That’s a term often used in sports give players with lesser capabilities the opportunity to compete on the same level as those with greater capabilities. Golf is an excellent example. It’s a way that Bob the duffer can play a round with Jim, the club pro, and they can compete on somewhat equal terms. If Bob is at the top of his game and Jim is having an off day, even though Bob’s score is in the nineties and Jim’s is in the seventies, after Bob applies the handicap to his score, he and Jim can determine that Jim buys dinner…
That’s great for a game. In real life, things are a bit different. Like education. Let’s look at the lowest common denominator in American education, the high school diploma. Absent a few people on either end of the bell curve, one acquires a high school diploma by attending school for twelve years and meeting some minimum standard of performance that would ideally indicate the absorption of certain levels of knowledge in language, mathematics, science and social studies.
It was pretty simple concept. For years, a high school diploma = proficiency to degree n. Employers could depend on that. In America, educational competence and expected levels of proficiency could be correlated to grade levels. Employers knew this and made decisions to hire based on that set of capabilities, thinking that if the prospective employee could be required to perform math at a high school level, then the possession of the high school diploma was a suitable indicator that he possessed those skills.
Not any more. A few years back I was involved in an industry group that provided training for people who wished to enter the construction trades. Part of the entrance procedure for students was the taking of a set of tests to determine proficiency in language and math. Another part was the possession of a high school diploma. An applicant for training as an electrician or instrumentation technician was REQUIRED to be able to read and do math to the EIGHTH GRADE level. I was surprised to find out how many prospective students could NOT meet that standard, even though they had the diploma.
I talked with a friend of mine who was in human resources at one of the major petrochemical plants in the area. He tells me that yes, the high school diploma is the minimum qualification for applicants, but they’ve long ago learned that it meant nothing in regards to the applicant’s actual capabilities. Instead, they administer their own battery of tests to determine if the applicant has the proficiency to perform the mental work associated with the job.
Now here’s where I am with all this: If I was a high school graduate and I found that I did NOT have skills to read at the eight-grade level, I think I’d be looking for a good lawyer to file the first of a million “Billy Bob Smith vs. Podunk Board of Education” lawsuits. Think about it. What if you take your car to the mechanic to fix the transmission, and he rolls it out the door and tells you it’s done, and you drive around the corner and it doesn’t go any more? Don’t you have recourse?
That’s what many school systems are doing with kids. They’re taking tax dollars and shuffling youngsters through twelve years of motions and announcing that those kids are educated and giving them a piece of paper attesting to the fact. And when that kid comes to me looking for a job and I tell them that they need to understand a little basic trigonometry and have the ability to read and understand books without pictures on every page, and they can’t do that, I’m basically telling them that they pretty much wasted twelve years.
Maybe it’s like that old joke: “Being married to ol’ Maude has given me three of the happiest years of my life. Unfortunately, we’ve been married thirty years.” Maybe what we’re doing to some kids is giving them three good years of education, except they have to sit in classrooms soaking up resources for twelve.
I work in a technical industry. I care not a whit that my prospective employee enjoyed an educational environment that was supportive of her ethnic consciousness or made him feel an important part of his community. If they cannot grasp the functionality of the ratios between the sides of a right triangle or cannot read through a 500-page manual to understand a piece of equipment, then they’re of no use to me. They may be perfectly suited to selling lingerie at JC Penney’s or shilling sound systems at Dood’z Xtreme Wheelz. They may be a lot of things, but they do NOT have the skills they should have held upon leaving high school.
Except I’m a dinosaur. No Child Left Behind only works if you slow EVERYBODY down. Before long, that “reads at a 8th-grade level” thing will disappear under a mountain of verbiage bestowed upon us by the educational establishment, replaced by the sort of verbosity one expects from a group of people educated past their intelligence.
It’s still possible to get a good education from public schools. There ARE good teachers out there. conversely, though, it’s also possible to bebop your way through twelve years and know just barely enough to read the comics if somebody leaves a newspaper in the lunchroom.
The addition of mandatory testing for schools is a two-edged sword. It leashes really GOOD teachers. That’s a bad thing. It short-stops sub-par teachers and schools from promoting and graduating students who cannot meet the minimal standards of the mandatory test for promotion to the next grade or for graduation. That’s a good thing.
However, there is a growing opposition to the idea that a student has to pass a test before graduating. Maybe, just maybe, we need to start educational “handicapping”. Got a high school diploma? Good! We’ll call that a “10”! Got a high school diploma and you passed the exit test? You get an extra piece of paper and we’ll call that a “12”. Your future employer may be interested.
And all that is about high school, folks. When we throw college on the table, the discussion gets really interesting. Of course, in the active worship of the gods of diversity, some special groups can sidestep screening requirements like the SAT and ACT scores. Remedial classes for college students are a fact of life as many colleges have not yet watered down the curriculum to the point that a mid-level high school graduate can function in college. Fortunately for us, though, college education in the hard sciences still seems to be pretty stout, so our new engineers and doctors and scientists and accountants are on the ball, but those other things? Well, I’m not so sure…
UPDATE: Apparently great minds think alike. The inestimable Chrissy touches on the subject of education and social promotion.
