Welcome to Busted Pencils, home room edition, educated educators, talk and education,
fully-led education talk. It's the end of the month, Jacob. The end of the month at the beginning of the week,
that's always a fun way to start things off. So we got home room today. Just me and you, Jacob,
less echo. We tried this a little bit earlier and there was boisterous echoes. Tim's been moving.
I'm making a little home renovation move. It's summertime. That's teacher off season. So listeners
out there, you teachers, I know you're doing all kinds of home projects, all kinds of things that
were neglected through the school year and now you might have a little bit more time to get to those
things as you get your R&R, which is always full of all kinds of activities, you know, home improvements,
cleaning, organizing, doing all the stuff to make sure you're ready to go in August. Maybe it's
September, if you're lucky. But we're here, Jacob, last day of June, tomorrow, it's July, and it's
home room. And you sent me this weekend a pretty interesting article. I think it's a great way to
kick off the week. You want to give our listeners a little preview of this awesome news article that
you found. I think really sparks a good conversation about what's happening in our schools, both secondary
and post-secondary education. Absolutely, Johnny. So what I found here, it's from K-12 dive written
by Carolyn Christ, I believe. That's how you pronounce that. Majority of high schoolers say they don't
feel prepared for post-graduation. Took a couple notes here. Fewer than 30% of high school students
feel, quote, very prepared for what they're going to do after graduation. Even among students
interested in a specific pathway, only 46% said they feel very prepared for that pathway.
And both parents and students said that they didn't know as much about other pathways,
such as certification programs, internships, apprenticeships, military options, or entrepreneurship.
At least half of parents said they know only a little or nothing at all about pathways other
than college degrees and paid jobs. Johnny, what are you thinking about this? Because it sounds to
me like this kind of ties into a lot of what we've been talking about lately. Yeah, absolutely. I
mean, immediately Jacob, I thought of the conversation we had last week, right? We were talking about
that on the show. You know, we were, you know, discussing Tim had brought up, you know, we're parents
disappointed to find out that their students leaving high school were not interested in attending a
four-year university. And he had pulled up an article that expressed, you know, that there was
sort of a letdown to parents. And Jacob, you shared a story about like parental generations.
So if you're of the age of, you know, young people, you know, 16 to 18, 19, 20 right now,
the end of high school beginning, you know, career life, which can include college.
You had mentioned Jacob that previously it seemed sort of like generations before just sort of
expected that college was a pathway to, you know, a successful, a quote-unquote successful life,
which by and large for previous generations is incredibly true, right? The percentage and
likelihood of you being middle class or middle to upper class or even jumping a socio-economic
class level require your to college degree. But things have changed slightly and that's not me
being sort of against going to college. But I thought this article was really interesting
and aligned to Jacob, what we were talking about last week too with like, hey, there are more pathways.
And we all, and I'll include myself in that as a parent, even though I am a professor in higher
education and a high school teacher, by and large, we don't know all those pathways. We're sort of
in the routines and patterns of the past. You want to be successful, you go to college.
And of course, we always knew too, especially, I call myself, you know, a blue collar scholar,
I came, you know, from the trades back to college. But, you know, there was always this sentiment that
if you weren't getting a college degree, you were in some sort of way failing or you were just not
smart enough. And I said all the time, I know this to be not true in terms of the reality. I know a
lot of really smart men and women who work in the trades by and large, like, there's a lot of
knowledge and a lot of learning and a lot of being incredibly smart that goes into being a successful,
you know, electrician, a successful plumber. You know, even we get, we get sometimes a bad rep,
framers or roofers, right? Like, because we're hammer swingers, it's sort of been, been characterized
as dumb guy work, which is far from the truth, but is one of those painful successes
of American education sorting people based on, hey, you did good in school or you were particularly
good at taking tests or doing a certain kind of learning. And so you're smart and rest of you people
who are more hands on and, you know, a different kind of learn, well, you're, well, you're just not
smart and unsuccessful. In fact, here, college for you successful students and, you know,
trades and other things for you less successful or unsuccessful students. And we've embodied that,
that sorting system in a lot of ways. But there are those patterns Jacob of the past. Like,
you mentioned about like your parents saying, like, hey, we really want you to go to college. It's
important. Like, because for them, the experience was finish high school, you go into college, you have
more opportunities in your career, you have more financial stability, you have more access to jobs
with, say, like, healthcare and 401Ks and retirement plans and all these things that sort of the
boomers experienced putting into place, you know, and then Gen Xers kind of grew into and worked
sort of, although I'll put a caveat on sort of because they're straddled with a tremendous amount
of debt to follow in those footsteps. But that millennials and Gen Zers and Gen Y and now,
certain it's going to be completely changed for Gen Alpha and all these different generations that
are coming. I would say the landscape has changed quite a bit. And even my own, I'm a professor in
and higher education. I taught high school. I would even say admittedly, my knowledge of these
diverse pathways is fairly limited. So I have to imagine, and this isn't me talking down to
listener who's not in higher education or in public education. It's me sympathizing.
