by Dave Denio

Created on: April 22, 2008

There are a few, simple questions a person can ask to learn if college is for him or her:

DO YOU KNOW WHAT CAREER YOU WANT TO PURSUE?

DO YOU WANT TO BE WORKING IN THAT FIELD TOMORROW?

From my experiences teaching at a community college, if you cannot answer those questions with a firm yes, you should wait or forget college. The perspective student needs to be self - motivated or it's a waste of time and money.

I've also worked in the public schools. I am aware of the disservice we are doing to this generation of "graduating" seniors. The policies and atmosphere of the public schools where I've worked instill in these teenagers ideas about education that are contradictory to the ways of the university.

I'm referring specifically to the overriding focus on state exams and the destruction of attendance policies. High school students today are pummeled with preparation for tests. In New York state, most teachers will begin practicing for the Regents exam for June, IN JANUARY! It becomes the sole objective. Today's teenagers can't help but interpret this behavior as the way of things. Education must mean test taking. Learning involves scoring well on an exam. Reading for enrichment is gone ; writing to express ones thoughts is clutter to the simple answer. There are thousands of students graduating from high school who have never read an entire book after they turned thirteen years old. Yet, public school administrations convince these kids that their next, essential step is college. They're not ready. They have no idea the reading and writing and unique thinking that is required for university level work. The nadir of this problem is the strategy guidance counselors and vice principals give to students who don't graduate with a high school diploma. They tell them to go get their General Equivalency Diploma and then head to college. As if four years of high school education can be absorbed in two months and one exam.

The other subtle, but no less important, way that public schools are weakening perspective college students is in their lax attendance policies. While teaching in college, I have had more than a couple of older students tell me that they hesitate when hiring teenagers from this generation because they show very little dedication and discipline to the job. They think nothing of taking off one day a week. They leave work for a week, unannounced, then return and flippantly tell their bosses that their girlfriends' aunts were sick and they needed to comfort

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