The Newest Mini-Fad: Majoring in High School
What’s the point of high school?
(a) To get the A students into a good college.
(b) To keep the D and F students off the streets.
(c) To provide a place for B and C students to hang out with friends and play sports.
(d) Um . . . Would you repeat the question?
Except for the college-crazed achievers, most students drift through high school without seeing the connection between Lord of the Flies, the X axis, the Homestead Act and any sort of future they might want. It’s stuff adults make you do.
To persuade teens that school matters, some states and districts are requiring them to choose a high school “major” that will lead toward a college major or a career.
The trend is big in the South: Florida requires majors and Mississippi, South Carolina, West Virginia and Arkansas are piloting programs that require students to choose a career path or concentration. Elsewhere, some comprehensive high schools now require students to major.
In Florida, ninth graders must choose one of 443 state-approved majors. The collegebound can specialize in Advanced Placement or an academic subject. Others are encouraged to earn a vocational certificate. The majors list includes fashion design, forestry, culinary arts, fire sprinkler system technology, animating and gaming, welding, child care assistant, commercial fishing and hundreds more. But students who pick a major not offered at a nearby school are out of luck. And how many high schools can train fire sprinkler system technologists?
Magnet programs and other specialty schools have expanded rapidly along with the small-schools movement. Students like the idea of a school with a sense of purpose.
What’s different about mandatory majors is that all students have to choose, whether they have a clue what they want to do or not. All schools have to offer career paths, whether they know how to do that or not.
It takes a lot of work by teachers to design meaningful majors that engage and focus students and actually prepare them for the future. It’s impossible for every school to do it — much less do it well — for more than a few specialties.
At Dwight Morrow High School in New Jersey, students must choose between sports management, fine and performing arts, health sciences, international studies and global commerce, communications and new media and/or liberal arts.
Sports management is the most popular choice — and the least likely to lead to a paying job. In fact, health sciences is the only major with strong job prospects; no major appeals to students interested in technical fields from mechanics to engineering and computer science.
In an Aug. 16 story, the New York Times quotes 14-year-old frosh Nicole Hutchison, who wants to be a doctor, nurse or cosmetologist. Right there is a clue that she doesn’t have a clue. Instead of health sciences, she’s majoring in performing arts because she loves to dance. “I think I’m too young to make a decision because I might change my mind later on,” she told the Times. Indeed.
The great fear is that Johnny will be pushed into the buggy-whip making major, especially if he’s non-white, and won’t get a broad education.
“This is a colossally bad idea,” says Debra Humphreys with The Association of American Colleges and Universities. “Businesses are telling us that the jobs that today’s ninth-graders will eventually have don’t even exist yet and that the specific training needed for technical professions is changing rapidly.”
Surveys show employers want “good communication skills and analytical thinking,” she said.
Well, sure, but students typically take a standard high school curriculum with electives to match their major. “International studies” majors take English in addition to a foreign language. Even Florida students going for a specific vocational certificate will have to pass academic classes.
The “jobs of the future” thing is hype. Most of today’s ninth graders will not be antigravity architects or nanocryogenesis technicians; there will be a place for nurses, police officers, accountants, welders, etc.
The problem the “majors” movement tries to solve is real: Way too many students are drifting through high school without working very hard or understanding why they should. The drifters aren’t learning world-class communications and analytical skills. They’re not learning world-class work habits. Some will get it together in college. Others will drift through their 20s. (But they’re not immature losers! They’re postponing adulthood for “the odyssey years” writes New York Times columnist David Brooks.)
Small, focused programs that require commitment and hard work could be part of the solution. Requiring every student to choose a major only guarantees that unmotivated students will drift along career paths that lead nowhere.
Joanne Jacobs, who blogs at joannejacobs.com, is the author of %%AMAZON=1403970238 Our School,%% the story of a charter school that prepares Mexican-American students for four-year colleges.
This is so wrong.
Students select majors BEFORE they’ve learned grammar or logic or rhetoric, let alone arithmetic, algebra and plane geometry.
In my first year of parochial high school, I learned the beginnings of Aristotelian LOGIC. The sine qua non of education. And taught now mostly in law school in the slowest, most sadistic and humiliating way possible (socratic method).
