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I took and loved metal shop, auto shop, and wood shop (I still use the desk I made in it), and went on to Caltech. Engineering is more than just math - it's about making things!

Amen brotha, but don't tell that to the PhDs. P.S: I'm a PhD student.

And architecture is more than just arts. Perhaps more relevant than the existence of multidisciplinary fields is the low employment of monodisciplinary fields?

Our high school uses tracked curriculum much like described. Math, for instance has 3 tracks:

1. Algebra 9A; Algebra 9B; Algebra 10; Geometry 2. Algebra 9; Algebra 10; Geometry; < various choices> 3. Algebra 10; Geometry; <choices>; <AP Choices>

Track 3, requires 7th grade pre-algebra and 8th grade algebra. They are equivalent to Algebra 9A and 9B. Our 8th grade algebra even qualifies as "high school math" for qualification for the Illinois Math and Sciences Academy(IMSA).

I enjoyed metal shop and even woodworking shop, but that didn't stopped me to go to college. In fact, I found those classes to be more important in life than other well established and respectable subjects, such as english and literature.

It isn't a either/or thing. And it shouldn't be.

Germany still has this system for the most part. Clear separation between trade school and University preparation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Germany

I don't care for this stuff. I don't think children should be placed into these tracks; it reinforces many problems. You have kids getting stuck into vocational trades because some administrator thinks they can't handle it or perhaps they haven't "blossomed" intellectually, or because of their family or family's station in life, think that's all they can do.

Sorry, but the "honors if for state college bound and AP is for UC bound" little formula you have there just makes my eyes roll.

What problems?

You seem to have a particular worry about administrators deciding the fate of children by thinking they wouldn't challenge them by placing them in the correct track, or that the children would be discriminated against based on their race or social status.

Just a quick FYI: this isn't 1850. There are solutions to problems like these. For one, we can provide aptitude tests. This would allow schools to decide which track is right for a student in an objective way. If a parent disagrees with the placement, they could request a certain placement, too. It's not meant to be segregation, it's meant to serve as teaching to students at a level that's challenging to them, but not unfair. Everyone is NOT created equal, and some excel at different things. To package everyone into the same exact track is ignorant at best, but probably just stupid. In fact, it's unlikely you'd have any student wholly within a single track. It makes more sense for some to take much more advanced courses in a subject that they excel at and in lower tracks for other subjects.

And honors/AP separation is approximately correct. But AP has become even simpler since I was in HS (8 years ago). I looked up the AP exams I took to find that they have been simplified. The AP AB CS exam for instance no longer exists because it was deemed too difficult. I got a perfect score on it, and I ended up getting a math degree because I went to a state school and the CS curriculum was trivial for me. Having later taken Stanford courses and taught myself the curriculum used at MIT, they would've both been good fits. The only reason I didn't pursue either was the cost.

Sometimes parents don't care. You realize that right? Sometimes parents fall into the same traps and don't help in opening up doors for their children. This is extremely common by the way. It's not that I think it is 1850; this happens every day. You may think it sounds crazy but there are plenty of kids that think that vocational jobs are their only options, very early on in life and I think these decisions are made for a number of reasons that may be faulty, especially so-called "aptitude" tests that young people take. People are not always who they were at 11, 12, or 13.

As for the business of the honors/AP separation. It's just silly. There are plenty of different combinations of non-honors-non-AP/honors/AP students in no-college/"state college"/top-tier permutations. Your story, I guess is fine, but not to be flippant, is not really signifying of anything as far as this is concerned. I don't think the proposed formula is a real thing.

You seem to be exclusively concerned with those "late bloomers" who have both their parents and the system against them. Now:

1) Like the parent's comment said, nobody's trying to prevent these kids from succeeding. It's the role of the education system to detect these kids, and have them transfer if necessary to the most appropriate section.

2) You don't seem to care about the brightest students whose potential is dampened by being bored in class, and who end up not going to the best colleges because they didn't push themselves as a result. Nor do you seem to care about those who don't want, or don't have the abilities to go to college and who have to spend years being miserable, lagging behind the rest of the group.

Also what about the kids that would bebefit from vocational training, but because they receive none are forced to take minimum wage jobs after high school, or after dropping out of college.

Also i graduated with honors from a state university, and only wish i could earn the type of income those in vocational jobs do.

