NOTE: Although written in early 2003, this commentary remains as valid today as it was when it was first published.
Like thousands of parents around the country, my wife and I are experiencing the trials and tribulations of getting our eldest son ready to begin high school in the fall. Last week a couple of hundred parents of middle-schoolers attended an orientation hosted by their child’s soon-to-be high school principal.
The school district is exactly what you would expect to find in an affluent suburb.
Academically, it is among the best in the country, with graduation rates approaching 100 percent and college board scores well above the national average. The facilities are first class, both on the education and the extracurricular sides. The teachers are all well-educated, energetic and, above all, friendly.
The course curriculum, which my wife had downloaded and printed from the high school’s Web site, is impressive. It includes extensive courses in math, science, and communication arts (English, to us old-timers), with each course seemingly paralleled by an “honors” course for those 14 year olds who could probably already hold their own at Stanford.
Not only does the foreign language department offer courses in Spanish, French and German, it also offers three years of Latin. That’s right, Latin, the mother of all languages, the root of the modern romance languages, as well as a significant portion of the words we use today in modern English.
The math department is equally impressive. In addition to the standard courses (both regular and honors level) in algebra, geometry, trigonometry and calculus, kids can also take business math courses like statistics.
Likewise, the science department offers courses that will make the first couple of years of college seem redundant for those teenagers who take advantage of the course offerings.
In fact, with schools like this, our children are receiving a tremendous preparation not only for college, but also for their working lives afterward. We were pleased with what we saw and heard.
Unfortunately, the cold dose of reality came when we read through the requirements for graduation, as established by the state board of education. No wonder we as a country are falling behind.
According to National Center for Educational Statistics, U.S. students lag behind much of the developed world when it comes to mathematics. The Kansas Board of Education only requires students to take two years of math in order to graduate. That’s in four years of high school, with seven class periods a day.
It’s the same for science, yet the state board of education only requires students to take two years of science – one biological and one physical – in order to graduate.
Technology has made the world a smaller place. Advances in transportation and communication have transformed commerce into one big global marketplace. Yet my kids, according the state educational standards, do not have to take ANY foreign language. For all of my adult life, people have criticized Americans for their lack of foreign language ability. Do you still wonder why we’re not getting any better?
How are we going to continue to lead the world in scientific and technical innovation when our high schools graduate students who take more cooking and singing classes than they do math or science?
Where are we going to find future American business executives to serve in — and learn from — our overseas business operations?
It was my generation, the Baby Boomers, who created this situation by eliminating the irrelevant (read: difficult) courses from our public education curricula. If we want to retain our economic leadership in the world, it’s time for us to go back and toughen up the requirements for graduation.
If we don’t, the global business community will soon begin to look elsewhere for the work force it will need in a knowledge-based economy of the future.
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