Don't Stay in School
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@scottalanmiller said in Don't Stay in School:
Even in the big financial space, hiring straight from high school was acceptable, even for high end positions. I've never heard of the "can't get a job without experience" problem in real life. On SW it seems to be common and, of course, we all see it in mindless memes posted to Facebook, but everyone with a job, anywhere in the world has gotten past this barrier. It can't actually exist until we get to a point that we have a massive upsweep in unemployment making it momentarily possible.
I expect that people always said this, they just didn't have the Internet and cat memes to promote their disappointment in it.
My guess is that people who are unemployable or marginally employable complain about this and other related items like minimal wage increases a ton because it feels like a viable reason to them as to why they can't find work. But most of the time, not always, the issue is just that they aren't qualified, are not willing to do what it takes to be qualified and don't want to accept the jobs that they are eligible for.
The problem is that a lot of folks don't know that they can intern or don't have local businesses that will let them intern when they are young enough to have the time to do it. As an adult, I could not afford to do any kind of intern jobs because I have bills to pay.
I got my foot in the professional world thanks to an intern-type program at my Highschool.
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@dafyre said in Don't Stay in School:
The problem is that a lot of folks don't know that they can intern or don't have local businesses that will let them intern when they are young enough to have the time to do it.
Agreed. That's why we need huge improvements in schools. How can anyone get hired as a teacher, guidance counsellor, etc. without knowing that there are internships?
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@dafyre said in Don't Stay in School:
As an adult, I could not afford to do any kind of intern jobs because I have bills to pay.
That logic, though, would rule out university FAR before it would rule out interning. Interning happens earlier, faster and at a fraction of the cost of university. So the things that make people wary of interning should make university out of the question.
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@DustinB3403 said in Don't Stay in School:
@Dashrender said in Don't Stay in School:
Learning how to research is probably a life skill most people should have - one that is rarely taught and when taught is poorly taught. I still consider myself a noob at it.
I think my google-magic has proven this a few times.
My Google-fu once found a copy of Act! 2000 installer files, etc, which the company was transitioning away from but still needed to install on the new PCs we were rolling out, with some Google-fu and Regex...I got very lucky but I managed to find it on a open file server somewhere on the internet, and it worked! My boss was so proud...LOL
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@scottalanmiller said in Don't Stay in School:
@dafyre said in Don't Stay in School:
As an adult, I could not afford to do any kind of intern jobs because I have bills to pay.
That logic, though, would rule out university FAR before it would rule out interning. Interning happens earlier, faster and at a fraction of the cost of university. So the things that make people wary of interning should make university out of the question.
I always wondered why interning isn't pushed harder in high schools. My conspiracy mindedness thinks that there is some monetary incentive for guidance counselors and teachers to push kids to going to college instead of looking at vocational or intern opportunities.
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@scottalanmiller said in Don't Stay in School:
@dafyre said in Don't Stay in School:
As an adult, I could not afford to do any kind of intern jobs because I have bills to pay.
That logic, though, would rule out university FAR before it would rule out interning. Interning happens earlier, faster and at a fraction of the cost of university. So the things that make people wary of interning should make university out of the question.
The difference is that a lot of folks can take classes at the university full time, and still work a full time or part-time job to pay for the university (assuming grants, scholarships, and financial aid make it not cost 25-50k per year out of pocket).
In that retrospect, I guess somebody could intern full time and work a second job to pay the bills.
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@coliver said in Don't Stay in School:
I always wondered why interning isn't pushed harder in high schools. My conspiracy mindedness thinks that there is some monetary incentive for guidance counselors and teachers to push kids to going to college instead of looking at vocational or intern opportunities.
There is a HUGE incentive for this. Teachers and GCs are totally dependent on the university system for their culture, jobs, etc. To suggest that there are other options would be to admit that they might not have done the right thing. Sure, they aren't paid to promote this, but every teacher or GC in a public school, at least, went to college. So they all have a huge emotional need and a cultural need and peer pressure to promote and enforce the culture of that. It's self fulfilling - only college graduates are allowed to be in the position to give that advice, so anyone who has a contrary or even just common sense view point is eliminated from the discussion.
Even if a teacher had a dissenting opinion, this would mean throwing the establishment under which they earn their living and on which they depend, under the bus.
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@dafyre said in Don't Stay in School:
@scottalanmiller said in Don't Stay in School:
@dafyre said in Don't Stay in School:
As an adult, I could not afford to do any kind of intern jobs because I have bills to pay.
That logic, though, would rule out university FAR before it would rule out interning. Interning happens earlier, faster and at a fraction of the cost of university. So the things that make people wary of interning should make university out of the question.
The difference is that a lot of folks can take classes at the university full time, and still work a full time or part-time job to pay for the university (assuming grants, scholarships, and financial aid make it not cost 25-50k per year out of pocket).
In that retrospect, I guess somebody could intern full time and work a second job to pay the bills.
Yup, even easier with interning because you can make the money and never have to pay to intern, and often internships pay something or provide some benefits. Those that are free normally have really flexible hours that class work does not have.
And for the record, I worked 50+ hours a week, went to college full time AND interned. It's a tough life, but very doable.
