Opinion: Let’s quit brainwashing kids that it’s a college degree or nothing

I found this article on fb on Sunday and it leads me to some conclusions about what I should've done once I finally graduated from high school. And perhaps how I fared in the work world.

Why is it college or bust not only for some educators, but parents as well?

Back when I began teaching, I seldom saw the students who were uninterested in the academic journey for a four-year degree. For they were the ones who had acquired internships, started apprenticeships, or took jobs in industry and manufacturing, as the culmination of vocational education programs in high school.

But these days I’m seeing more students with William’s dilemma, who are funneled to my classroom for lack of better options.

They are told by their high school counselors that they will not get a decent job without a college degree. And that high school qualifies them only for a low-wage job in the fast food industry.

Parents have been even more sensitive to the counselors’ warnings. So even when students found they enjoyed working in the building trades, or had a knack, say, for auto repair, their parents saw vocational education as a dumping ground for below average children: Not my child!

When I graduated from high school I never held a job. Sometimes I wonder where I'd be if I had learned a skill - especially a business skill such as accounting or bookkeeping - so that I could be employable even if college was my journey. I feel as if my career would've been better off without the thinking that college would make everything better for me.

In some respect I was like William. While I think my grades at Harlan was such a fluke that quite a few in my family expected me to to do well in college well it took me some time to finally get my degree. But either way, even if college was my path what if I had some other things going even as I continue to study. I still wonder about that now.

Let's continue:

In Chicago schools, vocational classes have been severely reduced, and schools and programs entirely dismantled over the past two decades. This is bad news for students like William, and bad news for the city as it competes for Amazon’s new headquarters, which comes with 50,000 jobs, many requiring not college degrees, but vocational education.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 68 percent of high school graduates go to college. This means that absent vocational training, 32 percent of our young people are unqualified for a job with which they can lift themselves out of poverty.

Of those who do go to college, 40 percent never finish, including William, who dropped before the end of the semester.

How to solve this problem?

We need to debunk the inference made by parents that vocational and technical jobs are inferior. Such a notion has led many of them to steer youngsters unwilling or unsuited for academic study into frustration, failure and depression.

College isn't for everyone, and tuition around the country has gone up. That means many students and their families are scrambling to pay for it. That means student loans you must pay off once you're out of school, and many of these students once they start working will have a hard time paying those loans off. This means perhaps we need to have an honest discussion with our young people about what they want to do once they graduate from high school and push them from there.