Today the Spawn is at home feeling under the weather (which is itself grey and slightly dismal), but yesterday we picked out her classes for next year — tenth grade — at Mondoville High. Remember that for some arcane reason, South Carolina law requires that high schoolers essentially declare a major (The Spawn has a double — performing arts [somehow including graphic art, which is her real interest] and English), but she’s basically in a college prep track. This means she’s taking Pre-Calc Honors (A.P. Calc AB is apparently available in junior/senior year), English III Honors (the A.P. course is Comp/Lit, and I reckon she’ll hit that in eleventh or twelfth grade), U.S. History Honors (I don’t know if an A.P. option is available) and Biology Honors (I managed to avoid Bio in high school, and went with a year of Chem and a year of Physics instead), and Spanish I (She would have preferred French, but Spanish is the only foreign language available at Mondoville High. Personally, I would have wanted her to take Latin.)
The State also requires that she take some technology courses (NOT the same thing as a technical course), so she’s down for something called “Computer Applications”, and she’s taking creative writing, marketing (which she hopes will be graphic design-focused) and sociology as fillers, with Driver’s Ed on tap if there’s a schedule conflict.
Despite the de facto College Prep curriculum she has, I’m still pretty dubious about the whole business. Mondoville sits at an odd intersection of the semi-rural and socioeconomically depressed on the one hand and the modern fixation on college on the other. This manifests as a promotion of the “OK college” — non-elite schools (like, ahem, Mondoville) and the state schools, both flagship and those lower on the food chain.While the curriculum ostensibly prepares the kids for such endeavors (although kids like the Spawn, with higher targets, don’t really fit the plan), my personal experience has led me to see that the high schools take too many kids into the college prep model, and consequently wind up underpreparing everyone, and certainly underpreparing the kids who are genuinely aiming high, rather than merely aiming higher. (Please understand, improving one’s lot even modestly through education is a Good Thing — I’m not knocking that at all. Still, attempting to breed the World’s Tallest Pygmies does little to serve the potential giants lost in the shuffle.)
This brings me to some thoughts that Withywindle has posted at A&J. At Castle Gormogon, Dr. J looks at the other end of the equation as well. Withy’s experiences reflect mine in many ways (although in different parts of the country). When I hear about what the Spawn does in class, I see in part why the kids are underprepped. And I think there’s more than a little truth to his conclusion:
In effect, I don’t think the number of people actually receiving a college education has increased proportionately since 1939–the rest are actually receiving a high-school education, or simply being warehoused. I don’t think any favors are being done, either to the students or to the country as a whole, by the wholesale deception involved in calling this shambles “a college education.”
Now one response to this might be Robert Weissberg’s assertion that most Americans don’t really give a damn about education. They care about having a local team to support, a place to store adolescents, and other ancillaries, but actually learning and thinking? Not so much.
But I do care — because it’s my business, and more importantly, because it’s my daughter.
Hope you’re feeling better, kid.
Professor Mondo 