This result makes intuitive sense and I get the recommendation, but something about it feels icky. As you suggested above, it smacks of “liberal arts for me but not for thee” elitism. It’s easy enough for people like us to say that most people don’t go to college and should accept the trade-off of specializing when they’re 14 even though…
This result makes intuitive sense and I get the recommendation, but something about it feels icky. As you suggested above, it smacks of “liberal arts for me but not for thee” elitism. It’s easy enough for people like us to say that most people don’t go to college and should accept the trade-off of specializing when they’re 14 even though we’d never accept it for our kids. I’m reminded of my aunt, who supported the Iraq war and said the military is a good place for some kids. I asked if she’d be cool with her son going to war. She said, “MY Jonas? No no no no no.” The gall. Back to specialization: even if it decreases wage inequality, it makes the U.S. even more of a class-based system like England. Maybe we need to accept that that’s what we already are in practice but … ugh.
I feel the same way. It is counterintuitive that the country could get more equality by being more class-based in its tracking. But perhaps kids who go to vocational school would benefit from starting out with a solid job and a strong base, and grow from there.
It's worth noting that the US is quite on the extreme end of the general education scale. I think Americans in particular are sensitive to this because we want to tell kids "you can be anything you want." We don't want to limit them by tracking them early.
One surprising thing I learned from studying for this is that Germany, Austria and other vocation-heavy countries actually had decreasing College wage premiums since the turn of the century. I had assumed the college wage premium increased everywhere.
This result makes intuitive sense and I get the recommendation, but something about it feels icky. As you suggested above, it smacks of “liberal arts for me but not for thee” elitism. It’s easy enough for people like us to say that most people don’t go to college and should accept the trade-off of specializing when they’re 14 even though we’d never accept it for our kids. I’m reminded of my aunt, who supported the Iraq war and said the military is a good place for some kids. I asked if she’d be cool with her son going to war. She said, “MY Jonas? No no no no no.” The gall. Back to specialization: even if it decreases wage inequality, it makes the U.S. even more of a class-based system like England. Maybe we need to accept that that’s what we already are in practice but … ugh.
Yes, often the districts that you see adopt career education the hardest are the ones with the lowest median income households.
I feel the same way. It is counterintuitive that the country could get more equality by being more class-based in its tracking. But perhaps kids who go to vocational school would benefit from starting out with a solid job and a strong base, and grow from there.
It's worth noting that the US is quite on the extreme end of the general education scale. I think Americans in particular are sensitive to this because we want to tell kids "you can be anything you want." We don't want to limit them by tracking them early.
One surprising thing I learned from studying for this is that Germany, Austria and other vocation-heavy countries actually had decreasing College wage premiums since the turn of the century. I had assumed the college wage premium increased everywhere.