Just a comment on the low value of 'area studies and languages'
I had a boss whose son did mid-eastern studies and Arabic - and Army ROTC. Very applicable. He went straight into military intelligence and was deployed to Bargram right after training.
8 years ago I told my son that his backup if his math skills were too low was Eastern Euoro…
Just a comment on the low value of 'area studies and languages'
I had a boss whose son did mid-eastern studies and Arabic - and Army ROTC. Very applicable. He went straight into military intelligence and was deployed to Bargram right after training.
8 years ago I told my son that his backup if his math skills were too low was Eastern Euoropean studies with a minor in Russian - and Army ROTC. His mother is a Ukrainian immigrant and he has modest Ukrainian. It was obvious 10 years ago that the military was going to need a lot of Eastern European specialists and linguists.
Preparing for the service is a reasonable path. If you have prepared for the screening test you can get into some valuable training programs. And there are related programs that train youngsters for real work without going into the service. My son-in law works on a base in Utah and they have programs to feed high school kids into training programs for things like aircraft maintenance and the like. Real skills and real jobs.
I had a co-worker whose daughter wanted to study psychology at college. I suggested two variants instead - law enforcement with a psych minor, or business - marketing with a psych minor. Both feed into reasonable job paths and can probably use the psych to some degree.
When I was in high school I spend 2 years doing pen and ink drafting and graduated ready to work as a starting draftsman (I am dating myself here). I had also worked in a clothing customization facility on Saturdays at 15 - live steam presses, no air conditioning - in Baltimore. It wasn't bad during the winter, but over the summer it was certainly unpleasant. I sure didn't want to keep doing that as a career. I worked my way through college doing machining / tech work to support research teams as a low wage student worker.
There are a lot of kids in high school who don't want to be there - and they make it hard for anybody else to learn anything. They are better on a job somewhere - but I would make some reasonable provision for them to return to school, probably a school for adults, later if and when they decide they are ready to learn something.
Just a comment on the low value of 'area studies and languages'
I had a boss whose son did mid-eastern studies and Arabic - and Army ROTC. Very applicable. He went straight into military intelligence and was deployed to Bargram right after training.
8 years ago I told my son that his backup if his math skills were too low was Eastern Euoropean studies with a minor in Russian - and Army ROTC. His mother is a Ukrainian immigrant and he has modest Ukrainian. It was obvious 10 years ago that the military was going to need a lot of Eastern European specialists and linguists.
Preparing for the service is a reasonable path. If you have prepared for the screening test you can get into some valuable training programs. And there are related programs that train youngsters for real work without going into the service. My son-in law works on a base in Utah and they have programs to feed high school kids into training programs for things like aircraft maintenance and the like. Real skills and real jobs.
I had a co-worker whose daughter wanted to study psychology at college. I suggested two variants instead - law enforcement with a psych minor, or business - marketing with a psych minor. Both feed into reasonable job paths and can probably use the psych to some degree.
When I was in high school I spend 2 years doing pen and ink drafting and graduated ready to work as a starting draftsman (I am dating myself here). I had also worked in a clothing customization facility on Saturdays at 15 - live steam presses, no air conditioning - in Baltimore. It wasn't bad during the winter, but over the summer it was certainly unpleasant. I sure didn't want to keep doing that as a career. I worked my way through college doing machining / tech work to support research teams as a low wage student worker.
There are a lot of kids in high school who don't want to be there - and they make it hard for anybody else to learn anything. They are better on a job somewhere - but I would make some reasonable provision for them to return to school, probably a school for adults, later if and when they decide they are ready to learn something.