Public High Schools Socialism, Colleges Capitalism?
AND WHY COMMUNITY COLLEGES ARE THE HAPPY DEMOCRATIC MIDGROUND. After raising two boys in the public secondary school system and sending them off to graduate in California Colleges (with a short stop at the local Junior College), I am making this observation: High Schools are Socialists, Colleges are Capitalists. One might generously say that each is the “best” of both Socialism and Capitalism, but I’d say that there is work to do at both levels, to make America more competitive at the international level and address social inequities.
It is known among educators that America eventually creates good learners. I say eventually, because in our dynamic society, kids are highly distracted in the teen years (with hormones, sports, internet, etc), yet ultimately settle down in college or trades where they compete well internationally. A mystery is why our high school students at the 15 year old sample point do not compare especially well with other nations (ranking in the middle of the pack in a recent study). I would venture to say that our competitive/creative society creates some teen confusion, as high schools are dutifully trying to educate while placing a “good citizen” cast upon students, not always with success. Enter American colleges and trade schools, where nobody cares about your behavior and you essentially “sink or swim”. Those not wanting to pay attention lose money or run up large student loans, and learn quickly to get with the program. It would seem that public high schools (who in fairness have difficult demographics thrust upon them) would do better to accelerate the “street smart” aspects of education in Math, English, and Foreign Language. American colleges (currently the envy of foreign students) would do well to better address the struggling demographics, and lower costs for the native-born in the interest of creating a stronger nation. Here is a contrast between public high school/college and what needs to be done: (Ryan,2013),(Desilver, 2017),(Duggan, 2011),(quora.com,2013)
GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF HIGH SCHOOL SOCIALISM
Mostly, a public high school only cares whether you show up and graduate (this is how they get paid). The “academic proficiency” of the school is generally a measure of how many rich white or Asian American kids attend. Generally, most high schools have enough kids from functional families to save face with test scores, and suffer through the troubled demographics (generally immigrant kids, some minorities, poor kids). A bad public high school offers enough watered-down classes so that the showing-up/graduation bar is set low, while the smart kids have “AP classes”. We always hope that dynamic teachers in the mold of Sydney Poitier, Kevin Costner, or Edward James Olmos will ride in and save the struggling kids, but honestly teacher “saints” are in short supply. The situation is worsening along with the epidemic of divorce and single parenting. The watered-down classes might be disguised as things like “Art”, or “Media”, “Ag”, or “Industrial Arts” so as to satisfy Obama’s “No Child Left Behind” (which is fine, but they seldom result in certifications and/or trades jobs). Meanwhile, the Teacher’s Union slows down or overemphasizes things like Math and English so as to maintain jobs and not punish mediocrity. With an overemphasis on good behavior, high schools begin to look like prisons with trusties and snitches. Clever students are quickly branded “smart alecks” and begin to resemble Cool Hand Luke (when in the real world they’d be high-achievers). It doesn’t have to be this way however. (Chen,2021)
GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF COLLEGE CAPITALISM
Colleges have gotten expensive, and your professor is somewhat arrogant and often doesn’t care if you show up or not. Most students are running up large student loans, which are government money mediated by greedy banks. If you know what you’re doing (or have hard-to-find “good counseling”), you’ll come out of it with a good-paying job, usually in the STEM fields. If not, you’ll have a liberal arts degree, a $30k/yr job as a social worker, and $100k of student loans. Meanwhile, foreign students are gaming our colleges with early STEM education starting when they’re about 3, while learning bad or middling English. They know that this is their ticket into a high-paying American job, even though they will always have bad communication skills or limited knowledge of our culture. Meanwhile, trades schools were never strong in our country, and most of the trades knowledge is learned on-the-job and is once again, sink or swim. (Camera,2020),(Hoffower,2019),(Gross,Marcus,2018)
A CONCLUSION FROM THESE TWO SYSTEMS
At this point, you may ask “why is America slowing down secondary education to the point where foreign students are stealing all the good jobs?” and you might answer “Well, to make good citizens, babysit, and er…create jobs for the teacher’s union while enriching foreign students, colleges, professors, and banks?” Yet while saying so is close to the truth, you’d be called a “smartass”, as many educators have their heads in the sand. Happily though, there are several rather easy solutions to this mess, some of which are already being implemented:
ACCELERATE HIGH SCHOOL EDUCATION, BEGINNING IN SIXTH GRADE
In many areas, K-6 is a kind of romper room time, when parents are highly involved and kids are in neighborhood schools being taught relatively pedestrian skills such as reading, writing, basic math, PE, and good citizenship. This is good in many ways, and most recall these years fondly. However, in today’s world, 6th grade is when the party needs to end. In particular, math education needs to get more serious at this point, and pre-algebra needs to be taught. It would also be nice if foreign language was begun in 6th, since this is part of learning language as a whole. The State of California finally agrees with math acceleration, and is beginning to speed-up math through the Common Core standards. This is finally doing what college has been doing all along…quickening the pace of math (and everything else, but we’ll get to that later…). California may have been embarrassed into doing all this, since the State’s performance on standardized tests are approaching those of Alabama’s (last in the nation). This is not entirely California’s fault, as it has a highly stratified society with a close to 40% Hispanic population (many