I agree with this article, Jacob. I think a majority of us, and I'm in that us, do not know very
much about those different pathways. We are entrenched in sort of those patterns of you go to high
school and you go to college. And if not, hey, well, you find a trade and we kind of know that
that's an option. But we're unfamiliar with the variety of different options like this article
and you mentioned certificates, apprenticeships, internships. You know, so I think there's a lot of
learning that we can do. If you're a high school educator or counselor, this is like probably top
priority. How are you learning the different pathways for students to help them connect with
those, but also help families learn. And if you're a parent or a student, you're asking questions
like, hey, I hear there's a lot of options for me. What are those options? So this is an important
conversation that I think as we talk about the changing landscape of education that we have to
be, you know, queued into. What are those pathways? I think we'll probably ask Tim more about it
this week because he's part of some of those conversations on his day to day. But Jacob, the other
thing about this article that really stood out to me and I, I was pondering for a bit was not
only the not knowing about those diverse pathways, but the idea that students felt unprepared for
the next step. And that really stood out to me. I mean, I used to send me that text. I read the
article this weekend and you know, I woke up this morning and had a cup of coffee and was thinking
about it and I was like, man, that is one of the immediate true realities of us, not like I say
us again, me the educator and educational leader and people like we're the grown folks. Like we knew
that there was sort of a pattern. There's sort of a habit almost in culture of like, well, here's
a choice, you know, in high school, you knew like you got the military, got the armed services,
you got college and we got different types of colleges to go to two year degrees, four year
degrees. You have a apprenticeship and trade. You have these three things, but they were pretty
like well-troddened paths. Right. That we knew about. And I think it gave us a little bit of,
I remember being, you know, 17, I graduated at 17, but I remember being feeling incredibly
unprepared for the next step. So at first, I thought, well, that's just what it's like to be 17
years old, 17, 18. And I still stand by that. I think we burned through school way too quick.
Yeah. I think, you know, like I'm a big fan of gap years. I'm a big fan of, hey, let's not race
through this. Although reality is I have a lot of students who've done half of their college work
as high school students, early college admittance programs, dual enrollments, all kinds of programs
that speed things up, which I get economically. But then I think about like there in the workforce
at 20, 21, maybe late. Some of them are 18, 19, finished with a degree. So I think we race into
things too much. But Jacob, I really thought about that. I thought about that, that aspect of
feeling unprepared for the next step. And my first reaction was like, well, that's just what
happens at that age. But, but I was really thinking about reading the article and giving our
conversations in my own confusion about what pathways are. And I think it's even more
accelerated. I think it's probably more intense, that uncertainty of what the options are,
what comes next. Absolutely. And what do you think about that? You feel like that's probably true?
