Turning Kentuckians into Germans
From Kentucky Citizen Digest, May, 1997

Do you remember sitting in your high school English class and having to write an essay on what you would be doing in 15 years?

I remember sitting in Mr. Phillip's high school composition class, having to do just that. Of course I had no idea what I would be doing in 15 years, and I wasn't particularly excited about sharing my ignorance with Mr. Phillips. And judging from the grades he gave me, Mr. Phillips wasn't too excited about it either.

I had a friend who knew exactly what he was going to do with his life. He was going to graduate from high school, go to college, get a law degree, buy an early model Corvette classic and marry a beautiful girl--and I'll be darned if he didn't do every one of those things.

Except he now has three kids, so the Corvette had to go.

Most of us aren't that way, however. In high school, most kids are like me. They have no idea what they will be doing in 15 years - and many probably don't care.

Fortunately, however, life is forgiving. Most of us - despite our inability (and sometimes lack of concern) about our future - make out just fine. Many of us go to college. Some of us even get law degrees, buy Corvettes and marry beautiful girls. Others of us plan our lives out only to find that the future held something completely different for us.

Many of us change our minds about what we want to do. A friend of mine was a high school jock with no particular interest in academics. He's now a philosophy professor.

That's how things are in a free country: you never know what's going to happen. That's because each one of us controls whether we work, how we get a job and what career we will pursue.

But all this could change - if certain people have their way.

Last year, Kentucky's state legislature nearly passed a bill that would have required 10th-graders to make career decisions.

In other words, we were going to require 10th graders to forecast, not what they would be doing in 15 years, but what they would be doing for the rest of their lives.

It's all part of what is being called 'School-to-Work.' But instead of concentrating on a good liberal arts education which would better prepare kids for a variety of careers, a number of national foundations and federal agencies are trying to set up a system in which students will have to choose their careers early - a choice which could limit their options in the future.

Despite the rejection of the idea by state lawmakers, state education bureaucrats are trying to accomplish the same purpose by forcing schools to issue ‘Certificates of Initial Mastery’ (CIM’s) to 10th graders. The argument seems to be that countries like Germany are doing this, therefore, we should do it too.

The educrats have apparently failed to notice that Kentucky children are not Germans - particularly when it comes to education. The average German student is actually well-educated by the 10th grade. That just is not the case in Kentucky.

We need to face the fact that even with well-educated students, the future is not certain.

If Mr. Phillips had been told that I would one day be writing articles that appeared in many newspaper across the state that were read by many people, he would have smiled and told you what a nice story that is - but that, as an English teacher, he knows fiction when he sees it.
 

Key Family Foundation Contacts: Kent Ostrander, Executive Director Martin Cothran, Senior Associate Policy Analyst