BlogHer - Asking students to choose majors at age 14? Just plain asinine - Comments

AMEN AMEN AMEN, Leslie

lauriewrites — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 11:44:32 -0500

This is a wonderful post and I think I'm going to blog my response in full, because I think it's such an important topic. These two points you made in particular really resonated with me.

We shouldn't be training students--we should be teaching them to think, to solve problems, to communicate. And to do that, we must get them reading quality literature, studying history, and writing, writing, writing. That just doesn't happen much in auto mechanics and other vocational classes.

Absolutely! Critical thinking is way underrated and also suffering, from what I see. Many students (of all ages) and their family members tend to be obsessed with "declaring the major" or picking the one that will take them straight to the highest paying job. They're disappointed when they get me as an advisor -- at first - because I talk about picking something, or waiting to pick it - that they won't be miserable with in the long run. "Should I do business or nursing to get a job?" Er...I don't want you as a nurse unless you REALLY want to be one. Seen what nurses have to do? Could you handle it?

There's a disconnect, often, between "major" and "career" and "job I'll have to do day in and day out." That's why I'm a huge fan of the gap year for high school graduates and experiential learning - internships, jobs that relate to the major/career ideas rather than retail or foodservice, job shadowing, etc.

As crazy as that may seem, she needs to take that winding path between ages 18 and 30 to explore all the different aspects of her personality, all of her interests. Chances are, if she had declared a food services major in high school, she wouldn't have gone straight to the culinary academy. Rather, she would have been ready to move on to the next thing--and she'd be unprepared for that next thing because she wouldn't have had the chance to take as many different courses and electives as possible to broaden and deepen her critical thinking skills. I've taken a similar, albeit not quite as dramatic, route to where I am now, and much of who I am grew out of the broad spectrum of courses I took in high school and college.

I ask at orientations who the people are who have no idea what they want to do yet. They rarely raise their hands because they're embarrassed, because they've often been criticized for it, at 17 or 18, just when they're coming out of the treacherous waters of high school. I tell them that whoever they are, that's fine, and usually the most unsure have the most interests/are the most interesting (haha), which is a GOOD thing. And if anyone else is in there who felt pressured to pick, and they change their minds in the next year or so, that's totally normal and also not bad at all!

Thanks again, Leslie. Good food for thought.

Laurie

LaurieWrites

In the old days, at least in

writergal8 — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 08:51:37 -0500

In the old days, at least in Toronto, Canada, kids were streamed into academic or vocational type HIGH SCHOOLS when they enter high school in Grade 9 (or age 14). Those who were to attend 4 year universities went to collegiate institutes, which were more or less public prep schools. Everyone else went to a vocational school. Collegiates were usually in middle to upper middle class neighbourhoods while everyone else had the vocational institutions (usually technical schools). Academic programs offered at collegiates have not changed much...many still offer Latin, which was a matriculation requirement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Technical/vocational schools are pretty much regular high schools, though they offer more technical courses.

As for actual majors, there are plenty of jurisdictions where kids are forced to pick "majors" or at focus on certain subjects only at some point in high school. It happens in many continental European schools as well as in the UK (ok, I know, you're going to say that kids in "sixth form college" technically aren't in high school, but some high schools actually offer sixth form programs). In Ontario, as well as most parts of Canada, the curriculum is standardized by the province. Therefore, the universities actually list the required Grade 12 courses a kid must take in order to qualify for admission. For example, a student seeking admission to the business program at University A must have, in addition to the standard core English course, two Grade 12 math courses and a business course. Well, all these courses have prerequisites, since they are Grade 12 courses. You would probably have had to take something in Grade 10, 11 or even 9. So yeah, while a kid might not have to declare a "major" in Grade 9, he/she pretty much is pre-business, pre-engineering or pre-lib arts by Grade 11.
my blogs:

Writing Blog (for updates on my writing and media plugs about my book)

Shorty Stories (a blog for petite activism)

Asking students to choose majors at age 14? Just plain asinine

Leslie Madsen Brooks — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 23:56:18 -0500

The New York Times reported this week that students at some high schools are being forced to declare majors. The schools see such a move as making their students more competitive for college. The NYT article explains that students "are expected to stick with their major through four years unless they have a compelling reason to change."