I think this is very misleading, If you want to go into one of those vocational positions are receive training in them, what barriers do you really have? Whatever they are, I assure, the barriers are much more for the reverse. If you have graduated with honors from a university, I think becoming a welder is well within your spectrum of opportunities. Also, while you may like propping up this argument or bring up some rich plumber that owns his own business, I think this dismisses people in these positions that barely earn a living enough to support their families.

I feel like we are being very coy about this.

I think this group potentially represents a very large percentage of kids. I think this group represents a large amount of adults currently "stuck" in their situations, now.

For #1, I think the education system has failed these kids in a very significant manner. Again, I think a large amount of people that feel there is no way out of labor jobs (and no this is not a slight against labor or a propping up of similar dead end jobs in offices but if you think everyone vocation jobs are content with what options their educational circumstances have given them, I think you may be delusional).

As for #2.1, I never claimed that at all. I do not claim that students should not be able to have separate sections to allow more advanced students to move at a brisk pace. I simply claim we should not throw the other kids out of the academic track and into a vocational track; this is a completely different issue. One point is about pace and the other is about not being on the track at all.

As for the last point, we're not talking about deep analyses of Kant and Hegel or quantum physics here. We are talking about high school, if I remember correctly. Many kids are miserable in high schools because of factors much different from being forced to read Animal Farm or having to factor quadratic equations. Further, if you don't think there are clear skews toward vocational tracks from particular socioeconomic classes or you think that is just so happens that those kids from those classes are exactly those that should be in vocational tracks then I don't think you really understand the matter at all.

I think it is interesting on HN when we see views about how "everyone should learn to program" or things like "we need to prepare for knowledge based economy and citizenry" or "labor jobs will be replaced by robots" we get one common theme of views but when this issue of splitting tweens and teens into educational tracks that will affect the rest of their lives we get this popular divergent view as the norm; seems like a very interesting "contradiction."

So why can't it be an ongoing thing? Counselors are a thing, and should help a student through the process and decide for themselves whether their placement is right for them. It should never be a "this is what you're taking, period!" If a student feels like school is too easy, they should be encouraged to make it known and be moved to something more appropriate for them. If it's too hard, the same applies. And if the parent does want to get involved, then it should be at the discretion of the counselor whether or not the student or parent's request should be met. This way we have a filter against parents who would otherwise impede their children for any given reason.

I don't think the honors/AP thing is silly. I think it's a system that tries very much to do (without too much success) what I am suggesting here. You have a swath of classes that are honors-level, and a swath that are AP-level above that, and then the normal classes. I wasn't AP-level in everything, nor was I honors-level in everything. It was a clear mix. But it's very much non-standard and very awkwardly done right now.

Now, no one is claiming there should be a stigma on a lower level at all. Just because someone is at AP-level (for lack of a better name at the moment) in a subject and would do well at a higher end university studying that subject doesn't mean someone who's not even at the honors level wouldn't also be able to go to the same school for the same subject a few years later when they're actually ready for it.

I feel awkward about the whole highschool -> college thing. It's just about continued education. College isn't necessarily "higher" education, as it could very much be an extension of high school for later bloomers. As a society, I believe we think about these things all wrong, and we put stigmas where there should be none.

But I do agree that there should be some way for students to be protected from indifferent, apathetic, or malicious parents.

Which aptitude tests do you think are effective? And if you buy into the objectivity of aptitude tests, how do you explain phenomenon like the massive racial gap in SAT scores [1]?

1: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/09/25/sat-scores-are...

Yes, the SAT has a known Asian cultural bias.

I wasn't referring to anything such as the SAT. I don't think any existing standardized test would be sufficient. There's not ONE test that will tell you where to put someone. Instead, they should take multiple tests in different subjects to determine their aptitude in each, including the arts. Then a customized course plan can be made for the student.

This should only be considered for placement and re-placement every year or every few years. It shouldn't be the end-all. If a student feels they aren't challenged but would be better suited in more difficult classes, or feels their current ones are too difficult, they should be able to request a transfer. The same goes for the parents.

The problem with existing tests is that they try to optimize for the wrong thing. Standardized testing tends to try to set a bar for all students at a certain grade level (not at a certain educational level, as some people may well continue learning into their 20s, or may be done with "high school" level subjects at 15, it's different for every person). Because a lot of things are based on the pass/fail rates of these tests, they're constantly adjusted downward to reach a certain pass percentage, which is horrendous and doesn't actually say anything about any of the students that take them. They also result in people being taught specifically how to pass the tests without necessarily being permitted to learn what they want to learn. I'm also not a big fan of how "top" schools currently filter out people based on tests like these and how everyone's expected to be college ready at 18.