The jellified brains of too many teenagers come from the lack of intellectual rigor of their equally jellified teachers. Spare me a teacher educated in the 1960′s where students got course credit for participating in political demonstrations.
There are millions of people who don’t know what evidence or proof is. The best watch shows like CSI, HOUSE, NUMB3RS, BONES, and that’s as close as many come to real science and math. I think there’s a hunger for real learning, but so long as the teachers’ unions protect bad teachers, things will not get better. I blame the cowardly Republicans for fearin to take the admittedly fearsome NEA and AFT on.
A major in high school? There are a lot of people who haven’t decided on a major when they get to be a college sophomore.
Sandra: “There are millions of people who don’t know what evidence or proof is.” Exactly. And they get to serve on juries.
“Aristotelian LOGIC. The sine qua non of education. And taught now mostly in law school in the slowest, most sadistic and humiliating way possible (socratic method).” How is that so? It worked fairly well for Plato.
And working through Euclid’s Elements would be another good idea.
Back to the main topic: I read every so often that students say “nothing’s relevant” in high school. Many kids just want to be rock stars, or NBA champions.
For technical fields, I read recently in an IT trade magazine that many kids – even in college – aren’t that interested, “because so many IT jobs are going offshore”.
But as someone else pointed out, plumbers aren’t seeing their jobs outsourced. Nor nurses. Nor doctors – but not everyone is cut out to be a doctor. How about pharmacists?
The problem seems only to get worse. Is NCLB part of the solution, or part of the problem? Why is “the test” [cue twilight zone music] such a dread? Doesn’t it ask for what people should know when they get out of school? If it doesn’t, let’s fix it (but not by dumbing it down), if it does, and the students don’t, then the teacher’s unions have some serious ‘splainin’ to do.
Is it really the case that Everbody needs to go to college? Maybe if high schools were more like they were at the beginning of the last century (when a few of them still required Latin), employers would not be so ready to think of high school as a 4-year time period used mainly to sort out the sports jocks from the nerds. And the non-college bound would have a 4-year or so head start on earnings.
Since most state HS grad tests are at a 10th grade level, they should all get the same education until they pass that. THEN let them specialize, and for Pete’s sake throw voc-ed and technology there. Aimless and rough boys love hands-on, and a combination of hands-on and science can get bright but bored boys through school with enough technical skill to think about going to college later but get a job NOW.
And yes, We really, really need welders. College has become a joke in part because we think every ditz with a desire to dance, write or weave baskets is college material.
FWIW, Englewood is home to a lot of athletes and entertainers, so the majors described make a little more sense than they might in the abstract.
That said, majors in high school? Wow.
I was required to declare a High School major almost 35 years ago…with no ill effect. I’m sure that todays kids are just as capable of overcoming their stupid early life choices as we were. I’m confident that they’ll overcome their stupid later life choices just as we do too.
Is a 14-year old who wants to be a doctor/nurse/cosmetologist less or more well adjusted than one who wants to be an astronaut/oceanographer/President? Are our schools prepared to meet the needs of either? Are our schools prepared to meet the needs of ANY child?
I “majored” in metal fabrication and graduated from a Portland, Oregon high school 22 years ago. Never used my sheet metal skills in an adult job, but it kept me in school.
I now have a B.A. and an M.A. and really don’t see what’s wrong with providing a sound core of classes that at hold student interest.
Of course, the key words are sound core, none of under water basket weaving crap–we have to save something for college.
Getting kids to think about their future career is a good thing. This may not be the way to do it though.
Kids going into college without a major or those that switch majors lose a bit of time and momentum. Kids that graduate and do something other than their major also may have missed some opportunities.
And of course those destined for non-college careers could specialize in learning a trade and perhaps instead of collegeprep they could have tradeschool prep courses.
A boy who went to church with me when I was in high school (I was homeschooled) effectively majored in stone masonry — I just graduated from college and look forward to either working for $30k/year or going to grad school, and he was making $50k+/year one year after graduation from high school. Especially when you realize how many non-college-bound kids waste the better part of their senior years on multiple study halls and one state-mandated English test, I’m not sure requiring majors is all that bad. I do think it’s better to require something broad (science vs. marine biology) but a lot of kids need focus. If they’re going to be focused on something small, better for it to be a Classics program at high school than Pokemon or Advanced Dungeons & Dragons or, sigh, MTV.
