Let’s say that some future President becomes convinced that there needs to be an alternative to keeping 14-18 year old kids in school for 4 years who do not want to be there or who cannot perform sitting still for 8AM -3PM every day. He proposes a 2 year track that will give kids the knowledge they need to survive and get by in the world and let them graduate with a degree that certifies they understand the basics they need to get by as adults.
You have the mandate to this. How do you go about getting this done? You have 2 school years to teach these kids what they need to know. What are the subjects? What will they be tested on? Let’s assume these kids are moderately literate and not special needs but are a poor fit for a standard school environment. You will decide what they need to be functional in to be employable and useful members of society.
That was the original idea behind elementary school. Readin’ 'ritin and 'rithmetic – that whole thing.
You can combine traditional academics with a vocational program, but you still need more than two years to teach anything meaningful. The idea that you can put together some curriculum of home economics/computer literacy/metal shop for only two years and get kids ready to get any job better than they can** already** get at age 16 is just not realistic.
I apologize, it’s obviously I’m not communicating the intention here. I’m not talking about a metal shop centric vocational track. I’m talking about taking at risk kids who would most likely not be able to graduate at all and giving them an obtainable toolkit to be able to get started in life.
I often see people who are college graduates coming to see me about leasing space. They don’t understand the nuts and bolts of putting together a cogent business plan, how to read a basic lease or a contract, how or why you might want to incorporate, and their credit reports are often terrible so managing money and their credit is not a thing for them either. These are college graduates. You have adults on the SDMB that have no clue how to read a lease they signed.
I think 2 years is sufficient time to get this and other life necessary data into a kids head before they are unleashed on the world. Yes advanced sciences, advanced math and advanced history, languages, band and etc will go by the way side in this stripped down program but none of this truly necessary to get by for these kids and you do not need 4 years of them sitting in classrooms to convey this information.
Basic rules of writing a clear letter or email. How to construct and deliver a convincing address or speech
Basic ±/X math and basic geometry for measuring spaces and volumes. How interest works
Some basic geology and life sciences
How the US government is set up and basic founding documents. How national state and local representation works.
How Capitalism works in the US. How do I wrote a basic business plan. How to read a basic lease or contract. How loans, mortgages and credit ratings work.
How to get medical care. Basics of birth control.
How to lease or buy real estate and understand what you are signing
How to negotiate and shop for cars and appliances
etc etc - These are just some ideas and not necessarily the best ones but the goal is for the kids to have some grasp of what awaits them in life vs foundering in the deep end.
I remember the transition from high school to college. Suddenly everything was taught at a much faster rate.
Yeah, you can teach the whole 4 year high school curriculum in 2 years and not leave anything out. You can gain another year by not having middle school be so slow.
I consider high school just a holding pen for teenagers. Give them someplace to sit until most (but not all) of their hormone stuff is sorted out.
The reason that college can be taught at a faster rate is that college students are a group selected for the ability to learn effectively in a traditional scholastic setting. Most people don’t go to college. Particularly, the ones who had a hard time completing high school don’t go to college.
I learned more in the first semester of math classes at college than I did in four years of high school, but that’s because I went to an elite engineering college. Everyone at my college excelled at math in high school, yet some of them failed that first semester. You put the average high school student in there and they wouldn’t stand a chance.
It’s pretty easy to increase the instruction rate if you’re willing to also increase the failure rate.
But if we’re talking about trying to teach the people who have trouble with completing the current 4-year program (for any number of reasons), “teach it faster” is pretty unlikely to work.
I was following the OP’s concept of an alternative track. Many high schools have a large enough percentage of college-capable students that an alternative track for them would be a benefit.
And since the school district is paying for 2 years instead of 4 years of education for a good chunk of their students, this makes economic sense as well.
Unfortunately, for all too many of the others their curriculum amounts to little more than Teensitting I, Teensitting II, etc.
The OP is asking about a 2-year track for students “who do not want to be there or who cannot perform sitting still for 8AM -3PM every day”. I guess “do not want to be there” is pretty open, and might include some kids who are college capable and want to get out of high school faster. But “cannot perform sitting still for [7 hours]” probably doesn’t. He’s talking about kids who are failing out of high school. You’re talking about kids who are excelling. Not really the same thing.
