I just read an article on msnbc.com concerning an Ohio high school that canceled their graduation ceremonies due to the uncovering of a rampant cheating scandal engulfing a large portion of the graduating senior class.
An Ohio school district says it uncovered a cheating scheme so pervasive that it had to cancel graduation ceremonies for its 60 seniors — but will still mail their diplomas.
A senior at Centerburg High School accessed teachers' computers, found tests, printed them and distributed them to classmates, administrators said.
You may agree with me, you may disagree, but I honestly think this incidence in Columbus is a microcosm of the American educational system. And what is institutionalized cheating a symptom of? Nothing more than a culture of over-demanding parents, something that has permeated our school system since I can remember. But it's a culture that, when children fail society's demands, generally ends up having fewer and fewer consequences these days.
On this site, we often fight for the rights and social safety nets for the less fortunate (be it due to their smaller intellectual capability, disabilities, sheer laziness, etc.) by comparing the failures of our system to the Western European model, where healthcare, hunger, poverty is taken care of by the government through higher taxes. Often progressives wish we could co-opt that European model in the United States and make our country a more hospitable place.
But what progressives generally fail to realize is how our society conditions the intelligent among us to see the less fortunate as nothing more than failures, incapable of nothing more than our pity.
Why is this? In my opinion, it's our societies views of what the goals of public (or private) education should be.
I was conditioned from elementary school on that the key to success in life is through attaining a college (and these days a graduate) degree. I don't think I'm alone, because the vast majority of my fellow classmates also ended up getting into and attending a college or university. The idea of a vocational education was somewhat foreign to my peers.
And this is a problem. Many want the European model, but are unwilling to accept that their kids may not be up to a college education. Few here realize that European children are open to and pushed towards vocational careers based on their intellectual abilities. They understand that there's nothing wrong with fixing cars, taking out the trash, daycare work, and their society realizes that these professions are necessities in a functioning society. So they don't deride those individuals who may not be smart enough to work a white-collar job, rather they reward them by ensuring that they won't go bankrupt due to a medical crisis.
We don't do that here, nor do many parents want to. Their child is always the special one. There's no way their kid could not be understanding the material in a class! It's got to be the teacher! No chance their baby won't be going to college!
And these beliefs have their consequences. Look how many schools of higher education we have in this country. 4,352, according to Wikipedia. And at each of them, the burden to pay (minimized for some by scholarships, grants, etc.) is on the student and his or her family. Compare that to a Western European country like France, where due to the tax-assisted subsidy of education, higher education may cost as little as $1000/year. Let's compare that to the $23,000 I'd be incurring in debt per year were I not making any money.
Now how do they do that? How do they keep the tuition costs so low? It's not only the higher taxes their citizens pay, it's also the fact that they require a much higher level of intellect and drive to attend a university. Students in their equivalent of American high schools take "le Bac," which, I guess, here would be most likened to our SATs. However, unlike the SATs, the Bac is an extremely difficult test that if a student fails, and they wish to take it again, they have to attend another year of "high school," if they wish to pursue admission into a university. Yet it's also not a necessity for graduation. If a French student has no desire to go to college, and wishes to pursue another career path, they are encouraged to do so. In fact, they are encouraged to do so from a younger age, and vocational classes are taught to high school students who wish to embark on a non-college educated career.
We don't do that here in America. My high school, for instance, due to funding and pressure from parents, got rid of its wood shop and automotive education classes. God forbid a child might be infatuated by working on cars or creating art through two-by-fours!
So every child ends up being pushed towards college, even those who don't want it and those who will go but never use the education they learn. And thus the cost of our higher education becomes so high, because the demand is through the roof.
So, getting back to the article I quoted at the top, why are so many high schools cheating? Many are simply lazy. But a lot of these kids have no desire to attend college. They don't care about studying communications, political science, chemistry, etc. They just want to pass and please their parents, who demand so much yet are willing to forgive just about anything.
These kids aren't worthless. They all have skills that society can utilize. We need auto mechanics, we need sanitation workers, we need short-order cooks. Yet, these are skills that aren't taught at your normal American college and if an American child professes to want to get into one of these professions, they are generally scolded into pursuing a college degree.
So until we can teach our young people, as in Western Europe, that vocational professions are completely acceptable and deserving of a legitimate social safety net, how will they ever grow up to think anything other than that the people who went to college (and those who didn't), yet are still at the bottom of the totem pole are there for anything other than their personal failures and thus deserve what they get?
Now before you criticize me with "get off my lawn!" and "every generation says that!," I'm 23 years old and only five years out of getting my own high school degree, so I remember, and am still in touch, with many of my peers. Much of this comes from personal experience.
Your thoughts?