Yeah, I think that it is worse now than it used to be. And I think the reason for it,
I want to cue in on something you said, is that when you were at that age, thinking about what
you're going to do after high school, that the idea was you try to get into college. And if you can't
get into college, then you have to get into a trade. And I think that for people now who are
16, 17 years old, I'm not sure that they even think about the idea that trades are more than just
a job. I'm not sure if they even think about that that's an option for growth and for finding a
way to live. I think the bias towards college education on behalf of a generation that preceded
young people right now has taken things over so much that young people nowadays don't even
conceptualize trades as being a noble line of work and a livable way to go through your life,
which they are and they can be and they should be. And I think that contributes to that anxiety
that young people have and that confusion that young people have. Because when I think about it,
I hear a lot of people my age or younger say, oh, I wish they would have taught us this in school
or that in school. And it's usually about practical things like I wish they would have taught us
how to fill out a checkbook or think it's like that. Maybe that's becoming less relevant now that
it used to be. But I get like balanced checkbook understand those kind of day to day tasks.
Adulting as they call it. And when I think back to when I was in high school class of 2017,
what what they did teach us that stuff. There were classes like that. But I don't think it really
sank in. And what I would say to people who might bring that up is I would say, look,
you apparently you do have classes like that. But if it's not getting through to young people,
if young people aren't educated on their options, then you're not doing it right. And it's not
an indictment of you per se. But if what you're doing is not having the outcomes you want,
I think you got to take a second look at that and make sure that people are actually
figuring these things out. I mean, Johnny, what do you think can be done? So that high school students
know their options and feel more comfortable taking alternative options.
Well, yeah, Jacob, you know, something came to mind at the same as you were talking about this.
And it's it's been bouncing around in my head for a while. And I have I've had a couple
conversations with some educator friends around it. But mostly just two and the fat on, you know,
kids these days. And you know, we're we're not that my my friends. And I we're not the type who
are like, man, kids these days are a problem. We're more like man, we're inspired by kids these
days. But but we've noticed some differences, especially in labor. And you talked about that like
understanding a trade is more than just a job. You know, it's a learning pathway. It's a career.
It's not like, it's not like, uh, uh, well, you didn't go do college. So now
pick one of these things over here. If I could say, Johnny, I think a lot of young people,
when they think about if I have a trade rather than a degree, they think that that's all just
unskilled labor, I think is how they feel about it. Whereas when you go through a trade or an
apprenticeship or some, you have just as much of a skill that you learned and that you expertise
that your expertise is in as somebody who got a degree. Yeah. Well, you know what, Jacob, you're
right. Because also just some basic psychology that goes into this, some learning theory, right?
You invest in seeing your own development happen, right? So it's like you enjoy it. You're fine
in that, like you've learned some structure around it. You know, you get up in the morning,
you go and learn and you start as, you know, a novice and apprentice and they get better and you
see yourself grow, hopefully, and something that you enjoy. And then you continue to do that.
It's the difference between, you know, a career and a job. And I like that. You said that that
we're doing a bad, uh, we're failing young people when we're not presenting them with the
opportunities to find those career pathways. The other thing, Jacob, I think, and it's me sort of,
also a little bit downtrodden about the economy. But I feel like we, we really kind of,
what's the word? I'm trying to clean up my language for the podcast. You know, we kind of
screw over young people. Sure. And that was in the article kind of coded read between the lines.
And you've brought it up is, is so many young people, and this is like field tested. It's not
researched by me, although the article gave some really good numbers that reflect my experience.
