is it me, or is this a dumb idea?

[hammercock]

Florida votes to require high school majors: TALLAHASSEE, Florida (AP) -- The Florida Legislature gave final approval to a bill Thursday that requires high school students to declare a major, similar to college students. The measure now goes to Governor Jeb Bush, who pushed the requirement as part of a sweeping education overhaul approved by the

Comments

[larksdream]

Yup, yup, yup, to everything you say. I'm all for letting kids study more of what they're interested in, but making it a big formal Major is just dumb.

[dancingdeer]

How many of those kids would actually be continuing on to college, and how many will just end up working retail or wandering around aimlessly for years? In some communities where college isn't a given, forcing the high school kids (before they drop out) to try to focus on their lives and their future can't be really a bad thing.

[hammercock]

I think that encouraging them to focus on their future is good, but I worry that they way Florida is trying to do that will actually have the opposite effect. Maybe I'm wrong. I hope so.

[osewalrus]

I thought it was a dumb idea when I heard about it on NPR a few weeks ago.

Since I can remember, I've been told that we as a country are going to get our behinds kicked because other countries are supposedly educating their kids better, as evidenced by al sorts of formal scores.

But it hasn't happened yet, because it turns out that knowing how to learn and being interested in the learning process is more important than having a tool kit already developed so you can "save time" on graduating

[donnad]

I've been told that we as a country are going to get our behinds kicked because other countries are supposedly educating their kids better, as evidenced by al sorts of formal scores.

Then why are our colleges full of international students? When I was at UMass there were more Asian students in some of my classes than American.

[hammercock]

If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say it's because their primary and secondary schools are better than ours, but that our university system is more open than its European counterpart and is still of high quality.

[bikergeek]

I think a lot of it depends on how it's presented. Getting kids to think about their future can't be a bad thing, but OTOH they should emphasize that this is not necessarily what they're going to be doing for the rest of their lives, and that it's acceptable for one's goals to change.

[larksdream]

Yeah, that's the thing-- the more it becomes the norm to make these decisions early, the harder it becomes to change your course as you learn more about your strengths and interests. College students already hear, "No, you can't switch to a bio major now, you've taken all these music theory classes..." like they're already permanently locked in to whatever track they chose when they were seventeen. Which makes no sense, because as much as making a change sucks, waiting and staying on the same course and making the same change a year or five years or ten years later is even more difficult. "We don't want to hire you to work on snorgleblasters, because it looks like all your experience is in flibbergibbets."

[bikergeek]

Sing it. The days when you went to work for one company for life--or even at one type of job--are over. Todays' kids can look forward to two or three career changes, if not more, before they retire.

This change in the workplace was lost on people like my father, whose perception (from outside of it) of the white-collar working world was rooted in the 1950s "Organization Man", where you went to college, got a job upon graduation, and worked at the same company for 40+ years until retirement. *Maybe* you changed companies once, when prompted by unforeseen, non-job-related circumstances. But in that environment, a thirty year old who had four or five jobs on his résumé was a "jobhopper" and had something wrong with him.

This was the same man who expected me to have my entire life plan figured out by the time I was in seventh or eighth grade, with no real room for error or change.

[hammercock]

the more it becomes the norm to make these decisions early, the harder it becomes to change your course as you learn more about your strengths and interests.

Yes. I worry that instead of encouraging academic flexibility, this is actually going to promote academic inflexibility, which is so very much NOT what we are going to need in order to compete in the world, or even just to be happy.

[lionofgod]

At least some European countries require this, and it was interesting to compare the attitude of some of my European friends in high school to the American kids. They seemed to think of it as not only natural, but beneficial to specialize early-- it meant that they got a head start on whatever they were going to be doing,
and wasted less time learning things that they'd never use again. We thought it was insanely restricting, and prone to serious failures of the type you're describing.

I think the Europeans are coming at it from more of the traditional apprentice mindset. I'd be happier with the concept if I trusted that colleges would not merely allow but encourage exploration outside of the high school focus; if the 'major' really means 'I actually picked a subject and learned about it in depth, instead of just taking a survey course', that's a fine idea. Sadly, I don't trust something like that to stay optional very long.

[hammercock]

I'd be happier with the concept if I trusted that colleges would not merely allow but encourage exploration outside of the high school focus; if the 'major' really means 'I actually picked a subject and learned about it in depth, instead of just taking a survey course', that's a fine idea. Sadly, I don't trust something like that to stay optional very long.

Yes, that's exactly it.