Is the point of education to prepare you for a career?
At a certain point, yes. Particularly in trade schools or skills-based education, that’s the point. Community College, conservatories, terminal degrees – these should find you ready for a career at their conclusion.
High school? The point of high school is not to prepare you for a career. High school should give you:
- Opportunities to try new things.
- Chances to fail and pick yourself back up.
- Places to express your artistic self.
- A daily place to be curious.
- Knowledge about the world and the great ideas that have shaped it.
More and more, our society is viewing high school as a pre-career training: through a statewide merit curriculum, designated tracks for future tradespeople, or college credit for courses in specific fields. Our state is aiming to designate computer programming as a “foreign language” so students can learn tech skills while meeting a requirement for what was previously considered a well-rounded human being.
If you view high school as nothing but preparatory boxes for a career, then you are consigning the arts even further from mainstream education. And you are saddling 15-year-olds with demands to know themselves better than they really should be able to.
I didn’t know what I was going to be at 15, and neither did most of you. Why are we demanding it of future generations of students?