The New York Times explained this morning what is behind the free Community College plan of President Obama. In this article they said
The United States built the world’s most successful economy by building its most successful education system. At the heart of that system was the universal high school movement of the early 20th century, which turned the United States into the world’s most educated country. These educated high school graduates — white-collar and blue-collar alike — powered the prosperity of the 20th century.
That may well be true. The high schools of the early 20th century taught employable skills (in addition to the absurd 1892 academic curriculum still in place.) Eventually all practical high school programs were eliminated from high school because everyone “must go to college.”
Mr. Obama, instead of restoring all the practical things that were taught in high school, wants to make everyone go to college in order to learn employable skills.
The plan would allow anyone admitted to a community college to attend without paying tuition, so long as they enroll in a program meeting certain basic requirements and they remain on track to graduate in three years. Its broad goals are clear: to extend the amount of mass education available, for free, beyond high school — from K-through-12, to K-through-college. “The president thinks this is a moment like when we decided to make high school universal,” said Cecilia Muñoz, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council.
Here is a wild suggestion, Mr Obama. Fix high school. Teach practical subjects there. Eliminate the 1892 curriculum. Here are some suggestions for what could be taught in high school today:
Some Proposed Curricula
- Criminal Justice
- Sports Management
- The Music Business
- Music Technology
- Law
- The Legal Office
- Military Readiness
- The Fashion Industry
- Electrical Engineering
- Civil Engineering
- Robotics
- Computer Engineering
- Computer Networking
- Homeland Security
- Medicine
- Nursing
- Medical Technology
- Construction
- Television Production
- Real Estate Management
- Landscape Architecture
- Computer Programming
- The Banking Industry
- The Investment World
- Automobile Design
- Aircraft Design
- Architecture
- Biotechnology Lab
- Film Making
- Travel Planning
- Financial Management
- Accounting
- Parenting and child care
- Animal care
- Zoo Keeper
- Urban Transit
- Hotel management
- Healthcare industry
- Food industry
- Graphic Arts
Could we do this? Easily. Online education allows teaching anything anywhere. Every kid could choose what they were interested in and then change his or her mind and do something else if they got interested in something else. And there are many more possibilities. Spend our money more wisely Mr. Obama. Build that.
Community college wouldn’t be necessary if the high schools weren't broken.
3 comments:
Breath of fresh air. Also note: not all MOOCs should be thrown under the same bus. I am a particular fan of Udacity's "learn programming by writing a search engine" and "learn web applications be creating a blogging service" as constructivist, learning-by-doing for the modern age.
Aren't those too granular, narrow subjects create *more* unemployable people, at least to the eye of the employer?
"I studied the Banking Industry" probably doesn't sound that appealing to an accounting firm, and lots of poeple who got hired in the banking industry did so without taking a single Banking Industry class, or daycare workers without taking "Parenting and child care" classes, and so on.
Your Proposed Curricula sounds a lot better than the current system, but I prefer students taking a more broad set of subject categories, like...
* Civics and Law Enforcement
* Entertainment and Media Production
* Engineering and Industrial Design
* Healthcare and Medicine
* Finance and Accounting
What do you think?
Why you do not offer an online course on coursera. Than you can show the world how create story-based learning really is.
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