School Readiness

Most of my returning, non-traditional students freely confess that they were not ready for school the first time around. I know I wasn't. I waded through, holding facts like water through my fingers, from test to test. I had no purpose, no value for money, no concept of the future...

My traditional students typically acknowledge a lack of purpose/direction at one time or another. Of a class of 20, likely 2 know their curricular course of action toward Fulfillment (which is almost always the sacred Job). In any given semester, I might meet (not even just in my class, but of all students I'm exposed to) an individual who sees higher learning as an enhancement to their life, rather than a means to an end. I do not work at a trade school, but then, I am not at the University anymore, either--but even there, I remember very few who were in school for enrichment.

Now that I'm working, with a family, with so many economic and chronological (?) burdens--it's too hard (so I whine) to find time to be Enriched. However, I do not walk down a hall w/o listening in on lectures I wish I could absorb. I really want to know about history, now. I am curious about biology, now. I want to be knowledgeable about the universe, for now I'm all growed up.

I think we have things so backwards in this country. We should all be granted jobs out of high school, taking away the college prep feel entirely. We should be civil servants or civic servants or military fodder--some kind of national service should be mandated for at least the first two years out of school. Somehow, I have a feeling this would affect drop outs, teen pregnancy, suicide, all sorts of things, for the pressures would be radically different. High school would be able to slow down and work on quality rather than SAT's and ACT's and transfer potential.

Then, whenever a young person felt ready for school, after at least their two years of national service, well...then they could try on higher education, richly subsidized by the govt. If they screw up, they are out in the work force doing menial labor (that woke me up, let me tell you!). If they screw up, they have forfeited their financial aide from the govt and must then find their own resources.

Two years of national service might be a good sobering period, a time for people to get their adolescence over with. It might help them figure out how great school had been, and thus, when they return to it (like so many returning students now) they would appreciate it.

But then....nobody asked me.