In many places, the alternate track for college-capable students who are bored in high school already exists: taking AP classes or classes at a local community college.
But effective education isn’t really a matter of conveying information or getting data into a kid’s head. It’s more about installing the operating system and other software into a kid’s head that will allow said kid to access and use information if and when he/she needs it.
Give up all the advanced math and science most people never use anyway. Even most people in tech related jobs. No need for the later years of studying literature and language either. These are things thinkers need in their work, most people don’t have those kind of jobs now and until a future we can’t predict. There are a lot people now who learned some fairly advanced job skills after high school and college based on simple ‘how to’ instruction and work experience. The skill most needed and not taught at high school and college enough is how to read the freakin’ manual. I don’t want to discourage anybody from improving themselves through more than the minimum education but they can keep doing that anyway while being productive and independent at a younger age.
Sure, but I don’t think that’s the case the OP had in mind. And even then “doing something you don’t want to for a future benefit” is still an important learning.
how to write effective complaint letters (i.e. not ranting), how to effectively complain in person and basic negotiation skills, I would include two-way communication skills but not include speeches
Agree, but I would teach these with everyday tasks: managing a checking account, paying bills, budgeting, applying for and managing a car loan, cooking and baking (for the volumetrics)
Agree, in the form of human biology and anatomy, sex education, geography. I’d skip geology because it’s never used in daily life.
Agree 100% with this one and I’d include how to research issues and representative voting patterns.
I’d just combine this with the math skills above and not go too deeply into it. Meaning I’d give them enough to start a small, simple business but not run a major corporation for example.
This is also handled by the life sciences part above.
Again, contracts mentioned above.
This should fall under the communication skills above.
I agree with just about everything in your post, and most of that wouldn’t even take a year of school for a 16 year old if they had some decent schooling up to that point. Even what the average person should know about leases could be boiled down to a dozen or so important points plus the knowledge of when and where to get help for more the intricate terms of a lease. And that leaves time for some more diverse exposure to real life and work skills with hands on experience instead of in depth studying of the broader topics.
In addition to any such approaches they’d be in better shape to continue more specialized education in the future. If you’ve got the high school degree, even based on a minimum curriculum you can get a job and work your way into a position where you might get further training in the details of business leases as an example, without that degree you’re most likely to be stuck in a dead end track through life.
Reminds me of the Chris Rock bit about how, if you drop out in the tenth grade, you might as well have dropped out in the second grade, because you’re qualified for the same number of jobs.
I’m with some of the other folk here, this seems targeted to the wrong 10-20% of the HS population - we should focus on 2 year tracks for gifted students, because the pace of high school is so agonizingly slow and pointless, and because they’re probably not learning all that much anyways.
Just for myself, I skipped more of my senior year in HS than I attended, worked full time, and still graduated in the top 5% with close to a 4.0 (and I was lucky enough to have parents who stepped up to bat for me whenever they tried to not let me graduate due to the number of absences). High school was soooooo slow and just agonizing and pointless, due to pacing, already knowing the material or having read the book, and the Teensitting 101, 102 elements mentioned above. And I was by no means the exception, I’ve known multiple other folks in similar boats, and in general the smarter folk I know all hated high school.
The sooner kids in that boat get to college, the sooner they can get out to a real job or get started on actual higher education with an MS or Phd, and all without wasting two years of youth and vitality and prime learning years pointlessly.
Back in the 1970s New York had something sort of like this - last 2 years of high school instead of study hall and filler classes, you could do a half day of high school and a half day of vocational education [BOCES] my brother did plumbing and heating as I recall.
Actually a fair number of HS students could graduate by the time they start their Jr. or Sr. year because they’ve earned enough of the mandated credits required. They generally don’t want to for a variety of reasons; they are going to High School for free or almost always for less than what college costs; they aren’t staying in HS to become better educated per se but to get into better colleges because they are only interested in going to college as a meal ticket (and I’m not saying that’s a bad thing); the colleges don’t want them because they have enough problems with 18 year old HS graduates who are whiny immature little snots.
The only reason we should focus on that group is to get them out of the High Schools so the schools can focus on the rest of the students who need the attention more.