I can’t really agree with you, RT. I spent three years with my British wife as she went through her Master’s program in Social Work. I’ve seen high school course work that was more rigorous! On the other hand, maybe it’s the nature of social work to be juvenile and dogmatic. Her thesis was a joke. Not a very funny one either.

Odd thing: I never said any of this to her and she STILL divorced me as soon as she finished. Personally, I think she waited too long…

But to reinforce some earlier comments, jobs like these demand a good understanding of geometry and math and also the ability to read and comprehend complex instructions, manuals, etc.

I had a bizarre education->work transition, which I only noticed in retrospect. I did pretty well in school, got university-level grades, but I never got to go to university for financial reasons. We were living in South Africa at the time, with little money, and there was absolutely no State backing for 3rd-level study. (I’m only getting to go to university now, 25 years later, in Ireland.)

So I took an apprenticeship in “instrumentation”, and you know what? It wasn’t half bad. It was work, and study, but I also got to do exciting stuff at a steel plant. Everything from tapping an iron furnace to seeing steel getting rolled in to sheets. This was the period when industry was getting more computerized, so the definition of “instrumentation” was changing. Anyone who could understand this PC stuff was in demand. It wasn’t all “sub-college” people, and smart people could rise through the ranks and do pretty well, though you would eventually run in to academic requirements for becoming an engineer or manager, and need to study further.

However, I don’t know how that would work these days, now that many industries no longer exist in their previous form. If every US State implemented this type of program, who would take all those students on? As already pointed out, not everyone is suited for college, and that does NOT mean that such people are stupid! For example, a good welder who is also smart can learn additional skills over time, such as underwater work, and make an extremely good living from it – and perhaps do a management degree later.

I do hope they also continue to include the sex education course: “When a Sister is More Than a Sister” or at least the simpler class, “What’s a Cousin, Anyway?”

If there really were any trade jobs going unfulfilled. It’s because employers would rather hire kids, with little need for health benefits, and retirement pay. Than staff with older and more experienced workers, who do. When I was in my 20s, in the Air Force. I knew I was already too old to be hired as a computer programmer, in some civilian company. Because they mainly hire them straight from college, in their teens. Just like Microsoft did. After 24, you’re screwed in the American labor market.

Fun to play with though–If 50% of folks are below average, and 50% of folks are above average, then how many people are just average?

((I know, read it off the graph.))

Jarvis DeBerry said it best in the Times-Picayune.
http://tinyurl.com/lyjk7o

“The state’s lawmakers — in cahoots with a derelict state board of education, self-interested teacher unions and school boards and a governor who ought to be ashamed of himself — are abdicating their responsibility to make the state’s high school diplomas mean something. They are, instead, about to create an attendance award and pass it off as if it signifies something other than the state’s low opinion of the recipients.”