But in field tests, I have in the past few years, not, I've never had so many students who have
never had a job. And they're young. They're just coming out of like high school age 17, 18, 19,
17 because some of these dual enrollments in college credit classes start even earlier than
ever. But I can blame COVID some and different in the economy. It's like,
jobs are really important because you don't only learn in school. And jobs aren't only about
making money, but you know, to be fair at a certain age, you know, say 15, 16, you can apply for
your workers permit and you can, you know, get a job and there are certain laws around how many
hours of the week you can work and things. But you start to learn about labor, right? And you
start to, you know, have this opportunity to be in a setting of peers outside of all the people
born around the same age as you. And you're not in a classroom, but you're learning in a life kind
of capacity developmentally. I think it's so important for, you know, late teens, mid to late
teens. I guess if we consider like 15, 16 mid, like mid to late teens to be able to have those
experiences. I know in working, especially as a young person, I started working much earlier than
I probably should have, but that was more common back in the day. And then through those
formative years, it was relationships with my managers, with bosses, with peers, where I really
learned about working, right? Whether it was washing dishes in a restaurant or, you know, doing
landscaping or clean up crew for a construction team, different things as a young person. I was able
to have employment, right? Which provided me with also like Jacob, he said, you know, they did
teach us how to balance a checkbook in high school. But I mean, come on, like we never had enough
money in our bank account to really be writing checks as kids. But we were started, but it was
through job life where we started to learn like, whoa, if I want an $80 pair of sneakers,
well, I probably can't go out with my friends to eat this weekend or next weekend. So you're
beginning to learn to make wise choices around wants and needs and how much money you make and
that, hey, maybe I shouldn't stay up till 3 a.m. because I'm supposed to be, you know, at my greenhouse
job at 620. So there's different life skills that I feel like we talk a lot about essential
curriculars here on busted pencils and we've talked about football and sports and clubs and
and they're important parts of the curriculum. But Jacob, I think being able to have an internship
or a job as a young person, especially a summer job, where now you're like shifting gears and like,
hey, you're working. You're with people who aren't only your age who are helping bring you into
the community and they're like, look, young blood. I know you're still young and having fun and
you know, you've got to focus on school and that's all part of it. But, you know, this is how
work life is. This is what it means to be on time. This is what it means to value working on a team
to have a lunch breaks and the like. I mean, I think there's a lot of learning that when I read
the article about people feeling unprepared for the next step, I started to think about, well,
a lot of us and talking to some of my friends and peers who are educators, I started asking like,
hey, when you were 15, 16 or at least 17, 18, where were you working? Were you working in the
cell? Oh, yeah. Almost everybody in my age, Jacob, had a summer job. And this is a rare thing
these days. It's hard to get a job as a kid. I think you're right, Johnny. And if you look at it,
out a number of fronts, young people, high schoolers now are less likely to have driven a car by
the time they're done with high school. They're less likely to have had a romantic relationship.
They're less likely to have had a job. And if you think about that, when you have not had that
taste of what comes later, it's probably a lot more scary and uncertain to be heading out into
the real thing, dry. Yeah, absolutely. And I want to just put a caveat out there, like,
Jacob and I aren't here advocating for child labor. There's a scaffolding. I think sometimes
we've gotten too overprotective or too. And in some ways, it's the economy. It's hard to find a job
and through different recessions and different closures of factories and layoffs and different
things, we've really been part of a changing landscape of the labor in our communities.
But by and large, as we're really building strong economies, strong local, you know, economies,
it's so important that young people are part of that because it's part of their learning.
And Jacob, you hit the nail on the head and I've been reading about this and I'm, and by
no means an expert on this, but I'm interested in what a lot of experts now are calling the anxious
generation. You know, they're talking about this idea, like you had said, it is not uncommon,
nor really, we might even say, and I always am apprehensive of these labels,
but it's not abnormal and I hate normal and abnormal because, you know, what isn't weird or
shouldn't be, but it's not uncommon for a young person, like you said, to not have had an
romantic relationship, you know, coming out of high school, to not have, you know, had a job,
to not have obtained their driver's license or driven a car. And so that's not pointing the
finger at these youth, like, well, I didn't take an opportunity to learn these things or me point
my finger at parents and say, what kind of parent would let their kid, it sort of crept up on us
and I think COVID exacerbated it. And I think, you know, how we've viewed young people,
primarily as a problem or as competitors, instead of important to think like, hey, they need
to also work with us, right? With some regulations around that, right? There's that socialist
Democrat in me saying, you know, like we need young people to learn to work and to be at work and
to be part of our labor experience in our communities, but we also need them to be protected
because they do also need to sleep more. We know this, you know, any pediatrician will tell you,
and all the learning psychologists will say that, you know, babies and newborns and teenagers
need the most sleep. And it's true. So, you know, we do need to protect them. So it's not like,
hey, they shouldn't, they shouldn't be having a 40-hour work week, yeah, right? But,
but them being able to have a couple of days of work, some internships, even throughout the
school year, especially as they're getting 17, 18 years old, big fan Jacob, even of us thinking
about what happens if there's a gap year where you're doing an internship as like a young entrepreneur,
or you're doing like a side-by-side instead of going right back into school after you graduate,
it's like, hey, I'm really interested in filling the blank, right? Whatever that profession might be,
while you go when you do an internship, you brought up a couple of weeks ago Jacob,
international models. And again, touchy subject because I'm not going to like, this is a gray area,
like I don't think we should have mandatory military service. That probably would be a big panic
button. The way our country has utilized military, primarily for the task of maintaining
national security. I'm not being critical of this, but by and large, there are other countries
who require service of their young people upon graduation at 18. You owe, sometimes it's a year,
sometimes it's a set number of months, but you owe service to your country, right? And it might
be a military, or it might be like, there's a number of different ways you could be in that.
