George Rebane
In today’s Union, James Hinman calls for a new high school in Nevada County that focuses on producing graduates who are able to go directly into the workforce and begin earning a living at a job that can develop into a career path (here) These pages have long argued that today’s colleges focus on providing its students with expensive, gratuitous meathead degrees that prepare them for very little in real life. Additionally, we recall that high schools used to prepare young people for the workforce in many highly technical and high paying positions.
I am the beneficiary of such a high school. Recently I again summarized my experience here in a comment stream –
I believe that shutting down high school shop (occupational) programs was a very big mistake. Especially since they kept a lot of the politically correct crap for curriculum. I took the full course of ‘shop classes’ in Indiana, and was subsequently able to work summers in industry besides men who were my father’s age. In California, I hired on as a draftsman (promoted to designer) on the strength of what I learned in my high school year of drafting. My wages were such that I could have quit school and made a rewarding career, and raised a family on what I learned in high school. Instead, my summer drafting job paid for a physics degree from Univ of Calif. And my story was not unique, high school prepared us for life in those days.
In the past decades high school has become a remedial institution for dysfunctional grade schools, and in the large, college has become a remedial institution for dysfunctional high schools. The political orientation of teachers and curriculum shares most of the blame for this. Mr Hinman suggests the formation of a new charter ‘votech’ (my term) high school.
I would like to see this approach discussed, planned, and implemented along a procedural path that sidesteps, as much as possible, the corrupted teaching establishment. The aim here should be to develop a votech high school that can also serve as a template for other communities similarly motivated – i.e. the proverbial ‘movable feast’. Industry and commerce should be the prime partners (both in planning and funding) in this enterprise. And no one should expect clear sailing to build such votech schools here or elsewhere. The progressive elements in Nevada County and across the country will come out swinging against this student and jobs oriented revamp of high schools, for it will shake the very foundation of their long-established sinecures.
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