Reply to Is the education 'crisis' in the USA overblown?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I actually think that focusing too much on traditional 4-year college education is the wrong approach as a country.  We should actually be doing more to bring back apprenticeships and training in trades.  And beyond that, we should change how we view those fields so that it isn't seen as "well, Johnny isn't smart enough for college, so he's going to go to trade school."  That's the wrong outlook.[/quote]
I talked about this with my mother a while ago, and she mentioned that during her childhood, it was okay for parents to say things like "my Johnny's not the brightest."  It sounds terrible now, but back then it was fine, in part because there were enough opportunities for everyone that you didn't HAVE to be the smartest and the best in order to achieve a comfortable life.  Now we act like anyone who isn't in the 99th percentile is destined to live in a squalor, and even worse, we act like they deserve it.[/quote]

You missed my point.  If you think that trades are for dummies, then you don't know much about trades.  You actually want the guy who does the wiring in a building or who works on plumbing to be smart because you want that stuff to work right.  It's a misconception that a trade is an alternative for a non-smart person.  And that misconception is a problem.

In yesteryear, smart people went into trades.  It was physical labor or menial jobs that people saw as alternatives for people who were "not the brightest."  But even still, those jobs should provide a living wage (and they don't nowadays).  But college or university was really something "back then" that people went into for specific things that required a college education (or if they were wealthy).  It was never the case that all smart students were expected to go to a 4-year university.  There were perfectly respectful pathways to employment aside from university that didn't carry a stigma of "that's for people who can't get into college."  That was my point.

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