of whom struggle with English). Previously California required all students to have taken Algebra by the 8th grade, and now they are apparently trying to boost the number of high schoolers taking Calculus (currently around 15%). They are “streamlining” math, basically using the college method of minimizing Geometry (which is only taught within college Calculus). Predictably, the CA Teacher’s Union is up in arms, saying that “kids are not mastering math basics” (translation: they are cutting jobs in lower math classes). I’m all for this trend, as Calculus is the “top of the mountain” and getting more kids to this high school level better prepares them for college STEM (important when we’re importing so many H1B STEMs). This is not to say that Algebra is unimportant, but more that Algebra education needs to start earlier, and perhaps Trig/Precalculus need to be combined (it already has been in many places). If all this is done, a typical student would take pre Algebra in 6th, Algebra in 7th, Algebra II/Geometry in 8th, Trig/Precalc in 9th, Calculus AB in 10th, Calculus BC in 11th, and Statistics in 12th, or various combinations (perhaps leaving out the Stat or Calc BC for average students and topping out at Algebra II/Geometry for troubled students). It would seem also that a charitable drive by high school “haves” (rich families) to assist “have nots” (poor/immigrants)via rides to after-school tutoring, plus hiring smart kids to help struggling kids would be in order. (Johnson,2021),(Chapman,2010),(Horn,2019)
Of course this raises the question, “why not accelerate all subjects?”. When one takes foreign language in an American school, one typically asks the question 1) “After conjugating all these verbs in Spanish/French/German, why am I still tongue-tied when I go to that country?” and 2) “why do foreign kids speak our language so much better than I speak theirs?” and you would be on the right track. In college, “Immersion” is the buzz-word for a sink or swim approach to foreign language (basically, they throw you into the foreign language shark pond, the way foreigners learn after they get off the boat to our country). High school would be better off forcing foreign language students to be in a locked room for an hour each day, where they couldn’t talk, eat or use the bathroom without saying the correct foreign language words (and learning the verb conjugation after…maybe in the 3rd or 4th year). They might also consider shipping high schoolers to summer foreign exchange programs. Similarly, college knows that a course in “English” is pretty much reading things that are interesting, commenting on them, and parroting those writing styles in your own writing methods (very subjective also). They don’t waste a lot of time with things like “grammar” or “punctuation”, as these are implicit in the act of reading/writing. Colleges also know that their market is limited, since most students are there to get a job and English doesn’t really help in that department, so they keep it sexy (thus English classes with names like “Sexual Subtexts within Shakespeare”). Secondary education would do well to skip the bullshit and simply let kids read what they want, and reward them for critiquing what they read appropriately. They should also broaden the sense of what “reading” is to include periodicals (this might also be melded with “Political Science”). There should be an emphasis on public speaking and writing, once again a kind of acceleration and sink or swim. (Long,2019),(Hern,Snell,2013)
Meanwhile, if college educators are snickering while reading this indictment of high schools, now its their turn. I’d say the really, really good thing about college is junior college (which is basically a really large and effective high school), and every State should have them and make them free. They are not only a safety valve for a bad high school (they are places where you can sneak your high school student in at night to get a better education), but they also save money and offer a great “catch up” for poor/minority students struggling with our language and culture. Four-year colleges are messed-up the way capitalism is messed-up, they are effective but tend to serve a privileged few. They have sold out to rich-kids (see Lori Loughlin scandal), and foreign students “gaming” our education system, since these are money-makers. Never mind the fact that these capitalistic colleges (and their usurious banking friends) are helping bolster China’s odds of winning WW III, the college administrators and professors are enjoying money, prestige and low-paid help (also called grad students). Colleges need to be forced to address their funding constituencies (this means a State college or university needs to contain roughly 80% in-state students, or their taxpayer funds get cut off). If they want to disavow their own taxpayers…hey! This is capitalism, you can always go private! Sink or swim! (Jaschik,2021)
And while we’re at it, why is a good trade-school education so hard to find in this country? Bill Clinton promised this education to the unions when he proposed NAFTA in the 90s, but he never delivered. Are trade unions somewhat opposed to trade schools, since they might undermine a union’s monopoly on the worker pool? Is America biased in favor of white collars and against blue collars? Does America take its blue collar workers for granted? Yes, yes, and yes…as there are pretty much too many college grads running around while we can’t find enough welders and need to import Mexican laborers who are quickly promoted to carpenters (great for Mexicans but taking jobs away from the native-born). Everyone would benefit from more trade schools and yet I suppose no one wants to help pay for them. (Faux,2014),(St Esprit,2019)
The community college system (which will grow if Biden has his way with education reform), is really the salvation of the whole educational system. Is the High school not doing its job?…take community college classes! Are four year colleges too hard or too expensive?…community college is the answer! Many community colleges also contain trades programs. In short, community college is the advanced high school education you wish you’d had, with prices, pacing, trades opportunity, and availability that put 4-year colleges to shame. As in most areas of our society, neither Socialist or Capitalist models are perfect, the solutions apparently in clever combinations of the two.
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