For years, I've listened to teacher after teacher complain that vocational training ought to be an option for high school kids, and it's been hard to disagree. In yesterdays Daily News, Errol Louis makes a very compelling argument:
I, for one, would gladly trade in every minute I wasted on high school trigonometry for training in how to fix my busted furnace on a cold winter night.
Now how could anyone possibly argue with that? Does anyone dare laugh at plumbers? If you've had to hire one any time recently, you won't be laughing all that loudly. If kids are indeed inclined to do that sort of work, why on earth shouldn't we help them?
Not everyone is a scholar, and thank the Lord for that. It would be a pretty rough world if we all sat around reading and no one ever fixed anything.
Plus, I'm thinking if we help these kids achieve what they want to achieve, well, maybe they'll give us a discount when we hire them. Maybe they'll even forgive us for making them learn trigonometry.
Stranger things have happened.
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