GET THE KIDS OUT OF SCHOOL AND INTO THE . . .

Providing apprenticeship opportunity to students will raise the quality of their lives and our country

This is the second step in my ongoing attempt (see We Are Not Giving Students The Skills They Really Need) to suggest to the monolith of education, perhaps the most immovable of our institutions, some ideas which go against the flow but which, I believe, fill critical gaps for young Americans.

The Plea From The Children

I’ve seen it in my own children and those I coached, and I hear it from others, that the younger generations have some consistent complaints about us and the country we have built:

- We have left them with a world that is so screwed up that there is nothing they can do to change it. Our example keeps them from wanting to try.

- There is no connection between what they consider important in their lives and what we tell them should be important to them

- All opportunity has closed down. At least, they haven’t been given whatever is needed to find and take advantage of opportunity. They have no meaningful skills.

- Everything bores them.

- School is and was little more than a way to occupy some of the day and connect with friends. They have no motivation to make it more than that.