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@coliver said in Don't Stay in School:
I always wondered why interning isn't pushed harder in high schools.
One innocent aspect of this is that the GC and teacher worlds have effectively zero experience with industry, broader education and such. They just have no exposure. People working in the high school, with only the rarest exception, have been involved in the singular primary education system or the university focused training for that industry, since they were four or five years old, as young as three if they did public Pre-K!! Think about that... the level of "bubble syndrome", the degree of indoctrination is crazy.
In a great many cases, those people are the children of educators. They might have parents who have no exposure to other careers, too.
This is one of the huge issues with the education system - most of the people in the system have never left the system. They have no idea what normal work is like, no idea how other industries do things, they have the least academic exposure of nearly all fields - because every other field has, at a minimum, exposure to the academic work as students in additional to experience in their own field.
I've worked in nearly every field that my high school teachers taught in more than all of my high school teachers, combined. It's not their fault, it's just how it is. I know of only one who had a comparable amount of university education. None that travelled as much. None that wrote as much. None that actually worked in other fields.
Pretty much every casual acquaintance that I have has more exposure than every teacher that I have known. It's not their fault, it's the fault of the system. It's not all bad, but it introduces some huge problems caused by living in a huge bubble surrounded by people who also live in that bubble. It's so complete that even their vacation time is shared so when they travel, they almost always do so surrounded by other educators taking the same vacations at the same time leading to a tourism culture that is really insular as well!
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@coliver said in Don't Stay in School:
@scottalanmiller said in Don't Stay in School:
@dafyre said in Don't Stay in School:
As an adult, I could not afford to do any kind of intern jobs because I have bills to pay.
That logic, though, would rule out university FAR before it would rule out interning. Interning happens earlier, faster and at a fraction of the cost of university. So the things that make people wary of interning should make university out of the question.
I always wondered why interning isn't pushed harder in high schools. My conspiracy mindedness thinks that there is some monetary incentive for guidance counselors and teachers to push kids to going to college instead of looking at vocational or intern opportunities.
I was just thinking about this same thing the other day...
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As a thought, or even real, experiment... go talk to teachers that you know. Ask how many ever looked into or thought about interning or volunteering in education? My guess is that you will struggle to find one. Certainly they exist, but how many actually seriously considered it?
Pretty much all teachers that I know, and like most of you I know a lot, did the "high school is for high school, then you go to college, then you go to job interviews or job fairs set up by that college for the profession you went to college for." It's 100% "follow the system and follow the rules" without variance. There is no reason to intern because there is a stable, reliable workflow to get into teaching that starts with a seventh grader saying "I see teachers, that looks like fun, I want to do that." Which sometimes is good, if you love to teach, you should probably teach. But it is also bad because literally everyone that falls into the "I will just do the one job that I observe first" ends up teaching because it is also the common thing that everyone is exposed to. If you have the least interest, motivation or curiosity you end up going to school for education. So the education field suffers from being chock full of those people in addition to the people who actually want to be educators.
By contrast, I know a few people who do not really consider themselves to be educators who have taken that extra initiative to intern and/or volunteer in education. Name any other field where the people who put in the highest level of effort and dedication (or what we would consider so in other fields) are almost always the ones that then don't consider that field for a profession?
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So some things that need to change in the American education system:
- We need to stop the "teach for the test" approach. Kids don't like tests, and I agree with Scott. I've taken tests on things that I barely knew anything about and done very well, simply because I'm excellent at taking tests. Tests are an easy way to generate metrics and numbers for someone to present to someone else. However, our current testing system doesn't really test on comprehension, but rather, as @Dashrender I believe said (sorry if I'm mistaken), them being able to regurgitate information.
- Teach kids practical life skills. How to change a tire, create a budget, basic home and car maintenance, basic accounting and bookkeeping, and much more. I actually use basic algebra on a daily basis. I still end up using a calculator, but if I'm trying to figure out that 280 is 90% of what number, I know it's x*.9=280 and I end up dividing 280/.9 to get the answer. Stuff like that. But if someone isn't going to go for math in college, why are we teaching calculus and trig?
- Teach skills. After 8th grade, get kids active in learning something. Let kids choose some basic activities they WANT to learn about, and have people teach them. Construction? Computers? Cars? Get them learning hands-on, and help these kids start both gaining skills they could use to get a job, and help them figure out what they actually want to do for work.
- College is a means to an end, not the be-all, end-all. I agree with Scott that I think many GCs propagate a system that is built on bullshit, because if they don't further the bullshit, they are forced to admit to themselves, and others, that what they built their life on was a total lie. You wanna be a doctor, lawyer, CPA, etc? You're going to need a degree. Want to get into IT? College probably isn't necessary. I also think that, if someone wants to get into a certain field, bringing in people who actually have REAL EXPERIENCE in that field, rather than a GC just guessing or making shit up based on what they found in 2 seconds through Google, as far as what they should learn and what training path they should take, would be advantageous.
