College For Everyone Is Just Plain Wrong

President Obama has stated that more people need to attend and finish college. I don't agree. Having more people attending college will lead to the further "dumbing down" of college curricula, so that more people can finish a four year degree within six years. This is the rationing of quality when it comes to higher education. Then, a college degree becomes nothing of value. It's just a worthless piece of paper. This approach makes absolutely no sense. Education in the United States has been too "dumbed down" over the past fifty years, and the further lowering of the standards from what they are now for a college degree so more people can graduate is stupid. However, I guess it will make all those poor people at the bottom of the labor pool with college degrees feel good about themselves. Everyone will have a college degree, but only the best and brightest who graduate from the top colleges will get the higher paying jobs anyway. There will be a lot of college degreed janitors. It's nothing but a vote getting smoke screen.

Because of our "dumbed down" education system, the Associates Degree from a community college is the new high school diploma. Soon, the Bachelors Degree will be the new high school diploma, and the Masters Degree will be the new Bachelors Degree. Education should never have been allowed to become that "dumbed down," but then again, education is a business like anything else, and when you look at public education, it's not just big business, but a huge unionized big business that rewards and protects incompetence. It's a huge government run monopoly that fails in its mission. It needs to be fixed and fixed fast. There are several things that need to be done.

First of all, we need to make school harder. Our schools are way too easy compared to education in the rest of the Western World. No more social promotions. No more "feel good" curricula that promotes self-esteem over real world knowledge. It's time to enact tough standards and stick to them. We need to get back to basics in the elementary level, and then in the middle school and high school levels start revamping the curricula to bring them in line with the requirements of our current and projected future employment markets.

We need to restore discipline back in the classroom. The main obstacle against learning in the inner city schools today, is not effectively dealing with the bad behavior that is inherent to the ghetto culture. There are similar problems in the suburban schools too. School districts are scared to death of lawsuits brought by parents when a teacher or administrator deems it necessary to use harsh discipline to bring a recalcitrant student back in line. Teachers and principals need to grow some spine, but that is not going to happen until the current crop of "feel good" educators gets replaced with some good old fashioned hard asses. Bring back the paddle and the strap. We didn't have that many discipline problems in the old days, because adults had some backbone, and teachers and principals were assumed to have in loco parentis authority. If you got hit in school, because you got into trouble, you got it again when you got home.

Today, it's not just the students that have no respect for the teachers and administrators, it's the parents too. Parents today are products of the Dr. Spock movement of the 1960s. They will sue a school district in a heartbeat, if their little angel who can do no wrong gets some well deserved discipline. If a parent decides to sue because their child got a well deserved ass whoopin' in school, fight fire with fire. Have the school system's attorney, who should be on retainer at a minimum, or preferably an employee of the school district, bring every bad aspect of the parent's life out in the open during the suit's discovery process. If a child is a rotten child because of rotten parenting, get it out in the open for everyone in the community to see. I guarantee there will be a lot less lawsuits if those parents are subject to a high level of microscopic scrutiny if they decide to sue. The trickle down effect will be a lot more traditional parenting and a lot less Dr. Spock. The parents will realize that the schools will not put up with their kid's bullshit, and will hold them accountable as well.

As a last resort, school districts need to establish public boarding boot camp schools for the worst offenders. Have special senior administrators that are empowered with a limited amount of judicial authority. These administrators should be able to order these habitual worst behaved students into these "motivational" institutions. If the parents don't like it, too bad. Next time do your job as a parent so the schools don't have to take that kind of drastic action. Boot camp works. I was in the military for 26 years, and I can definitely say that boot camp was a real eye opener as far as life was concerned. It's amazing how people change when they are subject that that level of discipline. They grow up real fast.

Also, we need to change the way of thinking of most industries when it comes to education. It's not going to be easy, but industry needs to stop using a college degree as a screening tool for jobs that don't require a college degree. Yes, you need college degrees and advanced degrees for many jobs. Doctors need years of training. So do lawyers and CPAs. Economists and business administrators need years of schooling. However, you don't need a college degree in order to be a web designer. You need specialized technical training in web design. You don't need a college degree to be a computer systems administrator. You need specialized technical training in network administration. You do need a college degree in order to be a software engineer. Stop blurring the lines. Once this takes place, we can revamp our education system to prepare students for real world jobs in a real world workplace. Sorry President Obama, not everyone in this country should, or needs to go to college.