Posted on 10/22/2009 10:53:08 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
“The only students in public schools who will have ANY chance of getting a college degree are the pre-AP/honors kids. (30-50% depending on the school”
“I disagree. There are some very good public school systems, some of which have very high graduation rates and from which many students go on to achieve college degrees. Many of these happen to be in communities in which the parents are actively involved in the schools, and teach appropriate values at home.”
... and those parents push their kids onto the pre-AP/honors track. I know. My wife and I are such parents. The *Parents* are the key ingredient to such education. We pick the best schools by where we choose to live, then push the children to excel. schools are little more than holding pens for juvenile barbarians without parental involvement.
“Yeah, but how many people can get work with a degree in Womyn’s studies?
Too many people graduate from college with no real skills. I’ve edited documents written by people with masters degrees in communication. They can’t write, they can’t spell and they have no hint of proper grammar.”
Pity them. They are victims of progressive education.
Degrees like Womyn’s Studies are markers for the types. AN employer should probably consider such a degree a detriment not an asset ... “hmmm, illiterate and with and attitude. why would I hire *that*?”
What do you call a Liberal Arts major after they graduate?
Waiter!
Interesting idea.
In big city districts the 30-50% is being generous.
As long as the family is willing to put in the effort to make something unconventional work, this is a great path. My friend’s daughter will probably get her B.A. in less than 2 years having spent about $11k. There is a cost/time benefit even over going to a commuter school because of the time and gas savings from testing out of so many courses. As I recall, one homeschooler did this program and started taking his CPA exams while he was still 19.
There we go — the keyword is “meaningful”. The problem is too many of our High School diplomas are meaningless.
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Conversations with recent college graduates reveal that a “four year degree” which often takes five or six years to obtain is at best a completion of what used to be a high school education for many. An engineering degree is different but those who have degrees in history etc. often lack the knowledge to pass high school final exams from fifty years ago. Jobs that are actually no more difficult than some that used to require at MAXIMUM a high school diploma now require a four year college degree. What point is there in having these students spend four or more years and huge sums of money (don’t forget to include income lost while attending school) trying to get the education they used to get before they reached eighteen, especially when the vast majority will still lack the writing skills and the knowledge of history that a 1959 high school graduate acquired in the first ten years of school? The whole system is screwed up beyond belief.
If you want a degree go to a university, if you want an education, get a library card, a good reading lamp and a high speed internet connection.
I would take the opinion of Charles Murray (whom I greatly admire) any day over the bloviations of Marcus Winters.
Mr. Winters seems to be your standard-issue apologist for students who cannot hack scholastic achievement; instead, he foists the blame for their failures on the schools and the teaching staff. If it were indeed a function of teaching then you could jerk anyone off the street and make him a nuclear physicist.
Clark Kerr pushed the same BS on the people of California in the 1950s, and they fell for it. At the time, the university system in California did not charge tuition, and was open to “anyone who wanted to attend.” As a result, Cali STILL has the largest higher education bureaucracy in the nation, although Ronaldus Magnus put a stop to the no tuition nonsense.
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