Everyone thinks more kids should go to trade school instead of college. Very few think their own kids should go to trade school though
The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College
191–200 of 247 posts
Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College
#192The apocryphal story here is as that of the successful plumber. He works hard, learns his trade, and eventually starts his own plumbing business. This business employs two other plumbers. He also has a wife and three children. As they age, his business grows. By the time his children are 17, he employs twelve other plumbers and is worth over two million dollars. He speaks to his sons about joining his business. All t…
Since we're just making these things up, how about a story where the dad is a deadbeat HVAC repairman who fucks up his back and gets addicted to pain pills while his three kids study medicine, law, and computer science and go on to be a general surgeon, judge, and tech billionaire
Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College
#193The crazy thing is that most colleges have evolved non-academic party tracks, or simple tuition-extraction tracks: https://jakeseliger.com/2014/04/27/paying-for-the-party-eliz... . Talking about "college," as if it's just one big unified thing, doesn't make sense today (if it ever did). I spent ten years teaching college, and I wish this point were better emphasized in the media narratives.
Do you think the college model makes sense for science/engineering?
I think it does. I got an EE degree at a state university, and couldn't imagine how anyone could just learn all that on their own. There is so much abstract/esoteric knowledge and skills you need to develop. Having a guided step-by-step process to learning is huge (along with experienced teaching profs to help you). Plus, at least with EE, you need to have access to some absurdly expensive tools like Synopsys Design Compiler.
Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College
#194If students are coming out of 12 years of general education needing more general education, that is a failure of the public school system. We should fix that instead of pushing people into more school. After 12 years of general education, how do you justify more? In my opinion, we should be pushing specialized education at a younger age. When students exit high school, they should have skills that they can expand or…
There are two purposes to modern high schools in the US: * College prep for the college-bound * Day-care for the non-college-bound In contemporary high schools, if you're not college-bound, you might as well not exist. You will be ignored by teachers, administrators, and guidance counselors (unless you are a troublemaker).
I was not college bound and was not ignored. Has this changed now or are you generalizing?
Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd argue that expansive view should be coming way, way earlier than high school. How about before you beat the curiosity and sense of wonder out of 5-8 year olds with times tables, memorizing the dates presidents were born, and repeating the word "prepositional phrase" a thousand times - that would be a good time to start.
Public education is fundamentally broken in this regard (except for the times tables, IMO much more time should be spent on math in-school vs homework). History in the elementary school level seems near useless, aside from building reading comprehension skills.
I'd much rather see kids doing things in class that benefit from the use of multiplication, along with exposure to how to do it and arguments for using it, than to just lecture them on repeatedly writing 2x2=4 2x3=6 2x4=8 over and over for weeks.
I'm pretty sure in my own first grade experience that was the point where half the class started drifting towards the "I hate math" camp of now-adults.
Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd argue that expansive view should be coming way, way earlier than high school. How about before you beat the curiosity and sense of wonder out of 5-8 year olds with times tables, memorizing the dates presidents were born, and repeating the word "prepositional phrase" a thousand times - that would be a good time to start.
Should parents have no responsibility in this regard? It isn’t the elementary school’s child.
There is no accountability for a failure to raise a child well, so no, parents have no responsibility.
It is of course a conversation one could have on if parents should be held responsible.
Schools are the only force in childhood held even remotely accountable for the success of those children entering adulthood. Which is kind of where the desolation of inner city schools come from - the schools are punished for bad parenting, but have no real capacity (especially once punished via funding cuts) to do anything about it.
Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College
#197If students are coming out of 12 years of general education needing more general education, that is a failure of the public school system. We should fix that instead of pushing people into more school. After 12 years of general education, how do you justify more? In my opinion, we should be pushing specialized education at a younger age. When students exit high school, they should have skills that they can expand or…
Your brain isn't developed (it keeps developing till at least 30) to the point that you are capable of acquiring that expansive world view during those first 12 years. There is a reason we don't trust teenage drivers, and part of college is that transition from being a teenager to being an adult. In high school you are still only seeing people from your neighborhood but people go far away for college where they meet…
I agree. It's a known fact that guys don't develop fully until well into their late 20's, early 30's. For example: I took accounting and finance courses in college and I hated them. I did not understand accounting concepts and felt stupid while others seemed to grasp them. Fast forward, I am now in my early 30's and the same concepts now make sense. I actually enjoy looking at finance topics (not so much accounting, but I understand a lot more of it now). I've often questioned the timeline on education and why we try to learn the most important topics in our early 20's when half of us cannot comprehend them entirely until late 20's. Sure, there are always those who do get the information and advance quickly, then go on to achieve great things, but what percentage of the whole population does this?
Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except that's what high school should be. And let's face it, general studies courses that make up that "expansive view" of college really are repeats of high school with slightly more work, at least if you take honors classes in high school. And if that expansive knowledge is being surrounded by peers who are in pursuit of higher learning...that's not the typical college experience these days. High school is becoming…
This was exactly my problem with College and why I didn't succeed there. I came from a really good high school that offered a breadth of knowledge across fields. When I went to college (granted in 1998) to become a "web designer" the curriculum and training was just not there. My first year was taking variations of the same math courses, the same english courses and a couple comp sci courses (teaching Java). It was h…
I don’t know about your school, but most of the useful classes generally occur later on. So, dropping out after a year means you missed out on the most useful parts.
It might seem wasteful, but gateway classes are what allow upper level courses to assume basic competency and move much faster. I had a computer architecture class where one assignment was to write a fairly simple program in x86 ASM and the handholding was a recommended book to get you started.
That said, a lot of collages had real issues teaching computers in the 90’s. Competent staff was hard to retain and enrollment was skyrocketing. So many schools tried to shuffle students into other departments.
Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College
#199The apocryphal story here is as that of the successful plumber. He works hard, learns his trade, and eventually starts his own plumbing business. This business employs two other plumbers. He also has a wife and three children. As they age, his business grows. By the time his children are 17, he employs twelve other plumbers and is worth over two million dollars. He speaks to his sons about joining his business. All t…
Since we're just making these things up, how about a story where the dad is a deadbeat HVAC repairman who fucks up his back and gets addicted to pain pills while his three kids study medicine, law, and computer science and go on to be a general surgeon, judge, and tech billionaire
That's ridiculous; it's more of a parable than it is "just making these things up". I have, if not in those exact words, heard of such things happening with some regularity.
What I wrote is supposed to make the point that you can be successful as a tradesman and that college is not absolutely necessary. What you wrote makes no point about the importance of college education vs trade school (the topic at hand, if you will recall), but rather seems like the baseless writing of someone with a chip on his shoulder.
Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College
#200The apocryphal story here is as that of the successful plumber. He works hard, learns his trade, and eventually starts his own plumbing business. This business employs two other plumbers. He also has a wife and three children. As they age, his business grows. By the time his children are 17, he employs twelve other plumbers and is worth over two million dollars. He speaks to his sons about joining his business. All t…
Some people just want to spend their time learning about Gothic art or about Persian poetry instead of fixing other people's plumbing, there's nothing wrong with that, quite the contrary. And to add a further non-apocryphal anecdote: I'm probably never going to be reach (I'm approaching 40 and you kind of feel this sort of things) but were I to die tomorrow one of my best memories/things that happened in my life woul…
Not a ding on poetry or art. More the fact that I have heard many accounts of boys giving up the family business to go pursue such things as a career.
More seriously, I've also heard of similar situations where the boy majors in management or something to that effect, gets out, and can't find a job (this was more common in 08-12). Tradesmen pretty much always have work.