- Stop cutting woodshop, band, etc. You want kids to learn and you want kids to WANT to learn? Get them excited about the idea of learning. I agree with Scott also that learning for the sake of learning is something to be encouraged, not looked down on. It NEVER hurts to be MORE informed, but we are seeing the sad effects in this country of what happens when people are FAR LESS informed.
Just a few ideas...sorry for the long rant.
Thanks,
A.J. -
@thanksajdotcom said in Don't Stay in School:
@dafyre said in Don't Stay in School:
@Dashrender said in Don't Stay in School:
@scottalanmiller said in Don't Stay in School:
@Dashrender said in Don't Stay in School:
I'll definitely agree that anything past probably 8th grade, and perhaps much less than that, are really needed by the common man.
Probably a mix. Few 8th graders are anywhere nearly prepared to talk politics. Things like geography and history are necessary for even basic functional citizenship (unless we remove democracy, then we don't have to educate every individual to all of these things - democracy comes at an incredible price.) Math needs to at least go to algebra. Science we go way, way too far. Computing we rarely even bother to introduce in any meaningful way. English lit... way too far.
I definitely understand where you are coming from - and I'll fully admit to my general lack of knowledge in history - but would dropping the general requirements for history really change much in the world we live in today?
History gives us good examples of things that have been tried and worked, or things that have tried and failed... In technology, government, business...
The issue is that, in the US, a lot of history is actually taught incorrectly, and is taught from a biased viewpoint that isn't really factually accurate, but is presenting the perception that is wanting to be imparted. I fully agree that "those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it", which is why we have candidates like Trump succeeding so well in the polls when he's very much a fascist. But we need to make sure that the history taught is being taught accurately, and not how people wanted it to be perceived, instead of what's the brutal reality.
A perfect example of this is regarding racism. People talk about how the country isn't racist, how we had the civil rights movement that helped end racism, but the fact is that the US has ALWAYS been racist. Since Day 1. Before we were even a country, settlers were infecting, killing, and stealing from Natives. The men who wrote our core documents were slave-owners til the day they died. Women couldn't vote until 1920. Segregation was still legal 50 years ago! And now we've got people who are freaking out about the LGBT community, calling them perverts, when it's all a giant bunch of bullshit. But I constantly remind myself, and others, that the USA is a VERY YOUNG country. There are universities all over the world that are many times older than our country. This year marks the 240th anniversary of our country. That's NOTHING compared to a lot of Europe. But I have high hopes right now...our country, and the world, is going through a transition away from a religiously-driven mentality towards a more scientific and secular one. Religious zealots are fighting their hardest to stop it, but my generation is already showing that more and more are rejecting the rhetoric of the past two millennia. And those that are staying religious are becoming far more secular about it. The next 20-40 years are going to bring MANY changes, and I am very excited to see what that will bring for both my children and grandchildren.
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Also important to note, all countries are racist. The issues vary, but the issues persist. Here in Eastern Europe you have totally different concerns than in America. Here Christian and Muslim groups live in harmony, but the Roma are discriminated against heavily. Americans often experience none of this. Move a Roma from Eastern Europe to the US and no one would be able to figure out why they were discriminated against here. In the US they'd just be another random person. You could even tell people that they were Roma and people would just say "what's that?"
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Go to Africa. They are very racist. Not against whites but against other blacks. There is no place on earth to get away from racism.
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@Minion-Queen said in Don't Stay in School:
There is no place on earth to get away from racism.
I cannot wrap my head around this. I just don't understand why people are so cruel to one another.
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The other thing that drives me nuts is when I hear people talk about how things like gender fluidity, transgender, etc like it's some radical new "liberal" thing. But these are things that have been around for thousands of years. I find it amazing how people talk about so many issues like they are brand new. They aren't. They have been around for a very long time, all around the world. What has happened is that, because of the internet primarily, issues that used to be hidden in the shadows, are coming to the light. Also, matters that used to be very "taboo" to talk about are becoming more normal and accepted. People who used to have to fear for their life or their safety, physically, emotionally, etc, are now able to talk about these things without AS BIG a fear of that. We're in the age of information with so many people who are proud to be so uninformed it's embarrassing.
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@dafyre said in Don't Stay in School:
@Minion-Queen said in Don't Stay in School:
There is no place on earth to get away from racism.
I cannot wrap my head around this. I just don't understand why people are so cruel to one another.
Amen!
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@dafyre said in Don't Stay in School:
@Minion-Queen said in Don't Stay in School:
There is no place on earth to get away from racism.
I cannot wrap my head around this. I just don't understand why people are so cruel to one another.
It's not always intentional. Sometimes it's just misunderstanding.
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@scottalanmiller said in Don't Stay in School:
@dafyre said in Don't Stay in School:
@Minion-Queen said in Don't Stay in School:
There is no place on earth to get away from racism.
I cannot wrap my head around this. I just don't understand why people are so cruel to one another.
It's not always intentional. Sometimes it's just misunderstanding.
Or cultural. Most people are morons, and morons fear what they don't understand instead of taking the time to gain understanding. It's a reflex basically. "Oh, that doesn't make sense to me, so it's stupid and I'm going to hate it." Intelligent people would rather learn about something that simply write it off because it's something they don't know.
