RICHARDSON: Options and opportunities
I asked the young man sitting to my left when would he graduate from Northeast High School. He replied, “I’m in the class of 2018.” I couldn’t even do the math. My brain was in a swirl of time as I felt myself age before his very eyes. I felt like Dorian Gray’s aging picture.
I am a proud member of the class of 1969. Do the math. By the time this young man graduates there will be 49 years between us. I have underwear older than he is.
I was at Northeast because it was GEAR UP week in Bibb County schools. There is only one institution that uses more acronyms than education, and that’s the military. GEAR UP, in education speak is: Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs. Translated, it means exposing freshmen, sophomores and others to the idea of college early in their high school careers. While that exposure might sound like a given, it’s not.
Many students don’t have college aspirations because they just don’t know -- and what they don’t know will hurt them. For example, freshmen need to know that the GPA clock starts running once they enter the halls of their high school -- and that a bad start can hamper their college options down the road.
I know, it’s kind of serious stuff for a 14-year-old. At that age I didn’t have a clue, but in 1965, I didn’t need a clue -- yet. Today’s students have to know more than I ever had to know. In the 1960s there were more options for high school graduates. There were 16 million nonfarm jobs in 1960. Those jobs hit a peak in 1977 when 22 percent of all jobs were nonfarm or manufacturing. Now, according to Global Micro Monitor, nonfarm payrolls, account for only 9 percent or 17.4 million jobs, in the country. In 1960, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, there were 179 million Americans. The estimate for 2014 is 317 million.
There’s more competition for jobs than ever before -- and the technologies used in 1960 only required a high school education and that won’t get it anymore. Post secondary education is necessary in the world of today and tomorrow, be it college or technical.
I talked to the students about options and opportunities. At 14, options and opportunities are everywhere. Dreams can be unlimited. But I also talked about life and how -- if the wrong decisions are made -- those options can dwindle.
And there are options to avoid. In Georgia, a student can dropout of school at 16, but if they decide to take that option, most other options and opportunities start to disappear. And while they might still have dreams, the reality is, those dreams will never be fulfilled.
I tried to express how fortunate they were to have the ability to be anything they wanted to be, but the key to opening the lock box where options and opportunities reside is education.
How many of us wish we could have a banquet of possibilities before us? What would we do differently with such a feast?
With age hopefully comes maturity, and getting these students thinking about their futures earlier rather than later is a good thing. It also opens up the “how” conversation.
It’s well and good to dream big. Wanting to be a doctor or lawyer or engineer is admirable, but it will remain only a dream if they don’t understand the road they have to travel to get there.
One young lady said she was going to be a cardiologist. I told her to go for it, but I also explained the narrow and long road conditions: Four years of undergrad training in chemistry, mathematics, engineering or psychology; a passing score on the Medical College Admission Test; four years of medical school; the American Board of Internal Medicine exam; and finally, six to eight more years of training. I hope to see her do it. She has all the options and opportunities anyone could want -- and education is the vehicle that can take her anywhere she decides to go.
Charles E. Richardson is The Telegraph’s editorial page editor. He can be reached at 478-744-4342 or via email at crichardson@macon.
This story was originally published September 28, 2014 at 12:00 AM with the headline "RICHARDSON: Options and opportunities ."