Every High School Student on College Track?

[dumpster56]

Interesting read here, I wonder who will fix our automobiles, build or remodel our homes, electricians plumbers, etc! Oh yea those immigrants!!

They removed all industrial arts from almost all the high schools in the nation, its crazy. Not every student WANTS to go to college, there still should be the industrial arts track!!

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/17/education/17college.html?hp

 

[Walt34]

The carpenters, plumbers and electricians will then become scarce, demand will rise, and they will again become well-compensated. Or make enough to afford a single-family home.

Not everyone wants to go to college. I didn't either until I spent six months unloading trucks. Technical schools will remain, and their classes are full. Google "technical school" and your state's name, there should be a lot of them. The demand for truck drivers has never been higher, and so on. And a lot of truck drivers like what they're doing.

 

[clifp]

I think that the biggest failing of the US educational is the lack of vocational training for kids who don't want and in many cases SHOULD NOT be going to college.

Other than the armed services, and handful of vocational schools, I have no idea how kids learn to be mechanics, carpenters, truck drivers etc. I know that my old company use to set up special courses at the local community college for training potential future employees.

 

[haha]

Why not just call high school college? Then we can save money by not building out another layer of useless "education" offered to people who can't learn by people who can barely teach.

Ha

 

[Caoineag]

Other than the armed services, and handful of vocational schools, I have no idea how kids learn to be mechanics, carpenters, truck drivers etc. I know that my old company use to set up special courses at the local community college for training potential future employees.

Actually, mechanic certificates are received from colleges. My father even went to college for mechanics when he was 19, oh so long ago.

The high school I went to offered vocational classes and AP courses and would help those not headed for college to find a vocational school in their chosen field. That said, a lot of employer's do the training and/or classes for skilled labor.

 

[ladelfina]

People here probably think I'm a lefty.. and lefties are supposed to think everyone has a divine right to become a Ph.D. intellectual or "XYZ"-studies major (they do, if they have the chops and can find decent employment or manage it in their spare time, but not if it requires grade inflation and social promotion..). I'm really disheartened by the level of expertise displayed in "the trades" both in the US and in Italy these days. Everyone wants a white-collar job instead (and here they are proud to perform those poorly as well). Conversely.. in hindsight I would have traded every hour I spent learning French since age 8 for an equivalent number of hours in home electrical wiring or plumbing!!!

I had a funny talk with my 80-y.o. Italian MIL where we were discussing a local flap in a local paper about who WAS and WASN'T "qualified" to teach kids journalism in some supplementary course. Of course she is conditioned to bureaucratic hierarchy and stamps and titles and so forth.. but as she was a math teacher, I asked her what Isaac Newton's credentials were. I'd learned as a sprout that journalism is "who, what, when, where, why".. no "titles" required.. and amazingly the NYT and CNN manage (to at least an equally good or bad degree as the Italian press even in the worst of cases) --without 'benefit' of the extra official "accreditation" required here. That said, there are still school tracks here that lead to formal trade apprenticeship, which should be indispensable in the scheme of things.

Much of the modern 'education' engine is an end in itself. Don't get me wrong; I generally love teachers. I hate 'educators'. Learning is by doing and showing and copying and evolving through developed mastery and desire, not just by dint of educators' yakking and students' dutiful attendance/submission to said yakking...

As far as truck-driving is concerned.. you just pay a buncha money to a private specialized driving school. I had an old (highly-paid-engineer) BF who took a few weeks' sabbatical off work to go to "tractor-trailer training school".. just for the heck of it! He said it was scary, or rather the students were scary.


Walt.. demand for decent tradespeople IS HIGH. but it doesn't seem to be helping fill the gap. There's a weird kind of "what's my line" Italian game show where you are supposed to match people up with their professions.. a secondary promotion shows a lady in the audience running up to the guy admitting to being a plumber, grabbing him and dragging him off, saying "I'VE BEEN LOOKING EVERYWHERE FOR A PLUMBER!!! Now, in my house, I have these drains that bla, bla, bla.."

In three years we have gone through all three local plumbers.. the last, most-established and most-expensive one, called to replace a leaking radiator valve 1.) put the new valve on upside down 2.) created/ignored a new leak in the exit connection so now it was leaking again from somewhere else. Is it REALLY so hard? I made a joke when he came to do another one and fix the previous leak: "the arrow and the numbers go on top".. He didn't entirely appreciate it.. "he had been distracted".. distracted by WHAT? He's in his 40s-early50s and (one would imagine) experienced.
[This is the valve, btw.. with numbers 1-5 like a refrigerator:

It lets you turn down the heat in a controlled fashion in rooms that may be overheated for various reasons w/r/t the central thermostat.]

