“College Is Not an the Only Option!”
CORRECTION: The actual quote on the billboard is “College is the only option!“
Sophie B. Wright Charter School has this sentence plastered across the bottom of its billboard off I-10. I am sure many parents, teachers, and other folks give this a smart nod of approval.
I’m about to say something that is unpopular, something I have gotten looks and snubs and gapes for in the past.
I do not think that college is for everyone. I do not believe that “everyone” needs to go or can go or wants to go to college. And by college I mean the four-year liberal arts experience full of research, writing, reading, challenging ideas and people [in both senses, challenging others and of being challenged by that which is other], rhetoric, critical thinking, final exams, guest lecturers, conferences, all that. It is not for everyone and it is a disservice to tell all kids that they must go, no discussions, no options.
Do you need a four-year liberal arts degree to be successful, however you might define that now, at 20 years old, at 67 years old? No. Do you need such a degree to be rich? No. Do you need it to be a productive citizen? No. Is college for you if you find reading boring? No. Is college for you if your sole reason for attending is someone said, “You should go to college”? Possibly not. High school As and Bs don’t necessarily mean college is your thing. [Likewise, Cs don't mean you can't make it if it's what you want.] Is that bad? No. Should you be ashamed of not going to college? No. Does not having that four-year degree and experience mean you have no intellectual curiosity about the world? Not at all. But college is more and should be more than just the next level of mandatory-to-somebody schooling. Under the right circumstances, or wrong, college can be a poor fit, an expensive mistake, four years of frustration and drudgery. Or just not what you need at the time. You can go back—there’s that, too.
I know that the teachers and staff at Wright are creating an atmosphere of high expectations and optimism, one to counteract the indifference, hostility and hopelessness found in too many public schools with large numbers of students of color or poverty. College seems tangible. The teachers all went. And the academic demands for college preparation are high which encourages—or should—rigor and sets the proper environment for intellectual curiosity and hunger. I get that and don’t have a problem with that. I have a problem with the “all” part of it, just like we should all have a problem with the crackpot idea of 100% proficiency, something that scrambles all meanings of “proficiency” in order to achieve something that looks like 100% to avoid punishment, if not outright annihilation. All the kids can read, write, do algebra, identify the continents on a map and understand the context of the noose in the US South and the history of the conflict in the Middle East and all kinds of shit without all going to college. It does mean expecting more of K-12 and part of the current problem is expecting too much with nowhere near enough support from any of the possible sources. It also means expecting something different from K-12. But when schools are punished and punished over a small set of data, how far from 100% proficiency is 100% college attendance? Especially if you loosely define “attendance” and even “college.”
I want the Wright kids to succeed. I don’t want them to think the only success in life is college. I want them to think that middle school is fertile learning-growing ground for the future, not just a means to a specious end.