I'm still looking for a compelling reason to ask 8th or 9th graders to select a course of study that will force them into a particular intellectual or vocational track. And yes, I'm using the word "track" here deliberately, because while in theory a few of the schools are adopting the major program in order to make their working-class students more competitive, in practice these programs, in my experience, lock students into ability-based tracks that prevent them from moving into more challenging courses.

For example, the year after I graduated from my high school in Long Beach, California, the school decided that all its mainstream students would be placed into "academies" that focused on such areas as arts and technology. I interviewed students in these tracks a full year after the program started, and the results did not surprise me.

"Everyone knows," one student in the arts program told me, "that the kids in Beach Academy are the smartest, and that the kids in Mod Tech are dumb."

Yes, Mod Tech students tended to be male, working-class students of color. And because the school did not have the state-of-the-art computer labs one would expect in a technology program, the students took auto mechanics and similar courses. Which is great if your city needs several hundred new auto mechanics every year. But what happens to students in cities that don't?

I get that not all students go to college. The solution for students who need vocational training is to offer that training as electives or on top of the liberal arts curriculum. We shouldn't be training students--we should be teaching them to think, to solve problems, to communicate. And to do that, we must get them reading quality literature, studying history, and writing, writing, writing. That just doesn't happen much in auto mechanics and other vocational classes.

Some folks in the blogosphere agree with me. Denise of Fast Times @ Homeschool High writes,

A 14 year old choosing a major based on her limited life experiences? A 14 year old choosing a major based on her parents' ideas about what she should be when she grows up? A 14 year old choosing a major based on what she THINKS she likes today but probably won't like four years from now because she's a KID and kids ideas change. That's why they don't vote when they're 14. That's why they don't drive when they're 14. That's why we don't kick them out of the nest when they're 14.

I'm completely in favor of encouraging the kids who DO know what they want to spend the rest of their lives doing. I'm completely in favor of offering a wide range of educational opportunities for kids to choose from and then allowing them to narrow their focus if that's what they really want to do. But forcing them to choose? What happens when they change their minds?

lmw of Becoming Dr. Warner tells her own story:

During the advising part of orientation that all incoming freshmen go through, I didn’t really pay attention. I didn’t think I needed to listen. I wasn’t like all those other people. I had a plan. I already knew what my major would be. So along with the general education requirements I enrolled in a course or two that I would need for an elementary education degree. Early into the semester we went to observe at a local elementary school. All of a sudden my plan didn’t seem so great. Teaching? These kids? Me? No. Can’t do it. No.

So I switched to middle school education. Maybe if the kids were a little older…I knew it wasn’t for me. But I didn’t know what else I was interested in. I didn’t really like my other classes. So I just sort of floated through my second semester. And at the end of my first year I felt lost. And being the immature freshman that I was, I didn’t go to my advisor. I would figure it out on my own. And I did–after dropping out of college.

Yep. I dropped out. It wasn’t just that I was lost. I had personal reasons also. But it’s the best decision I ever made. I spent a year working and thinking about what I wanted to do with my life. I had a new plan. Jubs had a year left as an undergraduate and I would transfer to whatever institution he decided on for grad/law school. This plan worked. Jubs encouraged me to read college bulletins and find courses that sounded interesting. He suggested that it wasn’t necessary to declare a major right away. I’m glad I was open-minded to this idea.

