Hello fellow classmates and who ever has an interest in learning theories. This is the first time I have ever created a blog. I normally use the net for checking the scores, seeing how what is now with the Colts, checking the weather or news, and maybe a little, and i emphasize little, shopping so please bear with me.
I teach Heating and Cooling at Southeast Technical Institute in Sioux Falls South Dakota. For more information on my school, please visit http://www.southeattech.edu/
Post secondary education should be a choice for a student and that student has hopefully done some initial investigations into a certain career. Parents seem to want to get into the mix of things and, God bless them, think they need to push their little Johnny into a certain or school. I have had to deal with several students who have parents that throw a pamphlet at their pride and joy and tell them to pick out a career because you are going to school.
Many of these students are fresh out of high school and have never been away from home or had to go out into the real world and discover what real work really is.
A person has to want to learn and has to want to go to school to succeed. To often parents want to continue their parenting into the students adult years. Its time to let little Johnny go and let little Johnny decide what they want in life. Maybe it will take a year or two, maybe five or 10, but they will decide. Let them go out and pour some concrete, or drive a dump truck. Let them figure out that $10 an hour is not going to make the house payments. It may make his beverage payments for some time, but eventually it will get old to the kid. Maybe your kid is ready for school. Maybe your kid is mature enough to really know what they want. If they are, that is wonderful, but if not, please do us in education, and your kid a favor. Let them decide when and where they want to go to school. Let them decide when they want to learn and how much they want. Pushing them is setting them up for failure. THEY have to want to learn.
One more thing. Sending kids to a tech school or a vo-tech is not an alternative anymore for those kids who are not "college material". Tech schools can be and often times are as challenging or more even than colleges or universities. The days of repairing cars by what sound they are making or charging air conditioners by feeling the refrigerant lines are over. Its a technical world.
My boys! (on the left, kinesthetic, on the right, visual)
Thank you! For as long as I have lived and worked in higher education (I worked and lived in residence life for almost 10 years - where you really get to see a side of the student that most do not) I have agreed with not pushing a child to go to school. If the school has residence halls the students love it - it is another way to build their social network and find more people to spend time with on the weekends, or week nights, but when they earn a 0.25 GPA it is evident they are not there to learn. Then, in the long run, those same students often end up causing problems for other students or for themselves - they have nothing much to keep them busy and it is disruptive all the way around. Although, it does serve as a good lesson (my husband can attest to that), but more often than not, I think parents are afraid if their kid doesn't go to college (two-year, four-year, technical, or otherwise) then they will have to keep taking care of them. Help them out, but lay the ground rules - make them pay rent and buy their own food... they will figure it out eventually.
ReplyDeleteI also appreciate your comments about not sending students to technical or community colleges if they are not "college material" - I was kind of college material and know that I would NEVER have survived at a technical or community college - many of the majors and areas of study I just can't wrap my brain around and I am not smart in many of the areas of study offered - I would have wasted their time and mine, as well as money. I think high schools are getting better about helping students get to know what suits them best - I think parents should perpetuate these conversations, but not influence to the extent that their ideas become their studnets' ideas.
Okay - enough from my soap box, this is your blog.