Our (now ex-)electrician "can't tell me" whether the new thermostat requires AA or AAA batteries (I have to tell HIM)!! Nor has he ever heard of a GFCI-type outlet (the concept of a ground here is essentially fabulistic, and not one of the several electricians and assistants we've had will even go so far as to speculate as to whether we have it in the house or not).. it's quite normal to touch appliances most everywhere I've been in Italy and get that "not-quite-right-with-the-polarity"-type low-level shock/buzzing. It's also 'normal' that a regular light switch or outlet be not only above a sink, but traditionally inside the parameters of a shower/bath enclosure. AAAAAAH!

 

[dumpster56]

What we have today is a lower class immigrant from Mexico or central america working for an american contractor and he is paying them well below what he would have to pay an american. IF he could find one! The schools have really not done anyone a favor dropping all the trade classes. I loved woodshop, auto shop and metal shop. Took them in high school and then went on to college and got a BS and a masters. But I still can work on the CAR and fix something that breaks IN THE HOUSE!!!

 

[jazz4cash]

Funny thing is, we don't embelish the industrial arts training ( or Vocational Ed as we call it in my parts), meanwhile all the mechanical devices are run by computers and can only be diagnosed by hooking up a laptop. All the diagnostic vendors are busy making thier service and training tools look like video games. So the young techs hook up the laptop, pull out a code, and change out whatever component is implicated. They don't REALLY understand how the systems work, so they just keep swapping parts until the problem does not come back. See it everyday.

 

[Rustic23]

There was a time during the Clinton administration when he said 'Everyone should have a college degree' Actually I think that is a miss quote and it was more like 'Everyone should have an opportunity for a college degree'

Either way, as someone pointed out, 'If everyone has a college degree that means the guy flipping hamburgers at Mickey Ds will now be college educated'

 

[bright eyed]

There is a tandem movement to reintroduce solid vocational arts programs.
I've been trying to wrap my head around this theme - the Gates fdn is pushing as well - "every child college ready"

if you come from a nerd background like me - that would mean perfect SAT's, 4.0 plus gpa etc. but really - it doesn't take much to graduate and go to a community college or state school - so that to me, doesn't seem as elitist as it can seem.

i think also, the idea that kids "merely graduating high" is good to get rid of because the graduation standards are not that high - and even so, so many kids are not meeting them it is very very sad!

 

[ladelfina]

A high-school degree should mean something, though.. whether they absorb it or not recent generations have superficially traversed more 'stuff' than preceding ones.

 

[youbet]

Vocational and tech training is readily available in our area (Chicago-land) for the trades for which there is still demand.

Carpentry, plumbing and electrical (building trades) is still primarily through apprenticeships with OTJ training and union sponsored classes. The classes are usually offered through our junior college and non-union sponsored folks can attend but, of course, aren't on a track to receive journeyman status.

Auto mechanics is a two year program at the local junior college.

Manufacturing oriented trades such as tool and die, model maker, machinist, millwright, industrial electrician, lithographer, die setter, mold maker, etc., have, with some exceptions, been outsourced with the rest of the manufacturing jobs to other parts of the world.

 

[Walt34]

Funny thing is, we don't embellish the industrial arts training ( or Vocational Ed as we call it in my parts), meanwhile all the mechanical devices are run by computers and can only be diagnosed by hooking up a laptop. All the diagnostic vendors are busy making their service and training tools look like video games. So the young techs hook up the laptop, pull out a code, and change out whatever component is implicated. They don't REALLY understand how the systems work, so they just keep swapping parts until the problem does not come back. See it everyday.

Probably they can't fully understand it. No one can. I bought the service manual for my 2003 GMC pickup truck and actually read/skimmed most of it. The "manual" is five volumes and the stack is 8 1/2 inches. There is one volume dedicated to just the electronics on the engine. They've basically integrated a computer network into the vehicle. The diagnostic procedures are long and laborious, and believe the shop guys when they tell you it took four hours to figure out what's wrong with your car.

I'm one of those who was overhauling car engines at age 14 and I have a good grasp of how they work, or at least the ones from that era. I did heating & refrigeration work in my early 20's, but but had to call a service tech when my refrigerator was acting up. There is a motherboard in the back of the refrigerator to control fans speed for energy efficiency. I did same some money on that repair because I ordered & replaced the part, but who would expect that refrigerators had computers in them?

 

[Walt34]

I had an old (highly-paid-engineer) BF who took a few weeks' sabbatical off work to go to "tractor-trailer training school".. just for the heck of it! He said it was scary, or rather the students were scary.

Yes, I've heard some of the horror stories. That's one of the reasons I don't like the idea of Mexican truck drivers in the U.S. The U.S. has some standards that drivers have at least ostensibly been exposed to.