My first college roommate switched majors from history education to geography to library science to education to range management--and during this process went to three colleges and joined the Army Reserves as a hydrologist. She went to grad school, briefly, in environmental engineering, did a stint in Americorps, then went to (most of) law school before finally settling on becoming an artisan baker. As crazy as that may seem, she needs to take that winding path between ages 18 and 30 to explore all the different aspects of her personality, all of her interests. Chances are, if she had declared a food services major in high school, she wouldn't have gone straight to the culinary academy. Rather, she would have been ready to move on to the next thing--and she'd be unprepared for that next thing because she wouldn't have had the chance to take as many different courses and electives as possible to broaden and deepen her critical thinking skills. I've taken a similar, albeit not quite as dramatic, route to where I am now, and much of who I am grew out of the broad spectrum of courses I took in high school and college.

Teacher Tom of Stop Trying to Inspire Me makes some good points and then shares his thoughts on an alternative "major" program for high school students:

3. School is not job training. This might be me complaining about how people ask "What are you going to do with that?" if you major in anything that's not an applied science or business, but it really isn't. I know quite a few people with liberal arts-related degrees who are in a wide variety of fields. It's called versatility. I'd say look it up but they probably don't teach vocabulary in schools like that.

4. Maybe schools should shore up the curriculum first? Or make sure the students can handle this? I don't know about you, but I've seen a LOT of ninth graders who shouldn't have passed the eighth grade. High school is general ed for a REASON, and if you're going to make things specific, you have to have grade prerequisites and maybe make majoring only for certain achieving students and have the kids who are more behind take classes to catch themselves up.

Wait, that's tracking. Never mind. What was I thinking?

Okay, honestly? I do like the idea (that I believe is practiced in other countries. Canada and France, maybe? Wait, that also makes me a moron because this is "Amuraca" and after all, the French surrendered to the Germans, so why would we want to follow any of their examples. ANYWAY ...) of having students choose a track for high school between a vocational/service-oriented education and a college-prep/academic education. It's this same concept of majoring but on a much broader scale. Everyone still takes their cores (math, science, English, history) but those students that are not going to go to college (and hey, let's be honest, some don't and don't need to) find a trade or some sort of field and those who are work on academic performance.

The blogger at Antarctica Starts Here expresses a perspective gained from experience in a high school program with majors:

RIGOR also severely restricted what we could and couldn't take - if you were on an engineering track, you could look forward to physical sciences and mathematics in addition to the usual stuff that high school students have to sit through (like English Lit and phys.ed) but if you had any other interests you'd have to wait for after school or the weekend to indulge in them (such as psychology or metalworking shop). In short, there was no real way to change mental gears to exercise another part of your mind, and that's been shown to lead to overall impaired performance (as well as boredom, which is the bane of any high school teacher).

Forgive my cynicism, but I've been there and done that. Being well-rounded is an advantage in an informationally rich environment, not a bane, and this is something that most tracking programmes do not permit. Being able to look at things from different perspectives (history, sociology, mathematics, dot dot dot) makes it possible to come up with new solutions to tricky (or once-thought intractable) problems. The ability to synthesize knowledge is a skill rapidly vanishing from North American culture because it poses problems for teachers who may not be equipped to handle creative answers to questions that really aren't as cut-and-dried as they seem (take for example ethics, which were taught in my US citizenship classes).

Many bloggers weighed in against the high school major proposal, but at least one feels it's an idea whose time has come. J-Ro at The Seminal sees "no downside to this plan."

I'm not always a champion of the status quo, but on this issue I think we need to stick with, and improve upon, our current paradigm. I get suspicious when schools adopt dramatically new programs because I feel it's in part a chance to mess with benchmarks. Take my junior high school for example. First it become a middle school (grades 6-8 instead of 7-9). Then it adopted school uniforms. Then it segregated classes by sex. And during all this time, it was easy for school district administrators to say that the school's low test scores were a problem of the old regime, and if scores weren't rising it was because the school was in a transition period. The same could be said about the high school majors program.

What are your thoughts?

Leslie Madsen-Brooks helps university faculty improve their teaching. She blogs at The Clutter Museum, Museum Blogging, and The Multicultural Toy Box.