academy they are in. The effect is the same as being "forced."
Additionally, who said I was against academies? (If you were indeed referring to me.)
I think old Core system was better - classes such as science, social studies and language arts were taught by a team of teachers, while electives were open to everyone. I think this provides a better balance between the close-knit academy nature and an open system in which students are free to take whatever electives they want (without filling out additional paperwork).
Dennis-
I was not addressing your comments. To say they are implicitly forced may be true. After all, if you like to do something and you choose to be in a community that does that something you tend to reinforce that something. Does that mean you have to look on your own to broaden your viewpoint? Yes. But that would be true in a non-academy system. If I don't look to take other electives, I won't take them.
Are there other models? Again, yes. However, none are intrinsically better than the other. A core model might work but it still would not provide any more opportunities to the students. The problem is funding. The staff does not exist to provide more opportunities. In physical systems a teacher has had to give up doing engineering because they need more math classes. We have less teachers today than 10 years ago and hence less options.
If we want more options, we need to provide more teachers or more periods in a day. I wouldn't mind seeing the class day go to 6 periods at about 60 minutes each, my children would then have more to choose from. We can't really add teachers since there are no additional classrooms. That was a problem with the "re-model". The district did not plan for increased enrollment and did not provide enough classrooms to grow into.
I really do not care that much about academies per se. I just want to get the discussion off the un-important structure of the school and on to how to fund more opportunities for our students. The academies don't hurt them, lack of funding does. I would gladly vote and campaign for a local option levy to increase funds for the schools. Or cut some administrative positions, especially at the district office.
The people in 4-H found out years ago that using a student's interest as a means to focus on learning is an incomparable way to educate yong people. Just as kids in cooking and cows use different topics to teach the same lessons, public schools can use "academies" to educate students. Most 4-H members don't follow a career in the club programs they choose - its a means to an end, not the end in itself. Equating academies in high schol to careers is not a valid comparison. We use to hear people asking that school "become more relevant" and now we have a way to do it and some people don't like that either; sigh.
Anon who mentions 4-H: I guess I never saw much evidence of the academies working the way you describe ("using a student's interest as a means to focus on learning"). Yes, that does happen - but, as far as I saw, only in small amounts.
Equating the academies to career tracks is a completely valid comparison (heck, that's a large part of the draw of the academies for some adults).
No, not everyone will end up in the career track indicated by their academy, and that's a good thing. It would be ironclad tracking then, rather than simply moderately class-based confusion.
Where have you been Improved Education? I hope you didn't let Dennis Dugan, who writes the Rhetorical Wasteland blog and Jennifer Walter, who writes the Lebanon for Reconciliation blog run you out of town! I enjoyed your opinions and views. Please come back.
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