I don’t know any recent high school students I could ask, and my own personal experiences are a bit out of date. The student is a high school senior/community college freshman in a small (population <10,000), conservative midwestern US town. She is fairly intelligent but unsophisticated and from a background in which academic success is not particularly encouraged. Her goal is to be a secretary or administrative assistant in some type of small business setting.
In my day, this student would have taken, as a high school senior, Typing II (wherein one learned how to take the paper out of the typewriter and reinsert it so flawlessly that errors could be corrected without being detected–I’m not certain high schools even bother with Typing classes anymore); Shorthand II (which was almost obsolete back in the 80s when I was in school); and maybe Bookkeeping II and a couple other business-oriented courses, plus the standard PE and Senior English. (As an aside, I recall taking a class called Business Machines, in which we took turns using assorted decrepit cash registers and adding machines, the main goal being to learn how to use a calculator without looking at the keys…Yeah, my high school was kind of sad.) As a community college freshman she would have been funneled into a general studies assortment of jr. college favorites (i.e., Composition I, Peer Counseling, Introduction to Psychology).
The story is set in 2010, so basically I need a more recent view of what courses would be involved. This isn’t central to the plot, but it’s a detail I want to get right. (Also, I stuck this in IMHO rather than GQ because I felt like it was more of a YMMV thing, but if it needs to be moved, that’s fine.)
I just pulled up a list of available courses offered at the high school in the (small) town where I live now, and you can probably find one for the town where your story is set – or something close to it if the town is fictional.
The courses listed under “Career Skills” are mostly technology and design based, although there are some dealing with early childhood education, personal finance, and nutrition. There’s an Intro to Business course that’s listed as dual enrollment with the local community college. There’s also a course called Computer Information Systems that from the description sounds like it’s basically just teaching students how to use the Microsoft Office suite of programs. So those two and maybe the web design class would probably be the electives of most interest to someone looking to become a secretary.
I think even in the place you describe in 2010 she’ll have to take a fourth year of math and maybe of science. I’m not sure bookkeeping would be enough.
The state where I live currently requires four years of English and three each of math, lab science, and history/social studies. The list of offered courses says that a fourth year of math is recommended, but it isn’t necessary to graduate.
My experience (2004) is a little closer to 2010 than the mid 1980’s…High School seniors were allowed to take American Government, College English 1, and certain math courses, and get dual credit (high school and college credit). I think they were able to take whatever math course they were qualified for as well. I don’t think they were able to take any other college classes.
I went to high school in Ohio in a town with about 8,000 people. The college (State college, not a community college) was in the next town, with about 70,000 people. We were required to have 4 years of English, and all seniors had to take American Government. Three years of math, history and science were required, a fourth was optional.
Excellent. This was exactly what I needed. I was able to pull up course information for comparable high school online, so thank you Lamia for suggesting that. Thanks to everyone who took time to respond.