The second question makes no sense unless you have some quasi-religious pre determined belief in the cognitive equality of different racial groups.

Not everyone wants to go to college. A lot of people enjoy working with their hands and are really good at it, and plumbers, carpenters, welders, machinists, mechanics, and electricians are a lot more useful to society than yet one more person who squeaked through the state college pushing paper in some dismal office. And likely happier too.

The idea that a college education automatically leads to a better life than preparation for honest skilled labor is pretty elitist in my opinion.

OK but at the same time, many people could have gone on to successful careers by going to college if they hadn't placed into the vocational box. It's not as if a college educated person could never become a welder or that that person has missed their chance to become a carpenter. By your same implication, and I know it is not that popular, a lot of people work as welders, machinists, etc that would jump at the chance to be able to move to another career.

Calling it "honest skilled labor" is just a way to load the issue with emotional weight. It's not elitist to recognize reality and there is actually no judgement being made here about which is "better" but it is clear than going down one path so early in life and close doors for other paths in a way that is not true in reverse.

There are plenty of people that would love to go into, what you might call "dishonest" positions, but feel they cannot and feel there only option was to go into the so-called "honest" positions. Honestly, I think your view of "honesty" is unfair and simply a ploy to prop up your position. I've dealt with many auto mechanics and I would not say that they are all pillars of honesty or whatever you want me to believe. :( Just being honest.

Part of the problem is so much of the workforce just isn't good at anything. We have a lot of people who flat out have no employable skills, and without a degree the only option they have for work that isn't minimum wage is a factory job-which are long gone.

Yet we don't even give a lot of these people the opportunity to be trained and find their niche, if they might be best at working with their hands.

I think this view of things is a bit misguided. Most of the jobs available to those who should not go to college are not traditional trades. Effective vocational training has to be focused on service sector and administrative jobs as much as "traditional skilled labour",

There is nothing wrong about being plumber, car mechanic or carpenter. Many of those people make more money and have better life than dummy with title and student loan.

This misses the point. As well, there are many people in these kinds of jobs that do not make as much money as you think; I feel like you're either taking the emotional bait or you don't realize that. I like "dummy with a student loan" reversal though; you realize many people have student loans for vocational training right? You realize many people have paid more money for vocational training than they can earn. Many have paid over $30,000 for schools and only receive a certificate that they cannot find employers willing to pay more than $10-$12/hr, if that.

I don't think it is controversial to state that one that goes toward an academic track has equal ability to go toward carpentry as one that started out on a vocational track, but the reverse of this is not so.

When I was in high school, students could choose what elective classes they wanted to take.

"Honors" classes were limited though to those students that had excelled in the regular courses. Honors classes meant more involved projects and work loads. Instead of reading and discussing one book a month, an honors class might read and discuss two books a month. However, no students was forced into taking the honors classes if they didn't want to.

Our school also offered AP courses in numerous subjects to anyone that wanted to take them. Some of these courses required coming in an hour before the regular school day start time in order to partake in. At the time, our school district also paid for the AP exam costs for any/all students who wished to take the AP exam.

The decision and choice is in the students hands. If the student has the desire or ambition to take more challenging courses they can and get to choose to do so. Likewise they could choose to take wood shop, metal shop, art courses, engine shop, etc it that's what interests them.

I disagree not with your argument, but the assumption that your argument makes.

We've recently seen the Learn to Code phenomenon, but HN has also had articles "Don't Learn to Code, Learn to Build" and "Don't Learn to Code, Learn to Farm". With the expectation that the majority of Americans drive cars regularly, there is no reason that the majority should have no experience diagnosing issues or doing basic maintenance. Similarly with shop or electronics, we deal with physical objects all of the time, basic craftsmanship should not be seen as a relegation to the not college bound. The same with basic circuits, most all have phones and computers nowadays; a screen replacement, or just knowing how badly your screen is broken should not be something you just give up on. Emergency preparedness is another example, it benefits society if it's not just scouts, jrotc, and ETs that know how to treat people for shock.

Don't make vocational tracks, but realize that to be educated people should understand at least some of the concepts of the things that they use in every day life.