The end of high school is generally considered the end of childhood. If this remains true, students in the cusp of adulthood must be prepared to take on their responsibilities, including a willingness to work hard, even for those who are moving on to the most pleasant experience of college. The end of high school should focus less on the hasty gathering of bits of information and more on the skills and attitudes that are needed in those who want to be of use to others. Adults need understanding and empathy to know what is important to others; need logical thinking, developed by writing and math problems; And they must be able to plan, set important personal goals, and then control themselves enough to achieve them. The late-high school culture, however, has become a combination of obsession with facts (in response to testing), self-promotion (largely dishonest), and party time (“to forget how stressed we are. ”) The result, too often, is regression rather than a careful and deliberate growth process. I used to blame older people for not being able to resist the most damaging aspects of culture. In fact, I still feel fundamentally that the processing of any experience is up to the individual, but now I believe that there is more that adults can do to reshape the experience that they are offering to their young almost adults.
However, the focus in the last year is correct. It seems to me the mission is to use the anxiety currently focused on the past year (for all Americans, not just those in need of remediation) to identify and work on bigger issues. Three are especially notable, urgent, and feasible:
– Lost time: High school seniors seem to lack much purpose except to move on to the next stage. The resulting lack of challenging academic, experiential, or civic work leads to fallow and unfocused time with bad habits that all too often last into the first two years of college and / or work. For many seniors, the common requirements for graduation have apparently been met. They clearly need individualized programs for the final year of high school, but the variety in this case has often led to a lack of rigor. The marketing of electives has made them cheaper too often. The transition experience is misunderstood and painful and has led to a pervasive culture of laziness, boredom, and “I’m too old for this place.”
– Classification: High school is a relatively common experience. The imminence of the world after high school, what kind of job, what kind of college, is an important and scary “classifier.” Much of the senior’s experience consists of confronting the reality of the fact that the selection will take place, on both sides, with what seems to them a lifelong purpose. The energy that could be put into actual growth is instead put into “playing the game” of manipulating that selection process. Most do it honestly and dishonestly, which puts older people off even if they have been successful because they cannot be sure whether their acceptance was based on actual achievement or the various techniques they adopted to look good.
– Ineffective communication: It would be a great idea to use time well and be clear from the beginning of high school what a student needs to know and be able to do for the tune they are doing in a good job. It would be helpful to have plenty of advice for high school teachers and their students from college teachers and workplace supervisors, especially when they describe the jobs to be done and the knowledge, skills, and personal qualities that help the student. worker to be successful. The problem arises when the translation is too automatic (as in “four years of English”, whatever “English” is), or when the question of “teacher territory” becomes too sensitive, or when the teacher’s own evaluations High school students are underestimated as “uninformed” or “too subjective.”
Our schools have been trying to get more students to start thinking about future careers now and to prepare those students to continue in those fields of study. We have done career reports and observation work in the past, but they have not been as effective as we would like. With incoming freshmen, we are placing them into focused programs of study or career paths. In this program, they choose a career that interests them and then take the classes that we have already categorized as a class that you would take for that specific career field. I think an important issue to consider is attitude. You can’t motivate someone to learn if they don’t want to learn. We need to make the school environment more of a place where they want to go, where they want to learn. I still see a lot of students, even students with excellent grades, who don’t want to be in school, they see it as a place they have to go to.
More resources, such as technology, well-trained teachers, administrators, and adequate facilities, are not a luxury in public education, but a necessity and a smart investment.
