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That said, today's issue has an op-ed on the high cost of college that proposes, as a solution:
"Why not reduce undergraduate education to three years, while tacking an extra year onto high school?"*Good God Almighty, as my father would have said.
Josh Barro
Five years of public high school?
FIVE YEARS of Hunger Games in English and Core-Plus in math?
And here I was thinking everyone should skip senior year and go re-take algebra and English at their local community college instead.
(Is high school cheaper than community college? High school teachers here earn a great deal more than instructors in community colleges, but I don't know whether that's the case elsewhere.)
and see:
the founder, chairman, and CEO of Netflix has a really bad idea
Larry Summers has a really bad idea
David Brooks has a really bad idea
David Brooks has a really bad idea, part 2
All is forgiven.
* That's the pull. Full passage: Why not adopt the Quebec model and reduce undergraduate education to three years, while tacking an extra year onto high school?
10 comments:
I recall reading that in Canada it's not uncommon for good students to skip senior year and go directly to college.
Not sure whether there's a different system in Quebec specifically.
I'm of two minds whenever I hear of particularly dumb ideas being floated in the school systems.
On the one hand, I'm thinking, "Cool, this gives my kids a leg up over the competition."
Then on the other hand, I realize that the overwhelming vast majority of the next generation of citizens are being educated with these cockamamie ideas and I think: "We are so hosed."
"Not sure whether there's a different system in Quebec specifically."
My husband did his high school in Canada and at the time, they had something called Grade 13. I'm not sure exactly how it worked or what it was for--it might have been college prep.
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I'm just back from a visit to Wikipedia. Grade 13 used to exist in Ontario (which was where my husband was in high school), but they recently killed it due to cost cutting. It was a college prep program.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario_Academic_Credit
"Grade 13" sounds so gloriously Orwellian.
Here's some more from Wikipedia:
"However, in a paper published by Harry Krashinsky of the University of Toronto, Krashinsky had found that the elimination of OAC had a large and negative impact on academic performance in university.[10]"
Interestingly, a large minority of students (especially males) continue to do a fifth year of high school, often for non-academic reasons (extracurriculars, maturity, etc.). According to Wikipedia, it's now called a "victory lap."
If US students took an extra year and did AP classes, it might be a very good thing. I can't see stronger US students sticking around that long in high school, though.
I expect that the cultural expectation that high school terminates with grade 12 are so powerful in the US that it would be very difficult to get students to treat an extra year as something other than an opportunity for longer senioritis.
Actually there's a long tradition of athletes taking 5th years of college prep -- but those are very specific, focused programs.
What I think is absolutely NUTS is the idea that you would simply tack on a 5th year to the present system. CRAZY.
I told Ed about it this morning, and he said, "So they can spend another year not learning the same things they didn't learn the previous 4 years."
Actually, getting back to time & efficiency, I do think education needs to become much more efficient and compressed. When you add in graduate school, students are going to school through their twenties (doctors are still in various training programs in their early 30s, I gather).
This is only an issue for students who go to professional schools, I realize, but still.
This is a bit personal, but I know from personal experience that peak fertility happens in your 20s, not your 30s...
I have a friend who I think is sending her son to a 5th year college prep program.
I think that's a bit scandalous, of course, because I've followed his career here since he was a little boy (and tutored his brother through Regents last summer) -- he has been ill-served by this district.
there's a long tradition of athletes taking 5th years of college prep -- but those are very specific, focused programs.
My cousin wasn't an athlete but he was a fall birthday boy and wasn't ready to apply to college as a 16-turning-17 y.o. 12th grader. My aunt instead decided to send him to a private prep school for a 13th grade. He was a bright kid but needed more time to mature. The prep school helped him get accepted to a much better college than what he would've been able to do had he applied in 12th grade.
In Quebec the schooling is 11 years not 12 with 5 years of high school (ecole secondaire) starting in grade 7. After that students attend CEGEP which is a 2 or 3 year college program. 2 years for univeristy prep and 3 years for professional training. So after 2 years of CEGEP it is on to 3 years of university study for a Baccalauriate.
In Canada the provinces have a lot of power and therfore they are unique in almost all policy. Be careful when you hear "In Canada they do this..."
Sean Price
"Be careful when you hear "In Canada they do this...""
Very interesting.
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