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I think college and high school should be better optimized for each other. In high school, it's perfectly fine if you don't have a specialization. You don't eve

by kart23 5y ago

I think college and high school should be better optimized for each other. In high school, it's perfectly fine if you don't have a specialization. You don't even really have to decide your major until the 2nd year of college. This creates a lot of wasted time for people who do know what they want to do. The first year of my CS education was learning stuff I already knew from High School. I was sitting next to people who had never taken CS before, and this was their first introduction. I think it actually should be required to enter with a major in mind, and have completed coursework done towards it in high school. Not every high school could teach specialized courses, but there is a lot of low-hanging fruit that would be pretty easy. Ex. Physics for engineering, Linear Algebra for CS majors, Bio & Chemistry, etc. High schools can teach these things pretty consistently, we shouldn't need to take such basic classes in college. High school should cover more advanced material, and college should cover less breadth-wise and start off more advanced. I shouldn't be taking calculus or basic writing in college as a CS major.

burlesona 5y ago
Many people would argue the opposite, the high school is already far too focused on college preparation and a lot of people are just not interested in college. A generation or two ago there were a lot of trade classes in high school, and it was possible to come out of high school with a “specialization” in some thing like pipe fitting or welding they were walking right into a local industrial career. Now that’s all gone for the sake of college prep, and kids who would be great pipe fitters end up as burger flippers. I once has a conversation with the (then) Mayor of Texas City, Texas who lamented this exact change and said the city had a big program to recruit and visa sponsor pipe fitters out of Vietnam to sustain the local industries because the local schools no longer taught the needed skills. These were apparently great middle class jobs with high wages and benefits (although I’m taking him at his word, I don’t know if it’s true). My personal take is that high school tries to be a one size fits all model, which actually just makes it a waste of time for everyone. It would be a big improvement if we could let people branch out a lot more starting around age 14 or so. Then perhaps it would make sense, if you knew you wanted to do computer science, you could go to a CS oriented high school and in two years do all the pre-requisite work for a CS bachelors degree and head off to college, or something like that. Mainly though, I think this doesn’t happen because most people need the high school to be in their neighborhood or close by. Kids can’t drive until they’re 16, And even then they are terrible drivers and probably shouldn’t be driving until they’re 18 or 21. But this is America and if you can’t drive you really can’t be an adult, so there’s no way that you can go to the specialty school 45 minutes away. And I don’t think very many parents want to send their young teenage children away to boarding school.
- kart23 5y ago
  that's true, I was coming at it from a 'going to college' perspective, when in reality a lot of kids don't end up going to college and don't need all that. It's a tough problem, and I want kids who don't want/need to attend college to spend their time in a useful way as well. And having a local high school is very important as well, It's definitely not practical to send kids on an hour commute. The system the UK has with grammar schools is pretty interesting, by separating kids around age 11, basically it's a more advanced public school. Although that system gets some hate as well. I think it separates kids a little too young, before they can really understand what's going on.
leetcrew 5y ago
isn't this what AP courses are, more or less? if you get a high score on the BC calc exam, you can usually skip straight to multivariable or diff eq. I don't think this would work well on a larger scale. deciding your college major is one of those big life decisions. it's hard enough for most people to make a good choice by the end of their sophomore year, let alone at age sixteen in highschool. with writing in particular, there is a reason most schools require some sort of freshman writing seminar, and it isn't because high schools don't prioritize writing. in my experience at least, high schools spend a lot of time on writing skills, but still fail to matriculate many students who can meet expectations for college-level writing.

by kart23 5y ago

burlesona 5y ago

Many people would argue the opposite, the high school is already far too focused on college preparation and a lot of people are just not interested in college. A generation or two ago there were a lot of trade classes in high school, and it was possible to come out of high school with a “specialization” in some thing like pipe fitting or welding they were walking right into a local industrial career. Now that’s all gone for the sake of college prep, and kids who would be great pipe fitters end up as burger flippers. I once has a conversation with the (then) Mayor of Texas City, Texas who lamented this exact change and said the city had a big program to recruit and visa sponsor pipe fitters out of Vietnam to sustain the local industries because the local schools no longer taught the needed skills. These were apparently great middle class jobs with high wages and benefits (although I’m taking him at his word, I don’t know if it’s true). My personal take is that high school tries to be a one size fits all model, which actually just makes it a waste of time for everyone. It would be a big improvement if we could let people branch out a lot more starting around age 14 or so. Then perhaps it would make sense, if you knew you wanted to do computer science, you could go to a CS oriented high school and in two years do all the pre-requisite work for a CS bachelors degree and head off to college, or something like that. Mainly though, I think this doesn’t happen because most people need the high school to be in their neighborhood or close by. Kids can’t drive until they’re 16, And even then they are terrible drivers and probably shouldn’t be driving until they’re 18 or 21. But this is America and if you can’t drive you really can’t be an adult, so there’s no way that you can go to the specialty school 45 minutes away. And I don’t think very many parents want to send their young teenage children away to boarding school.

kart23 5y ago
that's true, I was coming at it from a 'going to college' perspective, when in reality a lot of kids don't end up going to college and don't need all that. It's a tough problem, and I want kids who don't want/need to attend college to spend their time in a useful way as well. And having a local high school is very important as well, It's definitely not practical to send kids on an hour commute. The system the UK has with grammar schools is pretty interesting, by separating kids around age 11, basically it's a more advanced public school. Although that system gets some hate as well. I think it separates kids a little too young, before they can really understand what's going on.

leetcrew 5y ago

isn't this what AP courses are, more or less? if you get a high score on the BC calc exam, you can usually skip straight to multivariable or diff eq. I don't think this would work well on a larger scale. deciding your college major is one of those big life decisions. it's hard enough for most people to make a good choice by the end of their sophomore year, let alone at age sixteen in highschool. with writing in particular, there is a reason most schools require some sort of freshman writing seminar, and it isn't because high schools don't prioritize writing. in my experience at least, high schools spend a lot of time on writing skills, but still fail to matriculate many students who can meet expectations for college-level writing.