• the217
• Life
• Grow up but when you're ready

When I graduated college, I was sort of an idiot. I’m sure a fairly compelling argument could be made that I haven’t veered far from that destination since then, but for the next 900 words or so, let’s pretend I have. After 16 years of schooling, I wasn’t particularly smart. Oh, I had got decent grades and had a pretty good knowledge of many things, but I think that just made me somewhat intelligent, not exactly smart. I understood things but not in a way I could apply them effectively. That fancy book learning was great and all, but it was really just a small percentage of the knowledge I needed to acquire. I wasn’t prepared to head out into the workforce.

It came down to two things: I wasn’t really mature in any way, and I didn’t know what the hell I wanted to do. I drank like I was still in college (by the way, I still do that, but it’s down to about one night a week rather than all seven nights). I didn’t really care about my job after the first week or so either. This made for a bad combination. I still did the work and I was more than adequate at it, but that wasn’t the point as far as I was concerned. I just had no idea what I wanted to do with myself. No one else had much idea what to do with me either.

I suppose my point is that I needed grade school, high school, four years of college and then about five more years of dicking around before I felt like I was contributing much to the general population as far as my career went. At the time, I thought I was lost. Looking back, I think I just wasn’t ready.

I eventually turned out OK, but that may only be because I wasn’t from New Hampshire. The education officials there apparently decided they think a 16-year-old sophomore in high school is ready to graduate. They announced plans for a rigorous state board of exams to be given to 10th graders. If the students pass those exams, they can then move on to the state’s community or technical schools.

They hope these tests will guarantee higher competency in school subjects, lower dropout rates and free up millions of educations dollars. I would imagine they’ll also seriously damage whatever prom system they currently have in place, but they didn’t really talk about that. For those who’d like to go to a more prestigious kind of school, they can go ahead and complete the last two years and then take another, much harder test. Wow, being a kid in New Hampshire just got a whole hell of a lot less fun. It probably sucked quite a bit before all of this.

I’m sure a ton of kids would love to get out of high school early if they could. I know I would have at the time, but it wouldn’t have been the best thing for me. I could have probably passed the tests, but I really didn’t know my ass from a hole in the ground as far as life went. If we aren’t going to trust 16-year-olds with drinking, voting, buying porn and that sort of stuff, should we really trust them to decide on their future?

I understand the dropout rate thing, but I think teaching them better and making them enjoy school a little more might nip some of that in the bud. That seems like a better option than letting them cram for an exam just so they can get the hell out of there. It seems like the bar could be set a little higher.

OK, they probably do save on education dollars, but that may be negated by all the money the state has to spend on dealing with a workforce that’s not ready to be a workforce. I just think the whole idea’s more trouble than it’s worth.

I guess my biggest problem is that even though many of these students don’t necessarily need another two years of high school, when it comes to book learning, I’m not sure it’s going to really hurt them if they stick around. If nothing else, it might help them to define exactly what they want to do for the rest of their lives. I can’t really remember, but I assume I wanted to be a cowboy or something idiotic when I was 16. I’m sure it’s a fine occupation, but I’m also fairly certain I wouldn’t be particularly happy with my choice nowadays if that was the path I had taken.

People learn a lot more in school than just Xs and Os and formulas and literature and everything else. The biggest thing I really ever took from school was getting a better understanding of the people around me and how to interact with them. There’s really no test for that sort of thing, and about the only thing that helps is interacting with the people around you for a long period of time. Students better get as much of that shit as they can while they’re in school. I’m just not sure the rest of us have to the patience to put up with their dumb asses for an extra two years.