What’s wrong with high school is that the place is mostly run by C-students and they’re not very bright. They often teach boring courses to the explicably unmotivated. The concept, in vogue in California, that you can teach algebra to everyone in the eighth grade, is laughable. Could we please revive vocational education so that our kids can have lousy $125k/yr jobs as plumbers and electricians instead of being forced into going to college in communications or race-baiting? Requiring majors is a red herring designed to focus attention away from other issues like the inablility of our high school brain trust to teach everyone to read and write.
What’s wrong with high school is that the place is mostly run by C-students and they’re not very bright. They often teach boring courses to the explicably unmotivated. The concept, in vogue in California, that you can teach algebra to everyone in the eighth grade, is laughable. Could we please revive vocational education so that our kids can have lousy $125k/yr jobs as plumbers and electricians instead of being forced into going to college in communications or race-baiting? Requiring majors is a red herring designed to focus attention away from other issues like the inablility of our high school brain trust to teach everyone to read and write.
I’m a father of a 9th grader in West Virginia. This past spring, she was required to choose a concentration after a brief evening orientation meeting in which the general requirements were discussed. No individual guidance nor in depth discussion of the details or implications of their choices. Just here it is….go make choices. Well OK…until you dig into the details. Because of the early requirements of these concentrations, especially in math and sciences, a student picking one may not be able to switch later without doing some remedial work e.g., taking on extra classes during the year or taking classes in summer school. This is especially true for a student picking a concentration in the arts or literature that may decide later to move into a concentration n the health sciences or engineering/science. In addition to picking a concentration, they must also pick or request a track, in essence Advanced Placement, college track (which, in the details, would find them non-competetive for anything above a mid-level university or college)or career/technical school/trades track).
I don’t believe that college is the right answer for everyone and there are certainly many valuable, well-paying jobs in the trades and technical tracks. We need great people doing those jobs too. My concern is that we are forcing children to self-select a life’s course before they have the requisite perspective and experience to do so.
How horrible that we are forcing children, BEFORE they even enter high school, to make life and career decisions. My daughter has a good head on her shoulders and can achieve at the highest levels should she choose to but…she doesn’t have the perspective nor maturity to make these decisions. Children at this age are very susceptible to making choices based on social considerations…..what are her friends taking or what’s the “cool” major. Further, they are asked to consider careers in engineering, science, health, the trades, etc. before they have been exposed to them in any meaningful way (beyond the general science presented in middle and elementary school). By the time they have an opportunity to be exposed to a particular science or technical subject, it will be too late to change concentration or track without significant extra time and effort as discussed above.
At our urging, my daughter has already taken a summer school course before she started 9th grade just to preserve as many options as possible. But not every child has the foresight nor time to do the same. My wife and I will work with my daughter as she moves through her high school years, ensuring she is preserving as many options as she can and is making good life choices. Sadly, not every child will have that guidance…and may end up having made a choice as a 13 year old that may dictate the course of their adult lives.
Dad in WV
Silly idea. Not required when I went to High School (1970s) but I did have a idea about what I wanted to do and choose classes towards that career. I wanted to work in printing. I took print shop and a advanced classes at a vocational school.
What did I do? After I left high school I joined the Air Force expected to work in offset lithography.
What actually happened was that I was sucked into intelligence work, liked it, and 95% of the stuff I learned in those specialized classes was wasted PLUS I didn’t learn general stuff that would have been very useful (such as more advanced math, a 2nd language, world history and so on).
We don’t let 16 year olds vote or buy beer. But letting them pick a CARREER is a good idea?
It’s not that picking a bad major in high school will ruin your life, it just doesn’t help you as much as more general classes would.
What a terrible idea. At a time when most colleges are not even requiring incoming freshmen to declare majors we now have high schools trying to get kids to make choices? Is this really so that the teachers don’t have to teach them to think on their own? It would certainly be easier to teach a vocation than to teach creative thinking skills.
I graduated from Dwight Morrow, to my never-ending shame, and I’ve got to tell you this is all a sham. The “Choosing Major’s” bit is a way to divert attention from the absolutely horrid national and SAT test scores of the majority black and hispanic student body. I can promise that this will lead nowhere, but make a lot of people feel good, continue to fool black students into thinking that white guilt is still taking care of them, and produce some exceptionally fine janitors and cab drivers.