Pressure to Pick Early

So now there are high schools where you have to pick a major? According to the NY Times, that is the case at Dwight Morrow High. And it's a trend that's been going on around the country as evidenced by this passage:

Despite such naysayers, a number of school districts around the country are experimenting with high school majors, an outgrowth of the popular “career academies” that have become commonplace nationally, and in New York City, over the past decade. But while many career academies simply add a few courses to a broad core curriculum, majors require individual students to make a more serious commitment to a particular educational path.

Starting this month, Florida districts will require every ninth grader to major in one of more than 400 state-approved subjects, ranging from world cultures to fashion design to family and consumer sciences. South Carolina enacted a similar law last year, designating 16 career clusters, including architecture, government and agriculture.

In Mississippi, a $5 million pilot program in 14 districts this fall will have ninth graders following one of seven career paths, like construction and manufacturing or science, technology, engineering and math.

I think this is the reverse of where the trend should be going; I often wish I had felt less pressure to pick a major right away in college. I would imagine that the pressure to pick what I felt was right for me in high school would make things really difficult. The pressure, mostly speaking, is to pick something early on so you can start working towards completing your degree. I initially picked International Affairs because I figured, hey, I like international relations and our world is (cue the overused phrase) increasingly globalized. What I didn't do was figure out what the ranking of my program was at the time nor did I think about career prospects (fortunately I have a strong interest in finance and wizened up by adding that track as part of my undergrad education).

Imagine many high schoolers doing the same thing but then being pigeonholed in their "chosen" "career". I put chosen and career in separate quotes because to me making a choice means making an informed decision - something most high schoolers likely won't be able to do. Then I put career in quotes because the idea of a career is absurd to most high schoolers.

This is a small scale outrage. Earlier this year I found out via my younger cousin Carolina, who lives in Spain, that this has been the case over there for quite a while. Students are separated into two general "tracks" (either into sciences/engineering or a law/humanities/social sciences type of track); the process is very stressful for most people her age because they don't know what they want to do in life. So how can they make an informed choice? And why are we trending towards this in the United States? So that people have a better shot at getting into a higher ranked college?

On the whole, we should be emphasizing taking one's time in picking a major and pick a career. People shouldn't be afraid to dabble - it's extremely important in developing alternative viewpoints and broadening one's perspective. I count the random electives I took at GT (out of my own initiative and discouraged by my advisors) as some of the best learning experiences. Sure, I've forgotten the facts I learned in African American Politics and in the Building Construction seminar, to name a few random classes I took... but I now have a better perspective on learning and life than if I hadn't taken the classes. If you're a current student, I encourage you to take random classes as well because as I've found out it's the things you currently aren't comfortable with (and/or don't know too well) that help develop you as a person and student.

Anti-intellectualism

I had a debate about anti-intellectualism with a colleague yesterday and boy was it heated. My colleague said that the downfall of the United States will be its increasing environment of anti-intellectualism - this is a pretty heavy pronouncement! I told him that I agreed that there is an increasing sense of anti-intellectualism - that is, people against academic elitism and the low emphasis we generally put on intellectual accomplishment in our school systems. However, I also told him it wouldn't be the downfall of the United States, like he claimed. Here's why:

Even if there's a prevailing sense of anti-intellectualism, the US can "make up for it" because of the almost endless opportunities offered in this country. Not only that, but the academic elites and privileged can hold up a surprising amount of people who become "anti-intellectual", which by the way is in and of itself difficult to characterize. More and more, the people "at the top" are holding up our economy - the top 1% control $17 trillion in wealth, according to a really good book I read this weekend called Richistan. Even though we often hear about the problems plaguing the middle class (thanks to incessant reporting by people like Lou Dobbs), the prevailing sense of anti-intellectualism in that group won't bring down our country.

No, it's not anti-intellectualism that will bring down this country - it's all the other problems combined that slowly erode our competitive advantage. And what worries me is that most people don't realize our country's competitive advantages are slipping away, which is why I feel education and lifelong learning are more important than ever.

Education as the critical problem behind inequality

Instead of only linking to this great NY Times piece that many of my readers can't get without going through the free online subscription process, I'm going to link to a great blog post that talks about the article. The great post can be found here from the guys at Marginal Revolution.

A telling excerpt:

Income distribution thus depends on the balance between technological progress and access to college and postgraduate study. The problem isn’t so much capitalism as it is that American lower education does not prepare enough people to receive gains from American higher education.

Bottlenecks currently keep more individuals from improving their education. Professor Katz has suggested changes at multiple levels, including additional college aid, more-accessible community colleges, easier financial aid forms, more serious attempts to identify and retain top teachers in high schools and school voucher experiments.

It doesn’t suffice simply to increase the number of people in college; rather the new students must be prepared to learn. There is, however, no single magic bullet.