As I've said in the past, the problem with the schools comes down to recognizing that the American secondary education system as it is currently structured is frozen in a compromised state that only made sense between the 1940's and 1950's.
To explain this, I need to give you some terminology.
Primary Education - Is defined as what Americans would call grades 1-8. A person who completes primary education should be capable of reading in their native language and performing arithmetic and trigonometric math.
Secondary Education - In most of the world secondary education is bifurcated into two separate systems. Vocational education, and college preparatory education. These are different outcome objectives, with very different needs. To be effective, vocational education needs to be producing the workers the job market needs.
College prep education focuses on two major things: advanced math, and learning the lingua franca (today english, previously french, historically latin). Americans being english speakers, this means that college prep in the US is mostly about math, and sure as hell shouldn't take 4 years.
In the aftermath of WW2, the US was riding high. Economic prosperity was everywhere, and it was possible for most school districts in the country to combine vocational and preparatory education in the same schools.
I want to emphasize: This is not normal. Aside from Canada (which is basically just America in this regard), no other first world nation does this. College prep and vocational secondary education are different programs, and pretty much every European and Asian country forces people to decide, at a younger age, what path they want to try for.
But for a brief while after the war, the US was able to pretend that its high schools could offer vocational education. Then the baby boom hit and this illusion went to shit. In the face of surging enrollment numbers, schools had to drop hiring in favor of emergency facilities expansions, which would stress budgets for decades. Across the country, voc-ed took the worst hits, staying basically frozen in a 1950's state of affairs until the late 80's when Apple Computer came along.
To pick up the slack, community colleges emerged and quickly grew in the '70s and '80s, providing the actual voc ed programs that the high schools neglected.
What should have happened at this point is that the community colleges should have become alternative options for secondary education. That is, you could attend a CC as if it was a vocational high school.
Obviously, this didn't happen. And so the the US secondary school system rotted into its current state where everyone is given a college prep education that takes entirely too long.
As I've said in the past, the problem with the schools comes down to recognizing that the American secondary education system as it is currently structured is frozen in a compromised state that only made sense between the 1940's and 1950's.
To explain this, I need to give you some terminology.
Primary Education - Is defined as what Americans would call grades 1-8. A person who completes primary education should be capable of reading in their native language and performing arithmetic and trigonometric math.
Secondary Education - In most of the world secondary education is bifurcated into two separate systems. Vocational education, and college preparatory education. These are different outcome objectives, with very different needs. To be effective, vocational education needs to be producing the workers the job market needs.
College prep education focuses on two major things: advanced math, and learning the lingua franca (today english, previously french, historically latin). Americans being english speakers, this means that college prep in the US is mostly about math, and sure as hell shouldn't take 4 years.
In the aftermath of WW2, the US was riding high. Economic prosperity was everywhere, and it was possible for most school districts in the country to combine vocational and preparatory education in the same schools.
I want to emphasize: This is not normal. Aside from Canada (which is basically just America in this regard), no other first world nation does this. College prep and vocational secondary education are different programs, and pretty much every European and Asian country forces people to decide, at a younger age, what path they want to try for.
But for a brief while after the war, the US was able to pretend that its high schools could offer vocational education. Then the baby boom hit and this illusion went to shit. In the face of surging enrollment numbers, schools had to drop hiring in favor of emergency facilities expansions, which would stress budgets for decades. Across the country, voc-ed took the worst hits, staying basically frozen in a 1950's state of affairs until the late 80's when Apple Computer came along.
To pick up the slack, community colleges emerged and quickly grew in the '70s and '80s, providing the actual voc ed programs that the high schools neglected.
What should have happened at this point is that the community colleges should have become alternative options for secondary education. That is, you could attend a CC as if it was a vocational high school.
Obviously, this didn't happen. And so the the US secondary school system rotted into its current state where everyone is given a college prep education that takes entirely too long.