THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 6, 1995 TAG: 9508030017
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J4 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: By JAMES R. HERNDON
LENGTH: Medium: 87 lines
``Unready to Work'' (editorial, July 7), commenting on the July 5 Associated Press report addressing American student's unpreparedness for the world of work, was factual in content, but you drew some off-point conclusions.
Ever since World War II, we Americans have been convinced that we can do anything to which we set our minds. We tell our children, ``You can be anything you want to be.'' We tell our politicians that we have a right to the American Dream.
Education in America is suffering from the same fate as American business. That is, we think that just saying we are the best makes us the best. For the most part, we pay lip service to the cliche' that it takes hard work to actually be anything you want to be.
The editorial concluded that individual citizens must demand an education that prepares their children for work. I agree. But individual citizens must first rethink what it is they will encourage their children to aspire to. Today's society insists that our children must go to college, thereby conveying the message that anything less is failure.
Test my theory on yourself. What would your reaction be if your child in middle school announced that he or she wanted to be a plumber? Would you encourage that child's dream with school field trips to a plumbing contractor's project, or encourage the child's education in math and reading skills, knowing that being able to read and comprehend specifications, contracts and blueprints is essential as a tradesman develops in his profession?
I doubt it. You would more than likely say something patronizing and think to yourself that you don't want your child to have to use his or her back and hands to earn a living - the big money is earned only by using the brain and having a college diploma.
You say that squabbling educators will have to change the way they have always done things. I agree. We must realize that the educators, just like corporate America, must change when the customer or the competition demands it. We need to provide the appropriate forum where educators can debate the issues, and we need to be able to identify the objectives and measure the progress of the educational system in place. Corporate America struggles with this challenge, and educators will, too.
You say that business leaders will have to decide to spend money to bring workers up to speed rather than shift operations to countries where a trained work force is available. American businesses are already paying for and training their work force, which is one of the reasons we are not competitive with many foreign markets.
On a recent visit to Norfolk, Dr. Ronald Carrier, president of James Madison University, relayed that one of the changes he had observed as he talked with corporate executives in recent years was that they want new employees (in this case college graduates) who are ready to be productive workers because they can no longer afford to hire and spend one or two years providing the in-house training that has traditionally been provided. This indicates that businesses are finding our children to be poorly prepared by our educational system to become immediate productive members of our country's work force, even the college-bound students.
Community colleges have been primarily engaged in rework because of the poor quality of the high-school product. We should be doing the job right the first time with the tax dollars we are already providing for education, not placing the primary burden of education on the business community.
Norfolk's national model program ``TECH PREP'' and numerous apprentice programs educate and train young people for the work world. Apprenticeship programs are struggling, not because business doesn't support them but largely because the programs have difficulty attracting qualified applicants.
Many students who do begin apprenticeships never make it because their high-school educations have not prepared them. We have erroneously told students that if they are not going to college they do not need higher math, science or reading skills. Upon entering an apprentice program, they must be capable of working a full-time job, embarking on an educational curriculum equivalent to a college associates degree and, in many cases, raising a family at the same time. Most college-bound students are not equipped or prepared to face such a challenge either.
The Tech Prep program's purpose is to prepare every student for a career and basically establish the principle that all education is vocational education whether or not the student is college-bound. Perhaps if students were involved in programs such as this as early as middle school, they would be making choices that prepare them to meet the challenges they inevitably face after leaving high school. MEMO: Mr. Herndon is a member of the Norfolk School Board and Tidewater
Community College Board. by CNB