08.20.07
When Is Too Early To Decide?
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.