The topic of alternatives to higher education is very personal to me. My youngest son has learning challenges related to his autistic spectrum disorder. While he does great in math and concrete subjects, he struggles with abstract language. Last week, I told him that “March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb.” And then I asked him what that meant. He said that it meant that lions and sheep were going to invade our planet.
We never sent Ian to CCD, because our church doesn’t have a special education religious program. And religion is such an abstract topic that we never really talked about it with him, even though he goes to church every Sunday. So, Ian has had a lot of questions lately. Examples, “Is Jesus is a zombie?” That rising from the dead thing is a little creepy for him. “Why does Jesus hate meat?” Lots of confusion about meat-less Fridays during Lent. And so on. Abstract concepts and language are difficult for my sweet son.
He’s only 11. He’ll continue to make progress in language comprehension, but at some point, he will hit a wall. His brain wiring is different from other kids. Now, he has a lot of potential. Once we work out other related issues, he is very capable of holding down a job in computer programming or electronics or a whole range of honorable professions. But should he really go to a college and write essays about “The Old Man and the Sea”? No.
I’ve been touring public and private special ed schools looking for a good placement for him next year (and perhaps through high school). As part of promotional literature, college attendance rates are often cited. One special ed school boasted that 90 percent of its graduates attend college. How are all those special ed kids attending college? Because many colleges have set up special ed programs for parents who are willing to pay big bucks to give their kids the college experience.
College isn’t for everyone. Now, I would like to see more low-income and non-traditional students in higher ed. But what about kids with very clear weaknesses (and strengths)? Should we shove them through the higher ed process, too? I don’t think so.
Apt. 11d 
The really big fish is a metaphor for why nobody should read Hemingway.
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At some point, you’re gonna need a bigger boat.
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We around here find the whole “rising from the dead thing” a little creepy around here, too. My daughter was once seriously dismayed by a billboard featuring Jesus on the cross and no one really could explain it to her (though her aunt, who is Catholic, was trying to do it without proselytizing and being sensitive to our beliefs, so that probably hampered her).
I think there are college experiences that are allowing students to more selectively chose their experience — there’s an interesting review in Gas Station Without Pumps, of different college programs, geared toward addressing the needs of the blogger’s son, who is profoundly gifted in math and science, but struggles with the same kind of abstract symbolism/literature theorizing (struggled enough that the family decided to home school to avoid the kind of English classes offered in HS). The take home was that Brown, with its generalizing customizable curriculum, seemed more promising than some of the other schools (like Columbia). I’m guessing similar distinctions exist in other majors and other schools already — the liberal arts education isn’t the only one out there, even with the college experience.
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I have to add that the only person that I know who was ever told by their high school that “they were not college material” is now a highly respected professor at a super-elite university. I think that’s the danger we all live in fear of. There are people who might not be college material, but there are also false negatives. I live in fear of those false negatives.
It’s the same with the death penalty. If you that there are circumstances in with the state should execute people, how many innocent people are you willing to have the state kill? Because it will be non-zero in any real world.
Loosing out on your future isn’t as bad as being killed, of course, but how many people will we cut off from ever having the future they might have had?
(and, of course, this is a different question than the one a parent and child face in deciding together that college isn’t the right option for the child: there should be options other than the one path for people who don’t fit the standard mole, and it is a lie to suggest that college is a solution for everyone).
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Urgh, sorry for the typos.
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Since no one probably fits the standard mole.
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I do.
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Hah. Very good.
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It also strikes me that the problem isn’t telling students for whom college isn’t a good fit not to go to college but, to actually *have* an alternative path to a “middle class” life. The article seems to suggest that we tell them that exists, but, the drive to push everyone to college is partly premised on the idea that there are, no longer, jobs to a middle class life for those who haven’t completed college.
That path might be a post-high school “vocational” track, but if it were, I’d want to see the vocational employers paying for and developing it (as well as guaranteeing jobs on successful completion). Otherwise we have educators and students trying to guess what employers need in a quickly changing world, and likely to forecast incorrectly.
Here’s the Atlantic talking about how there’s no shortage of STEM workers: http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/03/the-myth-of-the-science-and-engineering-shortage/284359/. I’m sympathetic to the notion that the problem is employer related — because employers are trying to avoid training employees
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Since Autistic Youngest shines at her culinary class, we’re exploring the cooking courses at our local college (Canadian vocational system) as well as the university (where Chemistry and Ancient Studies are current options). Taking the six-year program to get through high school has been so helpful for her to learn the soft skills of life along with the range of courses she can explore.
Church? We had to write that off when she was eight and noticed a stained glass window that freaked her out. We teach her as best we can about faith and belief, as well as opening the prospects of other beliefs or non-belief, but it’s tough without access to those communities and environments that she shuns.
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