Yeah. And I'm a big fan of that, and I know I might be creating some controversy here because
of what we're familiar with. But I mean, like, hey, imagine your local economy having a group of
young people that are working in the library for a year. People who are working in our markets,
like our local farmers markets and our different things, it's a government job, right? It's a fixed
set wage, right? It's not like they're going to be banking on this or it's going to be, it's going
to help them take some time to learn to be in community. Jacob, I think we're going to have to explore
those kinds of ideas because I just worry that we don't have it in us right now to do it through
schools. And our culture has shifted away from apprenticing and bringing young people into their
life. And so that anxious generation, I can't imagine it not being anxiety-ridden for them
because they're diving into the deep end and they've never even been in the pool.
That's the scary part of it. Like we've been talking about this whole this whole episode,
it's like I don't support chucking your kid into the pool and traumatizing them. That's probably
not good. But maybe when your kid is two to four, hey, dad's going to hold you and we're going to
go in the pool and we're going to work your way there instead of saying, hey, you happy 18th birthday.
There's this thing called water. Never told you about it. But guess what? You're getting in there
in good luck with it. Not a good idea. So I think people need to get acclimated. I think a lot of
the ritual and coming of age things that we've had in this country are starting to become less common
for young people and that's hurting them. And Johnny, I like the idea of a national public service.
And like you said, it doesn't have to be military. Basically, for people who hear that, they think
of conscription and it's scary and people don't want to get conscripted. But the way it's done in a lot
of countries is basically, hey, it's time for you to do some service. You can join the military
for a year if you want. That's totally accepted. Or you can go pick up litter in Colorado for six
months. You know, you can find a way to be of service. I think that that would be good. I think it
would be good for people. The thing I'm hesitant about on that is I think it's good for you. But I
also think that in a free country, you have the right to suck if you want. And if you want to not
do things that are necessarily good for you, you should be able to do that. I mean, you should
be encouraged to do things that are good for you. But I get a little iffy about where we start saying,
this is good for you. I'm certain of it. And you have to. I get a little scared. But I wouldn't say
necessarily. I'm right there with you on that. I'm right there with you on that. And you know what,
Jacob, I love it. Because when you tell people they have to do something, it's the people who,
there will be a number of people who will figure out not to do it. Yeah. Or the figure out
a way to have it not work, you know, just being obstinate about it. And maybe, Jacob,
there's a ton of these options out there. We just don't know about them. So
we're like my people in that assignment. Yeah, that's like that's like bearing in
it back. That's our homework assignment this week is to dig into. So maybe these pathways
exist. And we just need to learn more about them, explore more, bring them into our locales,
you know, and encourage them to be widely more accessible to young people who are thinking,
hey, I want to, I want to be a little less anxious about what comes next. So on that note, Jacob,
we got some homework for the week. We got a great lineup this week. I'm looking forward to it
with you and with the Tim bomb. So I will see you all very soon. And now it's time for your moment to
zoom in. The cry of the poor is not always just. But if you don't listen to it, you will never
know what justice is. Hey, listener, man, we appreciate you. We especially appreciate you.
Listen into home room today. And if you want to grab more busted pencils podcasts just like
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