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I Just Couldn’t Sacrifice My Son
This heartbreaking story of giving up on D.C.’s schools - public and charter - is a telling and worrisome sign for education in the District, and a stark reminder that even the most involved parents and significant funding can’t solve for apathetic administrators and overworked teachers.
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6 Exciting Job Ideas for the Adventurous
This little snippet of wisdom, featured on the Yahoo front page today, is full of delicious ridiculousness. For example, did you know that “with language skills and a criminal justice degree, you can qualify for agency training that can lead to a job paying $53,000 per year”? Isn’t that awesome? Sign me up for some advanced spy training!
The list:
1. Police Detective
2. Undercover Operative
3. International Business and Trade
4. Adventure Resort Chef
5. Private Investigator
6. Emergency Medical Technician
Other highlights include the selling points for #6 (”A combination of on-the-job learning and medical training can help you earn $25,000 or more per year in this heart-pounding profession”) and #4 (”Want to wield a sharp knife under duress?”) Personally, I think the latter would be a much better lead-in for #2, but I guess that kind of thing is on the decline after the latest round of CIA reforms.
Of course, the whole thing is just a shill for craptastic “online training”, mainly emphasizing the “criminal justice” degree (note that three of the six professions are conveniently related to the field of kicking ass and - optionally - taking names). It was slightly surprising that this drivel was featured in the top spot on the front page, but I guess it shouldn’t be - after all, Yahoo sold out a long time ago.
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Forced to Pick a Major in High School
I’ve railed about over-specialization in education before, and this is yet another example. I just don’t see how freshmen in high school - or middle schoolers applying to high schools - can make these sort of decisions with any sort of pretense to legitimacy.
For yet more confirmation of why this is an atrocious idea, consider the six majors currently offered by the school profiled in the article:
“sports management, fine and performing arts, health sciences, international studies and global commerce, communications and new media and or liberal arts.”
Are you shitting me? What about, umm, math? Or history? Or, for that matter, agriculture or culinary arts?
And how the fuck is putting “sports management” in the same category as “health sciences” a good idea? Is anyone really surprised that it is, in fact, the most popular major? I’m willing to bet that there are more doctors and lawyers minted every year than sports agents. Shit, I’m guessing there are more doctors and lawyers minted every year than professional athletes. So why pretend like it’s a ubiquitous profession when in reality it’s a definitionally tiny field? I’m not saying that it’s a totally unreasonable ambition, or that students who are motivated and inspired to pursue that as a calling should be discouraged. I’m just saying that making it one of your six core majors inflates it to an unbelievable degree.
So, other than terrible implementations, why is it problematic to have 12-year-olds make potentially irrevocable decisions about their academic track? Because:
Two years ago, Akelia applied to the magnet program’s law and public safety academy because she wanted to be a lawyer. But after finding many of the legal cases boring and hard to relate to, she was unable to take classes in other fields because she was locked into her specialization.
“Now I wish I had probably gone to another academy because I like computers,� said Akelia, who is 16 and starting her junior year. “When you’re 13, you don’t realize how much work you have to put in to be a lawyer. It’s not like you just go to court, and win or lose, you make a lot of money.�
Umm… and? Is anyone really deeply shocked that business students have a higher rate of academic dishonesty than, say, political scientists?
It’s been a busy week, so I haven’t had time to blog as much as I’d like… however, right now I’d like to draw everyone’s attention to the fact that this week is my favorite of the “theme” weeks: namely, it’s Banned Books Week!
The American Library Association has a ton of great resources (linked above) - peruse them at your leisure. Fodder for comments: how many of the top 100 have you read?
PS - a note, the necessity of which both saddens and amuses me greatly: for the purposes of the above question, Where’s Waldo? counts as one book, no matter how many in the series you have read.
Princeton Drops Early Admissions
Following Harvard, Princeton is dropping its early admission program. This has an even greater impact, since Princeton’s program was Early Decision (the binding kind), and accounted for about half of the freshman class.
Does this mean that a sudden avalanche is on the way? Probably not; at least, most of the other Ivies and other elite schools have indicated that their early admission programs aren’t going anywhere this year. Still, it’s a great step.
Harvard to Drop Early Admissions
As many admissions officials quoted in the article point out, yes, Harvard has a special advantage in that they can drop early admissions without really sacrificing the quality of their admitted class. So what? Dropping Early Decision/Action is still a Good Thing for them to do, for all the usual reasons: ED/EA adds unnecessary pressure to an already stressful time, exacerbates class differences, and introduces yet more strategy into a process that (ideally) ought to be far less strategic.
So, yeah, not everyone can afford to do what Harvard’s doing, but that doesn’t make them any less deserving of approbation for taking this stand - especially considering that the few other elite schools who could also afford to take a similar stand, chose not to.
As Homework Grows, So Do Arguments Against It
Let’s review… homework, particularly at the lower grades, is rarely useful. Often, it’s actively harmful. Many, if not most, teachers recognize this. So, why does the total amount of homework keep growing?
But teacher knowledge is often trumped by school system policies, created by school boards whose members are often not educators, teachers have said.
Right-o.