Our (now ex-)electrician "can't tell me" whether the new thermostat requires AA or AAA batteries (I have to tell HIM)!! Nor has he ever heard of a GFCI-type outlet (the concept of a ground here is essentially fabulistic, and not one of the several electricians and assistants we've had will even go so far as to speculate as to whether we have it in the house or not).. it's quite normal to touch appliances most everywhere I've been in Italy and get that "not-quite-right-with-the-polarity"-type low-level shock/buzzing. It's also 'normal' that a regular light switch or outlet be not only above a sink, but traditionally inside the parameters of a shower/bath enclosure. AAAAAAH!

That's scary! My father was an electrician and had me taking apart motors at age five. Mom wasn't enthused when I did it to the vacuum cleaner though - I was good at taking things apart, not always good at getting them back together. So most of that stuff I do myself when I can.

 

[calmloki]

Slightly different view here. Regarding Mexican labor force in the US - my experience is that they probably have equal knowledge to their Anglo counterparts, difference is that they are much more willing to focus on completing a job and coming up with solutions to the inevitable gotchas that crop up on any job. Their solutions might not be the desired or best ones (ie., not yours), but they get the job done. Many of the domestic, home grown US labor force just walk away from the job - clock running - at the slightest variance from pure normal and put the problem back in your lap. Almost like they're loaded.... Lord help 'em if they actually had to think!
As far as car or refrigerator repair, prior comments are on the money. Line in the mech game used to be that doctors only had to study up on one brand, while mechanics had to know Chevy, Ford, BMW.... and they changed every year

 

[poboy]

I attended a meeting right after Georgia started the lottery and ran into a friend from Atlanta who has 3 sons. He told me if they finished high school with a B average, college tuition would be paid by the state. My response was every high school grad in the state would qualify.. Later, South Carolina followed suit and lo and behold their high school students became smarter. A chicken in every pot, every kid goes to college.

 

[Sarah in SC]

In SC, lottery funding can be used at the technical colleges where all kinds of trades are taught, plus the Associate in Arts & Humanities that will transfer to a 4 year college. It is a pretty good deal, but only students at the two year schools are eligible IIRC.
I'm taking classes at the tech school, 3/4 time (9 credit hours) and my tuition is $1215, of which lottery funding will pay about $700. Pretty good deal--for me!

 

[FUEGO]

I know they still teach mechanics where I got my college degree. In fact I took at least 4-5 semesters of mechanics. Mechanics - Statics, Mechanics - Dynamics, mechanics of soils, mechanics of materials, mechanics of solids, etc.

Seriously, the local community college offers 1-2 year programs in auto mechanics. Someone in my family got a diploma through that program. Most of the local auto techs at dealerships went through that type program. Community college must be one of the easiest ways to double your salary in under 2 years.

 

[jazz4cash]

Probably they can't fully understand it. No one can. I bought the service manual for my 2003 GMC pickup truck and actually read/skimmed most of it. The "manual" is five volumes and the stack is 8 1/2 inches. There is one volume dedicated to just the electronics on the engine. ?

Well they could understand it if they were trained in the basics. I use those manuals on a regular basis and have to 'translate and interpret' them for the guys trying to take shortcuts. A factory trained mechanic can easily digest those service manuals....the point is you MUST learn the basics before you can understand the intricate details. The problems we have in the industry is getting people that are "up to speed" in terms of basic mechanical knowledge. From that point learning the details and adapting to the incremental changes from year to year is 'easy'. Foreigners that don't speak english can read those schematics and if they are persistant at problem solving are not at a big disadvantage to English speakers.

 

[jazz4cash]

Slightly different view here. Regarding Mexican labor force in the US - my experience is that they probably have equal knowledge to their Anglo counterparts, difference is that they are much more willing to focus on completing a job and coming up with solutions to the inevitable gotchas that crop up on any job.

I tend to agree, but that's a TOTALLY different issue to having Mexican trucks on US highways. I dont trust US trucks on US highways because we have shortage of mechanics, loose vehicle regulations, and very poor regulation of over-the-road drivers. I expect the Mexican rigs will be worse.

 

[ladelfina]

On a related note.. I have caught only a few episodes of "Jamie's Kitchen" where Jamie Oliver takes a couple dozen unemployed/unemployable high-school-dropout types and tries to train 'em and mount a self-sufficient top-level restaurant with 'em. What's interesting is the motivation and hard work (and sometimes inexplicable lack thereof). Only about half made it through the course and most of them did find employment by the end of the first series.

Really makes you think about teaching, about resources, about how to find and stimulate people's natural talents if them have them in a certain field. In a way.. given the amount of time, personal attention, resources, and guidance these kids got.. I was surprised how many dropped out along the way. But it was great to see those who succeeded and who now have a career in front of them instead of life on the dole or at MickeyD's.